Apparition

[b][i]Review copy provided by developer via Curator Connect[/i][/b] Why aren’t there more ghost hunting games? It’s been a popular profession since at least the Ghostbusters, and the gaming world has always been quick to add weapons and combat to things that don’t need them. But no, typically ghosts in indie horror games are content to run past open doorways, break vases, and generally be ♥♥♥♥♥ until they get to kill you in the ending cutscene. Not so in Apparition, though, where you’ll be combing the woods for unnatural sorts, committing them to film, and then ideally escaping with your life. It’s a neat idea for a game, and if it could stick to that concept and flesh it out instead of… whatever it’s doing, it might even be fun. Honestly, I’ve already pretty much run down the plot for you. You’re a paranormal investigator who pays the bills by filming their discoveries (and apparently sells to the Sun or something, since no one seems to care you’re capturing GHOSTS on FILM). There’s a particularly haunted stretch of woods where people keep disappearing (again, that only you seem to care about), the perfect place to farm pics assuming you’ve got the right equipment. You can leave at any time by retreating to your car, and you’ll earn cash for whatever you’ve recorded which can be spent on new recording tools or other items that let you interact with the area. You’ll find a cabin and a few campsites in the area too, which may contain clues to the creatures you’re liable to run into. Just so we’re clear, there’s one map in the game. Everything you do is going to be on this one plot of dark forest, which takes less than a minute to cross. It’s entirely static aside from the notes you can find, including sketches of the monsters with bits about their behavior, and questions you can ask them. The questions are used with a Ouiji board you carry with you and can set near the main camp, allowing you to speak to and identify the critters that are going to come and murder you. This is probably the neatest part of the game, because you get some genuinely creepy responses and can even type in your own questions which the spirits will respond to. Once you’re done communing, it’s time to wander the woods in search of one of the game’s creatures. Creeping through the underbrush is definitely a tense experience, and spotting a knife-wielding ghost or thing without a face can be quite the rush, I admit. However, to get to that point you’ll need to do quite a bit of wandering, during which you’ll be subject to a screamer jumpscare about every five minutes or so. This thing is completely harmless and absolutely inexplicable, because it’s not something you can film, banish, or interact with in any way. It’s the very definition of a cheap jumpscare, and ruins the tension of stalking things that have every intention of stalking you. Eventually you’ll suffer through that to the point of finding a monster, record what you can, and get the hell out of there. And… that’s pretty much it. You’ll upgrade your stuff eventually by doing the same song and dance over and over, on the same map, hunting for the same monsters. It’s like the supernatural version of theHunter: Call of the Wild, except with a fraction of the content so small you could blink and miss it. In my hour-plus of wandering the woods I had one exciting encounter where I risked it all to film a murderous ghost and barely got back to my car before she ended me. My reward for that was not enough of anything to unlock new stuff, and I wasn’t about to endure another 20 minutes of hunting and pecking for the chance of another satisfying emergent encounter. The other thing I want to point out is that Apparition has been in Early Access for about a year. I tried it when it first launched, and I tried it ten months later, and there’s been essentially no change in the experience. It’s missed its planned release back in July, and the developer hasn’t posted about it in months. Instead, the Steam announcements are full of advertisements for other games from the publisher and occasional deep discounts on this one. I don’t normally examine the actual state of Early Access for games I review, but I also don’t normally review ones that are acting this shady. Apparition definitely isn’t a complete or even satisfying experience now, and significant doubts that it ever will be make it impossible to recommend. Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them on my [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/11322459/]curation page[/url]!

Abandoned early access.............Developer is making other quick games for cash grab. Go look at his page, MrCiastku.

Ouija board, shiver me timbers. I don't know what the developers were going for but whatever they wanted to achieve with this game just doesn't cut the mustard. The exploration aspect is bad, the map is too short. The graphics are outdated. The gameplay is redundant and unfulfilling, with the points you get, you can unlock new equipment but why not give it to the player right away since space in your backpack is limited and you need to combine the items anyway to beat your previous best score. The atmosphere sucks, it uses all tricks in the book to scare you but it ultimately doesn't work out. And lastly, the game is still full of bugs and seems to be perma stuck in early access. All in all, if you're looking for a bad horror game with good premise then by all means go ahead.

Apparition is a game where you're trying to gain score points by doing a ghost investigation. I didn't play very long into this game as I couldn't get into it. There was a lot of issues I encountered that made the game less than enjoyable. I'll list them below. I'm not a fan and I wouldn't recommend it. It was worth a shot. It seems to have potential, but maybe I wasn't understanding the mechanics of the game to fully enjoy it. PROS: * Good atmosphere * Good SFX * Decent graphics CONS: * No tutorial or explanation on how to play (journal doesn't really give you a good clue on what you should be doing) * Going out of bounds is instant kill, but it's hard to tell where the out of bounds are besides a note on the screen * No indication when you go BACK in bounds to a safe area * Scroll wheel to change what equipment you're using seems to be really unreliable. Using the numbers pad or tab inventory would have been better * No explanation of what you need to do * Controller support didn't work (XBOX, 8bit Pro Duo) * Seems like each time you escape you earn points, but no idea what you can DO with those points (besides bragging rights?) * Can't light an area up to use the camera to take pictures (couldn't figure out how to take pictures in dark areas to score points) * No way to run away or avoid enemies/ghosts/apparitions once they have seen you and are chasing you * No explanation on what metal/wood/resources are used for * Ouija board wasn't showing up on screen (was a blank board) At this time I would not recommend this game, however if someone would like to explain how the hell to play this game (cause the devs sure as heck didn't) I'd love to know. https://www.seravium.com https://twich.tv/seravium

