So, nearly a week ago I was consulting my wishlist, looking for a birthday present to myself, and suddenly I stumbled upon this one here. Now... for honesty sake, I give thumbs up because I effectively had some fun while playing this game, but... I'm not sure I truly recommend it, not in its current state at least. Another Eye is a classic Slenderman-like survival horror where we have to collect 10 items to unlock the exit while a monster is constantly stalking us. Seems rather familiar, right? Well, actually, there are a couple of things that give to this title its own character, if not even some originality. As the game's description says, you can find several eyes scattered all over the map, usually inside drawers, and if you eat them you can see through the eyes of the monster for a couple of seconds. And... you see LITERALLY thorugh its eyes, in the sense that if the head of the monster is bent aside, your vision will be as well! This is a cute detail, but it's not rather the point. The point is that, if you know the map well, being able to see through the eyes of the monster gives you an enormous advantage, even for a couple of seconds. This is a cool idea, which, actually, I had already seen in another indie game, a very old survival horror rather similar to this one, but I'm not really sure if the devs took inspiration from it, because it is not well known at all. Anyway, this feature is not the only cool thing about Another Eye. I appreciated the fact that you have to collect small (and cute!) statues rather than the usual pages, and above all the fact that even if you lose, the statues you managed to collect before being killed will give you some experience points, so that you won't have played for nothing. What do you do then with the earned experience points? Well, you can use them to unlock new locations and, above all, new monsters. You can even unlock game modes where you have to face more than one monster simultaneously. In your following playthroughs you can choose any combination of monster/location you prefer, and this is another very cool idea I appreciated a lot. BUT! There are some downsides, unfortunately. First, two of the three available locations are not beatable because of game-breaking bugs, and this is truly a shame, because in those locations there are even puzzles to solve, so they could have been a really fun addition to the game. And second, all four available monsters are basically the same. They have different appearance, of course, but they literally behave in the same identical way, there are no specific abilities, and this is a big missed opportunity in my opinion. So, is this the reason why I'm not sure if I recommend the game or not? No. No, unfortunately. The real reason is far more severe. This game is awfully broken in too many ways. The control system is the WORST I have ever seen, and I'm not even exaggerating. You interact with the world around you through the mouse cursor. Yes, you read well. The mouse cursor. Which, of course, is not fixed in the center of the screen, no, it would have been too easy, right? The cursor moves INDIPENDENTLY from the camera, which moves left or right depending on the position of the cursor: if the cursor is in the right half of the screen, the camera moves right, and vice versa. But the cursor moves MUCH faster than the camera, so, basically, you have to approach items sideways like a damn crab to pick them up. And I'm sure this is literally the intended way to play this game, because I saw the same system in the trailer. I mean... who on Earth may think this is a good idea? But it is not over! I have enormous frame rate problems with this game, there are moments when the frame rate drops to something like 0.5 FPS, and, guess what? I can do nothing about it, because there are no settings in the game, not even the basic ones! 90% of my deaths are due to FPS drops, just saying! Now, I could have forgiven everything, everything, if not for another ridiculous thing I noticed immediately. Are you ready? Well... the piles of paper sheets have collision. They are scattered all over the floors of the first playable map, and you can actually get stuck on them. What the... why? WHY??? Why should I be killed because I got stuck on a small pile of paper sheets I didn't even notice on the ground? This is incredibly unfair, there are no excuses, I'm sorry. Furthermore, I noticed that the devs NEVER answered to the players who pointed out these issues (like me!), it seems they don't even care, and this is a thing that really upsets me. A game can have all the bugs in the world, this is not important, the important thing is that the devs are really interested in their product and do whatever they can to improve it by listening to the suggestions of us, the players! But... this doesn't seem to be the case, unfortunately. If we consider that all the models of the game are pre-made assets and that the full price is a bit exaggerated for the content it offers, well... now you can understand why I'm not very inclined to give my trust to this project. And this is a shame, because the game is actually very fun! It is for me, at least. If you feel to give it a try, go ahead, but be aware of the issues I told you above. You may have fun as well, but of course play at your own discretion.
Cheers guys!
