Why add good sounds design at all if you can just slap a microphone in a game, you know?
After my experience I also checked ManlyBadassHero playthrough in case I was missing something and he told it took him 6 hours to beat the game.
But I am glad that we have such skilled Gamers as you among us, makes me feel safe and sleep well at night.
Just to be clear he said 6 hours to beat it without dying 😉 (which is commitment!)
The decibel meter is a visual clue to where/if the creature is present, it would be a little too hard to tell where the creature was coming from with just spatial sound.
Im not really sure what you mean that you can barely hear the sounds, this was never a problem through playtests and watching other people play it. Maybe its an issue on your end?
I do agree if you die more than a couple of times it loses its scare factor and it gets annoying, but you can say that about all these types of games. Its partially why we chose it for the game jam "shovelware horror"
About sounds: I can hear them, but they are not representative about monster position or if that's monster/ambient at all. They are very subtle. I think in horror game sounds themself should be MORE informative then visual reinforcement (recorder indicators). The only issue that could be present on my end is mental, in that case feel free to ignore my feedback.
I think I died multiple times without even understanding why, just after rotating from computer closer to the end. I think it's better for a horror game to be easier then too hard. Especially in that genre (I could argue that some horror games benefit from being hard, like SCP:CB). Ideally, I think, first time player fails monster should give very audible clue and give player ~3 seconds to react.
My friend who is an indie horror junky was of similar opinion to mine after playing.
I gave a game another shot to actually check how wrong I am and I would like to clarify my original issues with sounds. It seems for after playing on risky-loud volume and with concentration that game does not position sound effects depending on monster position to the camera (left/right), or it does so very very very poorly (I am not entirely sure cause some sfx are definitely stereo).
I just don't get it. Game has strict 90 degrees rotations and when monster is coming from the left (I sat a lot in the beginning where there's probably definitely only one of them) I just hear sound in the center. I mean I do hear that some sfx are stereo, but they are not positioned in space. Maybe it was an oversight in the development, like enabling 2d/3d property for the sound emitter? (i'm not familiar with it is done in godot).
