I can't believe I'm actually writing a review on this and taking it seriously but this game pissed me off more than it should. I bought this game because I remembered it from back in the day. I had just turned 11 when this game came out a few weeks prior. There were many youtubers I saw play it, and I eventually played it myself but refunded because I thought it was too difficult. So, Christmas/New Years sale comes around and I see it in my recommended games tab and thought ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wow I haven't thought of this in years!!! And so I regrettably ended up buying it and played through the entire thing.
Trust me when I say this is actually one of the worst games I've ever played in my entire life. I would like to try the other entries in this series (particularly 1999, as it seems the most appealing to me) so I'm not entirely put off. But this entry is genuinely so bad I can't stress enough.
It's funny because it does so little in a short amount of time, a lot of the reasons I can boldly say such a thing is because of poor optimization, lazy design, horrible AI, and a generally stupid concept. I played the demo of SMS 1999 and was actually impressed by how it played compared to this.
This whole time I've been remembering this game the same way I remember Slendytubbies. A fan game that was weirdly kind of popular when it came out and developed a small fandom, while piggybacking off a larger property (such as Slenderman, or in this case, Five Nights at Freddy's)
Anyway, this game is very simple. You do the following for 10 levels with zero context outside of an opening cutscene and ending cutscene played out through comic artstyle: Spawn inside of a house, where you have to sit in hiding spots that are marked with a dark blue glow, until they turn green. Marking them as immediate safe spots. So, when in a chase, if the spot were blue, the monsters could still come and get you. However, if it were green, they immediately lose you if you get into the safe spaces. When you get a bar filled, having enough safe spots, you have to look for a glowing orb somewhere in the house (first marked with a neon line on the floor, it disappears after like a minute and a half) and once you find it you are told to exit the house. Which is only through the front door.
It's this exact thing for 10 levels. It never changes once, outside of like...the house being a different color a couple of times? Or maybe 2 or SOMETIMES EVEN 3 of the monsters at once. I would not have a problem with this if the game didn't cost money, it's too short to justify its price. But hey, atleast it's 4 bucks instead of 15 like it was on release.
The repetition of the game basically kills any discussion of the game's gameplay. But I feel like the AI is also very important to bring up because it ties to the gameplay. It's...really odd. From what I played of SMS1999 they seem to have fixed every issue I had with the AI (but that game is still difficult as ♥♥♥♥) and this one has very silly design. An enemy spots you and the only indication apart from being chased is a red eyeball icon in the corner, they don't make a sound.
The enemies lose you as soon as you enter a safe spot. If they see you enter a safe spot, they turn around and continue searching for you?? If it were still a hiding spot, they'd come toward you which yeah that makes sense. The AI in this game is legitimately dogwater, it is so barebones and it's difficult to figure out exactly where they are due to the bad sound design but I'm pretty sure they're on a strict patrol route.
They do chase you as I said before but they go back to the route they were on just before, which also leads me to the optimization: While in chases, it's sometimes difficult to make it to a spot in time because the game constantly drops in framerate depending on where you look. This is genuinely Yandere Simulator level of bad optimization. Even if played on the Fastest setting in the Unity menu it runs the exact same. It has moments where the framerate is decent, but that's when it doesn't load in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of unnecessary things.
The last 2 levels in particular were difficult because of the poor optimization. There's too many assets that aren't even necessary.
Oh yeah btw, who the ♥♥♥♥ is Nightmare lol??? I got an achievement for escaping Nightmare or whatever, but I didn't even see this character once. I am assuming it's the character who showed up during those annoying cutscenes that play throughout the levels. But I didn't see it once in the game at all.
Anyway, game is really really awful. I am wasting my breath talking about it in great detail like this. I give up. I intend to try the other ones but I doubt I'll enjoy them, safe for maybe 1999 which from the demo seemed legitimately decent in some ways.
