Astray

Arriving at an abandoned museum run by your now missing uncle, you explore its darkened halls uncovering only unsettling discoveries that hint at something sinister lurking deeper within. Strange puzzles and cryptic clues guide your path, leading you into a mystery that blurs the fragile line between reality and the unknown. Armed with your wits and a flickering flashlight you must navigate the unknown and uncover the truth—if you dare. Astray is a first-person horror puzzle game that sends the player through a series of interesting and eerie environments to solve puzzles which culminate into a well-done story that borders on the realm of insanity. The controls are quite simple, and all the clues that you need to solve the puzzles are provided, making Astray a very easy game to get into. Overall, the game should take you a couple of hours to complete. The game’s strongest aspect is its ability to instill unease. Certain zones ooze with dread, successfully making the player feel vulnerable and on edge while the addition of a creature wandering around in some levels helps to heighten that experience. Sadly, the world itself often feels lifeless, with environments that appear more like stitched-together assets rather than a cohesive, lived-in space. Overall, a good story but meh visuals. The are no achievements for this game. Astray is not bad, but then again, the game isn’t great either—even nodding to the fact that Astray is over ten years old. It’s one of those games that is hard to recommend. While it’s impressive that a two-person team put this game together, Astray ultimately doesn’t stand out in the crowded horror genre. Unless you have a particular interest in older indie horror games made with limited resources, Astray is best picked up on sale—or ultimately skipped altogether.

First half isn't horrible, but it just tries so hard to be Amnesia, but this time you can clip out of the map, usually by accident, and die! I actually was able to skip a section I had no clue what to do in by jumping into the wall until I popped into the other side of the wall. And the AI is honestly more funny than scary. Getting it to chase you is practically invited since you're the same speed and it loses aggro at the most stupid things, like a closed door or just going to a different height, higher or lower. Then it just stares at you and f*cks right off. Was more fun to trap them at previous parts of the level that they weren't supposed to go to than it was to avoid them. Honestly, there are much better puzzle games like the Portal series, and there are better horror games like Amnesia. There are also better horror-puzzle hybrid games, like most of the mascot horror genre, and we all know how terrible that can be. I would recommend SECURITY BREACH over this.

This game is a real mixed bag for me. I enjoyed the museum aesthetic at first, with having to navigate three different exhibits to solve puzzles. It would have been nice to see that concept expanded, instead of later environments devolving into generic hallways and caverns assets. The puzzle variety was nice at the start and the use of physics based objects to solve some of them created a rewarding experience. I found the horror element very lacking. You are stalked by the same poorly modeled zombie/ghoul throughout each level. It's basic pathing and awkward aggro radius make it more of a headache as opposed to any real threat. The checkpoints are fairly generous and the sound design was acceptable if a little bland. Story snippets are told through notes left by other characters in the world. You never really discover who you're playing as or why you're in the museum to begin with. Seems like a missed opportunity to not include some other NPCs to create a more engaging narrative. Instead, I just felt like I was exploring the remnants of someone else's more exciting journey. The ending had some descent cutscenes but still felt overly cryptic, leaving more questions than answers. Overall, I think this games strengths lie in it's puzzle design but it isn't enough to rise above the poorly conveyed story and generic horror elements. Not recommended.

Played for around 15 mins. Seemed pretty bland and boring.

Astray is a short 3D horror game that lets you traverse a museum through it's ancient themed rooms, underground sections and even goes further below that. There are pipeline puzzles, switches and letter / number combination puzzles all throughout the game. Add to that a dreary atmosphere and creatures that lurk from within that are sure to give you a fright upon the first few encounters. While the story can't be explained on it's own, you must read documents and notes to fully grasp what is happening with not only the building, but something greater as well. The game has decent graphics, plays relatively well and has linear paths so that you don't get lost and know where to go next. With all that said, the game does have a few problems, sometimes the flashlight can drain away quickly, and while there are batteries around to refill back up for power, it's not much as there are few in numbers and some of them are rather hard to spot, especially when you run out of juice and either have to wait a good 2 to 3 minutes to re-energize the flashlight completely or have to look around in pitch darkness for one. Add to the fact that the game is always very dark, so this can be rather bothersome, maybe it was meant to be put in the game as an extra challenge, but it comes off petty to me and isn't an interesting gimmick to have for any game. Also while the creatures themselves are scary upon first viewing, you start to memorize a certain pattern that they all have and can easily be avoided or exploited if you know the advantages. So the AI isn't up to snuff either as well as an extreme lack of enemy variety as this is the only model for a monster you will get throughout the whole game, despite the final boss of course. With all that said, the game isn't bad, it's certainly not a great game, but it's enjoyable and has a length that doesn't make the experience drag too much either. Surprisingly, it's quite good as an stand alone, independently made title. It could have easily been much worse I'd say. Comparing this game to professionally made titles would not be fair at all, So my expectations weren't super high for Astray. So for what it is, it gets a 7 out of 10 experience as a short indie horror game. I enjoyed what little it had to offer, and was still a good time killer all things considered. I recommend this to people who like short indie horror games. It will disappoint some people, but I'm sure it'll have it's fans. I wouldn't consider myself one, but I liked it fine.

Nem olyan rossz ez, de különösebben jónak sem mondanám. A múzeum helyszínként jó ötlet (végre nem hotel vagy régi ház), de nem igazán használja ki a játék a helyszínben rejlő lehetőségeket. Egyébként a "logikai" feladványok nagyon könnyűek és az ellenségeket is könnyű kicselezni. Egynek elmegy, de csodát ne várjatok tőle.

Nichts außergewöhnliches, aber auch nicht total schlecht. Kann man entspannt in 2-3 Stunden durchspielen. Die Monster sind nicht gerade helle, die Szenerie ist schön und die Puzzles angenehm leicht.