The Cronus Camp for Wayward Boys | No Failure Runs | Part 9 FINALE
9Lost potential. I think that's the best word to describe the entirety of Episode 3. I sat here for a good couple of hours just trying to find a better way to say this, but I unfortunately couldn't find anything less when I say the experience is actually improved if the entire thing is just scrubbed and restarted design wise.
The Dungeon seems to have good intentions. A map where you can seal/open areas, allowing you to trap enemies within. Except that there's not much room in each of the rooms themselves for you to sneak around enemies with, there's not enough hiding spots with ones that do in the dungeon itself being useless since enemies can still see you through them, the switches aren't marked or have cameras meaning you'll have to use trial and error to figure out which switch opens/closes which doors, and lastly, not having a lot of dark areas to sneak around in. This is assuming the stealth system got fixed after what Banished and The Trenches did to shatter expectations.
I don't need to explain much regarding Geryon's Playground, it feels like level design doodling than a proper map. I didn't even need to stealth in order to get a 0 kills run. Also refused the idea of using the Lightning Gun at all, I apologize in advance if anyone's expecting me to start zapping eldritch horrors.
The final boss. Oh, my dear. There are many ways you could do a final boss in a stealth horror mod, and it is NOT running around like Tom & Jerry while pressing switches. You know what? Even Tom & Jerry would be preferable, 'cause Jerry had to run from a killer 20 times his size and he still has to use stealth and hiding spots!
Maybe you could have a dynamic area where the goddess creature changes the lights every now and then forcing you to adapt quickly. Use silent teleporters to add a bit of non-euclidean charm as reality falls apart. Add a time limit while still forcing stealth. Maybe have an area similar to The Trenches except with no other enemies, have Ms. Dane altered to have a faster patrol speed than the other Jitterheads so she can still catch you off guard as you press the switches, merge a little bit of the goddess creature's aesthetics into her to show how she's different from the rest of the other Jitters after the first time you met her, make her immune to stun and deadly weapons so even gun-ho players would need to STEALTH. That's the keyword that I demand from this entire nonsense. You don't do what Episode 3 did in a mod claiming itself to be a Stealth Horror mod!
I apologize dearly if I'm being mean the past few vids' description and this one, but I can't help but express my utter disappointment. After the fantastic beginning of EP1 and the increasing intensity of EP2, EP3 feels like someone dropped a bag of salt in my teapot. I do hope this doesn't discourage Impie or even others from perhaps updating or doing another one of these kinds of mods, because I do feel that this mod is great. Even past the hokey story, the janky text-to-speech VA, the occasional shenanigans like in that one map that kills you for going in the wrong order, I still liked this mod. Just wished that the last bits were executed better.
Mods Used:
The Cronus Camp for Wayward Boys: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=68322
Good ol' HUD: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=54123
Nash's Gore: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=11545
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ZikShadow presently has 275 views for Wayward across 1 video, and less than an hour worth of Wayward videos were uploaded to his channel. This is less than 0.03% of the total video content that ZikShadow has uploaded to YouTube.