I’ll Agree With You Here, There Is A TON Of Missed Potential With Some Stuff In The Games, But That’s

I’ll agree with you here, there is a TON of missed potential with some stuff in the games, but that’s to be expected. This is a small indie game, so they’re will be some bigger imperfections. But DAMN there’s a lot.

1: The contrast in the atmosphere. Compared to the 2nd game’s setting, the attic in the 1st game feels a lot more tapped into and gives you a sort of claustrophobic feeling the whole time,. Throughout the game, you’re always on edge, wondering if something scary’s gonna pop out of the darkness. And don’t forget the ambience with the rain and thunder outside (honestly, it felt kinda nice for me, I like the sound of rain and thunder). But the second game? It just feels like nothing. The setting is just a regular library and feels more comforting than it does scary. I think the only time the setting really scared me was when the lights went out during the “Goodnight” tape. No sound, no nothing- with the only light coming from the TV with Amanda looking back at you looking scared. That sequence is REALLY good in terms of atmosphere, but the rest of the game just feels like nothing.

2: The missed potential of the side characters. Hot take, but I wish Riley talked during the game like the player character in Bendy and the Ink Machine to add to their character and get more people to actually are about them. Maybe, they could have little snippets of grieving over Kate’s death to show how they were connected or have them feel bad for Amanda. For Joanne, I wish we could’ve gotten more of her and not just a letter from her in the attic. No one really cared about her UNTIL she became an actual character in the second game. I only remembered her because this series has become engrained into my brain that I remember every single detail of it. When she had her speech, I felt a little bad for her, but I mostly didn’t really care for it. I just wish we got more of these characters so we could empathize with them.

Also I TOTALLY agree with your statement of Amanda and Wooly having too much free will in the second game, which is funny because they should have free will- but because of their situation, they can’t. HOWEVER, the reason for that was probably to reveal more lore about them.

Amanda and Wooly are having too much fun and I’m like “where’s your lack of free will??” (THAT WAS A JOKE, it just felt weird to me)

Anyway, that’s all I got.

Expanding on my earlier post.

@thequasarwinds I will probably mostly be explaining things based on your reblog.

What I meant by lack of character information was more about lore and personalities then anything else.

Even though we got a bit of expansion on the characters, it isn't much more than what we learned in the first game.

Let's take Amanda for example. If I were to put my finger on anything we learned, it's that she has a more caring personality than what we saw in the first game. However, the rest of her personality is simply an expansion of what we saw in the first game. Her darker interests that go beyond the shows creepiness (her fascination with Mr. Fox and death in general in the first game), her interest in drawing, her sass, her impatience. All of it was there from the start. We already knew she was Rebecca Colton. Even the softer side of her personality was hinted at by her father Sam. Though with Amanda I guess we did learn quite a bit compared to most characters though we learned nothing about her lore-wise and no new questions seem to be posed.

We learned the opossum is supposedly Jordan Cook before we even got so much as a HINT as to what's happening with Wooly!

And Joanne. Oh, Joanne. Replaying the game made me realize just how LITTLE we got of Joanne. There is so much missed potential there. I wish they let us get to know her more. What her relationship to Kate and Jordan was like. How she felt about Amanda and Wooly especially. She'd been close friends with Kate, helping her on this case right? There's no way Kate didn't explain the truth right? How did Joanne feel about this? To know that Amanda was a trapped child just like her brother? Joanne and the opossum both seemed to get the short end of the stick. I really want to care about these two on the level we care about Amanda and Wooly but that's simply impossible when we haven't been given much to connect with them on. Why didn't she watch some tapes WITH us. Why does Amanda not trust her?? When replaying I couldn't help but wonder what the point of introducing her like this was if we were going to learn nothing? We didn't finish reading all the information in Kate's house, but Joanne would know. Why didn't she explain just... a little bit? IDK I wish we learned more about her. She wants to save Jordan? Why not reminisce about him a bit? Just a small bit of dialogue. Why not have her say some things about Kate? How we remind her of Kate? Some little chats or discoveries they made. Something. Again, the fact she never once mentions Amanda or Wooly directly is strange to me. She should know who they are. She should have her own thoughts and opinions on them. I think both endings would've had more impact if we got some little details about her here and there.

