I mean that's literally a puzzle for the player to figure out, lol.
Enemies can only spawn once in the same location. There's less spawn locations than there are hiding spot usages, so it's impossible to use them all up.
Edit:
I looked at your stream, you never looked at the reflections, you ran like madman through all of them and got attacked repeatedly.
Same. I couldn't figure it out. Not very intuitive. I tried looking at the reflections a few times but nothing happened so obviously I was doing something wrong. I ended up buying multiple health items, running through them, dying a few times. (Sometimes they walk over the mirror's hitbox, not sure if that's a glitch). One time I got lucky and managed to escape. If you try and go back they're still there. Reminded me of Pocket Mirror's mirror maze, which despite how frustrating it was, you had an idea of where to go and do for the most part. I'm just glad it wasn't a huge map.
I agree with you about the chase scenes and the layering issues. Although I do like the different monster designs, that horse was creepy. Also a really nice tile set. I played a similar game a while back that used similar graphics tiles, I have a screenshot if you're interested (I don't think it was ever finished). Also that broken giraffe sprite in the main park though, poor thing. :(
I'm not really sure what you're proposing I could even do to address this issue, that I should be having Asuka go "Huh, my reflection sure looks weird, I suppose I should look at my reflection more" or something in that line? That would be really weird and tacky and completely ruin the thing. I really don't know how else to present something like that other than completely break the immersion of the player or put a tutorial box, which would eliminate the whole point of the room in the first place.
Honestly I feel that part of horror games, especially retro horror games like Clocktower is trying to figure out what to do and what's the sollution to the problem, even when they're vague. This is meant to be a retro horror game and emulates that unknowing factor of what you can do.
The problem is when your puzzle defies the rest of the game up to that point with no real clues. The rest of the game basically suggests you to keep moving and avoid the enemies. Then the mirror wants you to stop. These are two conflicting ideas.
What can you do? Many things. As an example, a book in the shelf of books that mentions a story about the face in the mirror.
Day XX YY
Today, I thought I saw a shadow in the corner of my eye. I turned and, for a moment, I thought I saw the face of a stranger looking back at me. I must have been imagining things since as soon as I faced the mirror, I could only see myself reflected.
You could've also had, for example, a room with a doll facing a mirror and blood leaking from the mirror. This would be subtle, but might be something that the player might remember.
Another way would've been to create a natural way to see it happen. Have it start with a path leading right, then make a turn up with a mirror two spaces up. Have it so that the enemy shows up in that mirror, then when the player turns up, the enemy disappears and your reflection shows up.
There are many ways to do it without breaking immersion.
From what I recall of clocktower, it provided plenty of clues to the player. They were less vague and more subtle. Vague and subtle are two different things.
