An atmospheric horror walking sim with striking environments and sound, with a surprising mix of polish and jank. Light on gameplay, and occasionally feeling a bit aimless, I'd say it's still worth experiencing for the price.
[h2]ATMOSPHERE[/h2]
This game has fantastic visuals and sounds. This is an excellent example of smart asset-pack use. Everything feels coherent and fits together well. The levels all have the same oppressive and isolated feel, but there is a good amount of variation so it never feels too visually samey as you progress.
The lighting is particularly good. The use of colour, harsh shadows, contrast, etc. is all very high quality. It's the main reason the environments look as good as they do. This guy knows how to light a scene.
The sound is also very well done. Footsteps and ambient noise feel visceral and immerse you in the scenes, distant movement or screams add tension. Most of the horror in this game comes from smart use of SFX.
[h2]HORROR[/h2]
Not the scariest game, but it can certainly be scary. Like I said before, SFX are the main source of terror here. But you quickly learn you are very rarely in danger, and walking back and forth between rooms collecting items doesn't feel tense for most of the game.
There are a few monster encounters. They are brief and not particularly challenging, but do add a lot. After the first time, knowing the game [i]does[/i] in fact have enemy encounters, the dark hallways and spooky sounds feel a lot more threatening. For a while at least.
The scary-ness did peter out for me by the end, mostly because the game never really lets up on the atmosphere and you get used to it's tricks. There are a few small flashback sections that sort of function like breaks, but they only do so much.
Despite a good amount of variation in the look of the levels, they do all 'feel' very much the same. It's always walking through rusted hallways pressing buttons and finding items. There is little challenge to be found, and though I wouldn't say I got bored, things were getting little dull towards the end.
[h2]JANK AND ISSUES[/h2]
Performance is not great. It ran fine for me, but still had performance drops in several areas despite a pretty powerful setup. I imagine on mid-range PCs these problems can get pretty extreme.
Numbered control panels were very awkward to use, the mouse movement is laggy and can get stuck on the edges.
The interface in general is a big weakpoint. Use of inventory is awkward and clunky. There is a dedicated documents tab that is only ever utilised twice in the game, as well as a camera photos section that is only needed [i]once.[/i]
The HUD updates to show interaction icons at a longer range than you can actually interact, which is a baffling choice that caused a lot of minor frustrations. If the reticle changes to 'push button' I tend to assume that means I can push the button, but no. You always need to be a few steps closer and there is no further change in the UI to indicate when you are [i]actually[/i] in interact range.
I did also hit progression blocking bugs twice in the game. One was fixed by exiting and re-opening, the other was a permanent soft lock where I was stuck inside a wall. Luckily I found a save file online, so I only had to replay a little bit instead of the entire game.
Also, the achievements seem to have bugged out because I fully finished the game and only got one of the progression achievements. A little annoying but I'm not a huge achievement hunter or anything so it's whatever.
[h2]WORLD AND THEMES[/h2]
The game is very explicitly concerned with childhood abuse and trauma, (Though there are no direct depictions of it, in case you were worried).
Some of the ways it handles this theme are very obvious, some are more subtle, but the setting is weirdly detached. Outside of a few sections where you find yourself in modern real world environments, the game mostly takes place in an industrial nightmare. I understand the developer was trying to replicate his own feelings as a survivor of abuse, but most of the time it just feels like you're in a standard sci-fi horror.
It's a shame then that the levels have no internal fiction to hold them together, which I feel still could've been done without sacrificing the theme. There is no story or lore here, aside from the overall theme. I get what it's going for, but it made much of these levels feel a little aimless to me. There is never a narrative reason to progress other than "I need to open this door to continue the game".
Even many of the puzzles feel only barely related to the overall theme. Some are very blatant, like slicing open your own body to find a children's toy, but others are just "restore power to this sci-fi equipment", which doesn't feel very rewarding when there's no story wrapping it.
There is some text at the end that ties a bunch of things together, and it mostly works. But not perfectly.
It's like the game had the choice between having a fictional story as an allegory for abuse, or going extremely direct with the developers actual experiences. It aimed more for the latter, but didn't fully commit and ended up in this weird middle ground.
I certainly don't think the game made me 'view abuse differently' as the developer claimed.
It's not bad, I just think committing fully to either of those two approaches would've yielded a stronger result.
[h2]OVERALL[/h2]
This is an incredibly impressive feat for a solo developer, and IMO worth the price. Despite my complaints about the setting and theme not always jelling, It's still powerful that the developer used his own real experiences with abuse and poured it into the game. The dedication at the end was genuinely moving.
If it sounds like the kinda game you're even a little interested in, give it a go.
I'm very interested to see what the developer makes next.