And Riley, we actually learned a couple details about them through notes and letters in the first game... but nothing in the second. Most people don't even seem to recall their name!

Then there's Wooly, and while I'll admit we learned some things. I am not trying to say we've learned NOTHING about these characters, simply that I feel like we learned more about them in their introductions. We still know NONE of Wooly's lore. We don't know of any hobbies he has. We learn that he doesn't like sad things and has some odd reaction to talk of "horror" he likes things that are quiet and peaceful. He clearly has a personality, but it's hard to pin down when we know so little about him.

Then there are the character retcons. Personality-wise they remain consistent. However, I have noticed that there are some inconsistencies in Amanda's powers and abilities. Some examples include:

Despite being able to injure and eventually kill Wooly all by herself, she seems a lot weaker to the opossum. In some scenes, not even attempting to handle him herself when all it would take would be a shove off the couch. It doesn't seem like her to just stand and watch as someone messes with her stuff. Even if she were to fail, I think she'd at least TRY to do something.

In the first game, the only objects that moved around were ones already present in the room. The second game confirms this was Amanda's doing.... but now she's summoning objects that would never be present in a library. Come on. Don't tell me that a library would have a lighter, a frying pan, a living frog, frog dissection tools, a nightlight etc. just laying around! So does this imply that Amanda can just summon random things from anywhere?

I feel like there was more but I simply can't remember at the moment.

As for lore... I remember noticing SOMETHING in my playthrough but I didn't write it down and ugh now it's going to bother me but again, I forgot. I said in the previous post that most of these critiques were small and didn't affect the overall quality of the game anyway so *shrugs* I did notice something about the opossum, but he's already got his own post I'm drafting so I'll save it for later.

For continuity issues, I mostly mean the jump from the first game to the second. Amanda (and Wooly, but Wooly is more understandable in this case) act very different in the second game. Amanda is a lot more calm and isn't really trying to tell us anything. Which could be because she told her secret, but I felt like in the first game a lot more was stressing her out then that secret. Since the game starts right after the first one ends and nothing has happened in between, this large of a shift in behavior doesn't make much sense to me. Like especially in the patience tape. She didn't have much skills managing her temper before, but now she does. No time has passed to show when she would have acquired these skills. Making her sudden ability to calm herself down seem confusing.

The vibes deserve their own post. Maybe I'll expand on this more, but Amanda 1 was WAY more creepy. There was constantly an unsettling vibe, this was supposed to be a kids show but it clearly didn't feel like one. These two kids going around doing activities kids don't usually do all alone in this big empty world. Wooly getting hurt. The whole picnic episode. The topics of the episodes themselves. None felt like they BELONGED in a preschool show.

Then there's the aspect I finally realized as to why as a whole Amanda 1 and 2 felt way too different. Something that always made the game scariest was Amanda and Wooly's general helplessness. They can control aspects of our life and world, but they were constantly terrified of some greater unseen force.

The game made it clear that these kids were stuck in this scary world with no one to help them. When you answer Nobody can help. Amanda sighs and says we're probably right. The fact that there is no doctor present for when they get hurt (which they clearly can). The fact that both wish to help the kitten in the cage but clearly can't. THE ENTIRE MEATMAN SCENE. There are multiple scenes in the first game that suggest Amanda and Wooly are not the most powerful beings in these tapes. They are stuck obeying the will of a stronger being. This, I think even subconsciously, is very scary because we know Amanda and Wooly don't want to hurt us. But this higher being they are so scared of? We don't know what its intentions are.

Amanda and Wooly felt too FREE in the second game. They were just doing whatever they wanted, and acting much more like a real kids show. That's fine... but I think we should've gotten one or two smaller scenes that just reminded us that they are not completely in control. We sort of got that with the broken tape... but idk it's just not the same? I realized Amanda 2 really felt too much like a kids show.

Welp Imma head out. There's still more I could say but this is the general gist of it. Enjoy this silly in-between of Amanda I accidentally paused on.