-Update for 6/2020 -Game appears abandoned. Critical features almost unanimously requested by the community like -turning off the random jump scares- still haven't been implemented. No evidence of activity on the forums since late last year. Avoid this until it's been given a proper treatment. Original review proceeds below: This is excellent. I used to do this spooky stuff all the time back in '01-'03, and this pretty neatly sums up the paranormal investigator lifestyle. You start out broke and ill-equipped, trespassing on private property and scaring yourself witless with every creak and gust of wind. The property you're investigating is comprised of a couple cabins, sheds, and campsites. You earn experience collecting evidence (pics/vids) and talking to spirits with your ouija board. Once the fear is too much you hightail it back to your truck and gtfo. You use the exp gained to bring better gear the next time. Maybe then you start to get really brave and spend time chatting with ghosts or scouring for evidence, and the threat becomes real. The monsters you'd heard about in the scattered lore are now somewhere on the property actively seeking you out. You have to try to document these things without letting them get ahold of you. You'll eventually gain access to a crafting station where you can make traps and totems to use against the monsters. It turns into a deadly game of paparazzi hide and seek. You're trying to draw out the evil ones into your camera equipment and traps while keeping yourself alive and sane. Each creature has a unique behavior you must learn to recognize and exploit. Then you have to make it back to your truck with all your evidence. Really great experience, especially considering it's still developing. Strongly recommend. This brings me right back to my misspent teenage years, chasing echoes down dark hallways and trying to photograph entities in abandoned asylums. If only I'd been faster or smarter, I could have made it out alive with my evidence

Well, i wasn't expecting the feelings that i got from an indie game like this! It is propably the most up to date Ouija simulator i have ever played! With some more updates on the animations and the gameplay it is going to be a proper Horror game for sure! If you like survival indie horror games, you should definitely try this one^^ * DO NOT EXPECT A STORYLINE... THIS WILL GIVE YOU MANY MANY JUMP SCARES!

This game immitates the immersion of the feeling of something watching you out in the woods and leaving you cautious and freaked out. It's like real life when you are afraid to turn around and preysomething isn't behind you. This isn't some psychological BS, it's actual straight up supernatural horror/eerie atmostphere. Other than the atmosphere, I decided to write a review for once to point out a horror game that actually has a way to be replayable and fun. (SPOILERS) The unique idea of earning credits for capturing stuff is really neat and for going back to do it again with freedom of how much you want to do. I pray that this makes it to full game and not remain early access because I don't think this concept has been done before for a horror game.

I have got to give this game a positive review, because it is so freaking scary! I also love the concept, it's an RPG/roguelike combined with an FPS scare fest. The problem is that the game throws too much at you all at once. there is no strategy allowed if i don't even know what i'm going up against. I think each run should be an investigation into one type of monster (that you determine via spirit board). as it is now its just too difficult, perhaps a random mode (as it is now) could unlock as a new gameplay mode after players become familiar with how each creature acts. as it is now it's like a pizza with everything on it, when most often i prefer a cheese or pepperoni. I only suggest this knowing that all of the content is already in the game, and don't want to come across as someone complaining that there are no pancakes in my waffles.

I'm not really sure if Apparition is an asset flip. Some elements of this game certainly make it seem like the developer put some effort into assembling some kind of original here. On the other hand, a lot of the game assets don't seem like they were created by the developer, but they haven't credited any asset creators for supplying assets, which might be a case of plagiarism. There's no evidence, so we need to give the benefit of the doubt... regardless, asset flip or not, the quality here is indistinguishable from many asset flip/cash grab scams, and that's a problem in itself. The game was abandoned roughly 1 year after launch and hasn't been updated in over 4 years. It blew past the developers commitment to complete the game without any notification or admission of failure from the developer. The game will never be completed. Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The developers didn't design the game for modern gaming PCs, as such the display resolution caps out at around 1440p, there's no support for the state-of-the-art 4K or higher resolutions. The game simply won't look right on modern gaming displays due to this failure on the part of the developers. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 10 players, and it's possible those players were just idling the game to write some very suspicious, possibly fake reviews. Now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Unethically, the developer sold keys to this abandoned Early Access game into cheap, nasty game bundles, where they knew it would be advertised and sold as a complete PC game. This seems to have been done in an attempt to mislead gamers into buying a knowingly faulty, defective and incomplete product. When a developer does this for a game they have zero practical intention of completing, this is essentially a scam, an intention to get paid for a broken/unfinished product. Often this is done as an exit strategy, as the developer takes the money and runs. No refunds have been given, the developer kept all the money they took from gamers. Another unethical act of this developer, knowing full well that this game is abandoned and they will never complete it, they are deliberately trying to scam gamers into buying it by offering it on discount from time to time. It's impossible to "accidentally" discount a game. The developer looked at their abandoned game, and instead of doing the right thing and removing it from Steam, they instead doubled-down and tried to scam even more people into paying for it. Greedy, and completely unethical. Doing the wrong thing, on purpose, for money. This is not okay. Apparition has the almost scam-like price of $10 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $10 asking price for this game could get you games like "Mass Effect Andromeda", "Dead by Daylight" or "The Elder Scrolls Online". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. There's also thousands of free, superior quality games on Steam. Final note: This game features a number of suspicious, likely fake positive reviews. The reviews all appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the game, and all have very similar wording and writing style. Immediately after this huge peak of reviews, reviews (and player counts) for the game dropped incredibly sharply. This is highly unusual given the very low quality of the game and poor player counts. The "Positive" review score on this game should be taken with a large grain of salt.This might have been done to deceive/mislead gamers into paying for a bad product. The "Positive" review score on this game should be taken with a large grain of salt.

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