The Creep - WIP Horror Game

So after finishing a fairly successful Ludum Dare I'm back to working on "The Creep" (Looking for a better name though).
A lot of the work that have been done is "invisible" work though, such as writing the story, tweaking code and such.

I have decided to release a demo at some point, and the first level (Which will also be the demo) is roughly done. It is possible to complete the entire level, but I still need to tweak a few things here and there, work a bit more on the atmosphere and add a few more scares here and there.

I'm kind of feeling the need to share some thoughts today, so here follows my thoughts on level design and cutscenes.

Thoughs on level design
Since the first level is in a forest, and I prefer to give the player as much freedom as possibly, it also makes the level design so much harder. It is very difficult to predict the players path, and as such it is nigh impossible to make something happen sequentially since there's no guarantee that the player will follow the most obvious path. This makes it.. interesting to track the players progress and objectives, as the player can potentially find clues that isn't needed until later in the level. I don't like to just make things appear as they're needed, unless it adds something to the game.
A similar issue arises when making scares around the level. As the player's movement is hard to predict there's a lot of possibly scares that the player will never experience- So it's all about making enough "scare events" around the level, without cluttering it with cheap jump scares and such- I like to keep it fresh, and not just the same three things over and over. I'm also trying to add a bit of dynamic to the game by making the triggers a bit dynamic, by moving them around, so that they're not exactly at the same place every time you play. Also, by making some of them have a chance not to trigger it makes it slightly harder for the player to predict when something happens and I'm hoping that will keep some of the scares and events fresh for a longer time.
Finally I like the idea of exploration. This is not something everyone will do, as being chased by something nasty doesn't really motivate the player to go out and explore. But sometimes you do end up getting lost, and this might cause you to end up somewhere unexpected. This way I get to place various information that isn't directly needed to complete the game, but it does add some extra story and atmosphere which (hopefully) makes the game seem more real and immersive.
I am looking forward to working more on the second level, as it is an interior level, where it is easier to predict the players movement, while still maintaining some degree of freedom.

I would love to hear your thoughts about designing levels for a horror game (or any game really) and I'm always looking for input or ideas to improve myself and my game :-)

Cutscenes
When working on a game I have a todo list that I update regularly. To keep myself from burning out I tend to have a few different tasks "open" at the same time, so that I can get a change of pace now and then. So when I'm not working on level design and scares and atmosphere, I'm working on an intro scene for the game. This is all very new to me as I have absolutely no experience in making cut scenes whatsoever.
I've made myself a simple camera manager scripts, that maintains all the cameras in the scene, and allows triggers of various kinds to trigger a change of camera. As the intro scene is about the family you get to play driving in their car, a lot of the triggers are triggered by the car, making it possibly for me to trigger events at specific places, and times. There's probably a better approach, but so far I'm pretty happy with it.
I've been using MakeHuman to make the three main characters for the game, and I've made the model of the daughter (Jill) and the dad (Jake)- I'm still not done with the mom, but I'll get there. Yesterday I started to play around with the animations, and placed Jill on the backseat of the car. I think I was moderately successful but it still needs a lot of work and tweaking. Below is a screenshot of Jill holding her music box on the backseat of the car.
The "grand" plan was to have the cutscene finished before I release the demo, but I'll be able to determine that better as I progress on the cutscene and get a better picture of how long it will take me to make it.

Here's the screenshot of Jill sitting on the backseat:

That was my thoughts for today. Thanks for taking your time to read it (if you did) or at least for stopping by.

Feel free to leave your thoughts if you so desire, as I'm always looking for feedback and ways to enhance whatever it is I am doing :-)