Reviews for The Insanity 2

[Istentelen]

not that great

I hate timed puzzles in general, but the ones in this game are even worse than the average. You don't give instructions, fine, it's not very hard to figure out anyway, but you should give time to think, or at least to read what the character says! Becouse most times I was dead before I could even read it!
(It's true that you don't get instructions or extra time IRL, but IRL you have all your senses and know what you can do and what you can't, wheras in a game you only have your sight and hearing and even they are restricted, and you don't know what will do something when you click on it! Also a game is meant to be won, so it mustn't be as hard and as unfair as real life is!)
The dialog boxes are also very bad: the text goes very fast, so it's very hard to follow, and if you fall behind with the reading you have to wait until the whole dialoge is over to be able to go back to the begining! It should go slower and should be always scrollable. It's not very player-friendly either that one click scrolls only one line in the box. Also the game should always remain paused until you click to end conversation. It was a hit below the belt when that Tikaki (or whatever her name is) attacked at the very moment the last line of the dialoge appeared! I was still reading many lines above wasn't expecting a charge at all. And as I mentioned before it was absolutely unfair that she reached and killed me in 2-3 seconds! That time is too short even if one knows what to do. To get past her I had to attack her during the conversation.
The aforementioned things were just mildly annoying however compared to the minigame where you must escape frome the old vivisect. You really should exclude these minigames from your games, they suck! In The Insanity there was "The Machine", wich annoyed the fuck out of everyone, now there is this, wich is even worse, becouse The Machine at least made some sense. But this running is just plain stupid, and hard as hell. I've got a double-click button on my mouse and I clicked it like a madman and I still lost. And what were you thinking anyway when you decided to put a button-mashing minigame in? Mashing a button is not fun and never was, however it kills your mouse/keyboard and makes your fingers hurt!
One more thing: screamers (a suddenly appearing scary face with a loud scream) are VERY old! They aren't scary anymore, instead they are boring and anoying. You should come out with something more original in place of them next time. For example with a third person view animation of the monster attacking the protagonist.

[Roadkill247]

Great!

But what if you could choose the difficulty for the minigame difficulty? Because at when you have to click fast I suck at that, but my friend is awesome. Just a suggestion.

[ninezerowill]

Excellent!

Loved the atmosphere and creepy music. The story rivals that of many horror movie franchises. Would be a big seller if made into a movie. Very well done.

Also, will there be a Insanity 3? Just curious. Love these type of flash games.

EvilKris responds:

For sure they'll be a third and closing part for the franchise. The story is not set in stone as of yet but the fixed details so far are as follows:
1.Nathan Langon (P.Langdon's brother) IS the main character - a malicious, bent, drunk ex-policeman. He's no goody two-shoes. His tale will coincide with the first part of the series.
2.It will be more adventure based. Check out the game 'It Came from The Desert' on YouTube for inspiration. Map based, with several locations you can visit.
3.They'll be action sequences, QTE style and shooting guns etc.
4.The story will take place in the small fictional village of Weasel Marsh. Edgar Friendly's birthplace.
5.The story features 'intelligent vivisects'- they look like humans, until....well you'll see.
However, work won't begin on it until probably the latter part of next year.
Don't get me wrong I'd love to start on it immediately but unfortunately the games haven't been much of a cashcow for myself and the other team members (too niche) so I'm putting off doing the third one while I rip out a couple of quick'n'satisfying mini-flash games that'll (fingers crossed) will afford us the finances to work on a next part- knowing full well it won't make a damn cent *lol*
Anyway, your support is much appreciated. Thanks.

[supertailsrules]

The problem with prequels...

is that the player may not know the exact details, but will know enough that most all of the game is spoiled. This is a shining example of that. Having played the first game, I knew almost exactly what was going to happen. It was already given that Langdon would not live and Tracy was evil. Despite this, I won't deny it was a great game, certainly better than the first. It was nice to be forced to kill monsters or get around them in creative and different ways rather than just hammering through them all and being able to die through poor choices or puzzle failures kept me on my toes. However, I still feel I couldn't get into the game well enough because of my intimate knowledge of what was already going on from the first game.

As for specific suggestions for this game, the dialogue box, in all cases, should be removed. Characters should still talk of course, but I think it might work better to display it in a similar manner as when examining items or your surroundings. Honestly, the box looks kind of goofy for a game such as this and makes it difficult to take dialogue seriously. The dialogue also moved WAY too slowly to keep my attention. This wasn't ordinarily a problem except in the case of talking to Tracy as trying to skip to display the whole text would cause her to instantly attack you. My suggestion is to have a button to skip the whole dialogue, perhaps space bar, and another, probably mouse click, to advance dialogue until a new person speaks. (For example, if Langdon was talking to Tracy, it would advance to the next line Tracy had, another click to Langdon's next line, etc.) The same principal should apply for when discovering, or being discovered by, monsters. It takes too long for the text to complete and by that time, the shock has worn off.

In the tunnel where you had to shine the flashlight on the key while avoiding putting it over the monster, I feel personally that his head was too close to flashlight. It would've been better if he had been leaning the other way near the key to force the player to be careful when grabbing it. I died several times on accident barely moving the flashlight down form it's starting position, which was more frustrating than anything, and in the chase scene, I don't think you should show the monster's position relative to yours. I think it'd be best to leave it to the imagination of the player how close he is.

As for the ending, it was completely unsurprising as I mentioned everyone who played the first game knows he would be brought back and killed, which took away a lot from the ending. Even if I hadn't known, the shadow of the man in Langdon's house was way too obvious to not be noticed. You should have placed him against a dark background to help hide him at least a little. After that, the ending would probably have been better if you had skipped straight to the video recording of Langdon. After all, I'm sure most people could easily remember Friendly saying he would be the last thing he would ever see, so that monologue was really just a waste of space and time. You need to keep your audience more engaged, and I feel that monologue just didn't do a good job.

Overall, I feel this was a very well done game that only had a few points needing real improvement. The biggest problem of all was not necessarily your fault in the fact that it was a prequel, and there is certainly nothing you can do to really fix that. I will look forward to the next chapter.

EvilKris responds:

Thanks for that detailed and lengthy feedback.
I'll keep some of your comments in mind when I begin work on the last installment next year.
Couple of things though, first of all I think you may have mixed up the names, Peter Langdon is not Nathan Langdon, the one mentioned in the first game. That's his brother. So even though Nathan did get killed, (and btw it's a horror game?what do you expect lol)- it's actually Nathan Langdon that Tracy Takaki was referring to in part 1.
But don't expect there won't be more of a twist to that too.

I do agree with you about the Project K shadow not hidden well enough. My monitor is a little dim and it looked completely blacked out when I was designing it. I didn't realise the mistake until I saw the game on another laptop after release.

Thanks.

[Re-iLL]

very nice artwork

Nice work bro, it was a good game, although the big newspapers in the start aren't inviting to read because there is nothing known about the story