Beastiarium

[b]“Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.” ― Sue Grafton, [i]I is for Innocent[/i][/b] [i]Beastiarium[/i] is the first of Fazan's games, and I must say that it is highly exaggerated, based on its Steam Store description. Nope, there is nothing adventurous about it. Nope, there is no horror factor into it - and nope, calling it a puzzle game would be a downright lie. It is basically a glorified waste for Unreal Engine 4, since the same effect could have been achieved in Unity, for much cheaper. Talking of price, the game is also overpriced for your "an hour" playthrough. To begin with, the only story narrative about the game resides in the store description: "The action takes place in underground Petersburg in the beginning of 20th century, one hundred years later since the monsters invaded the planet". Sounds at least a bit intriguing, yes? Not really. Throughout the whole game, this is the only bit of lore that you will get. There is no decent plot, no story explanation, no character that would even speculate about any depth. There is neither any hero, nor journey into it! It is a complete loss of time, plain and simple. As you start, an ambiguous creature introduces itself as an embodiment of curiosity and decides to tag along with you for some reason. For another reason completely unknown to us, there is a monster raid and we are - somehow - out during the attack. We keep looking for a safehouse and deal with creatures that consist of a diamond eating shrub, crawling zombies, stalking patches of grass, a walking table - yup - and flying electric fish. According to the game lore, those are the monsters that drove all humanity underground! Aside dealing with these, you get to solve some primary school level riddles; and that's it. You finish the game, only to listen to the most irrelevant sage advice - and that's literally it. There is no why, where, how to anything! The game is available in various languages, yet I would guess the original would be in Russian - since there are quite so many Russian posters or books - oh, and the game takes place in Russia. There is a shallow totalitarian air as you start, which soon dissolves into a "okay, what's that supposed be now?" atmosphere. Developers, apparently, were too lazy to model and animate people! All characters that you encounter, will be talking to you behind closed doors. You never, ever, even once, see a person throughout your playthrough - even though the store claims that there would be "Charismatic characters — each one with its own personality and background". Fair warning: developers lied to you. You have just paid 15 dollars for total time loss. Gameplay? First person camera, WASD. You run around a bit, combine some items. Atmosphere? Well, it's nothing extraordinary - or even interesting. Horror? What horror? You'd get scared of flying fish? Really? Creatures are somewhat cute even, at least momentarily. Puzzles? Please tell me you'd have an IQ higher than room temperature. Yes? Then there is no puzzle in this game. Even if you'd get this game at a sale - which gets around for 3 dollars - you'd be cheated out of your money. There is nothing to enjoy here, even hypothetically. Please carry on. Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/11672469/]here[/url] - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!

At the time of writing, Beastiarium is the only game on Steam from developer/publisher Fazan. Released in December of 2016, it thus far has only a small base of gamers who have purchased it, and an even smaller community of reviewers that have taken the time to write their thoughts about this alleged horror/adventure/puzzle title. The only background to the "story" presented in the game is available for reading on the store page. Apparently, Beastiarium takes place in underground Petersburg at the beginning of the 20th century, and it has been 100 years since monsters have taken over Earth. The takeover caused all survivors to move underground and build a new world, but alas the cities that developed also got overrun by monsters. It is up to you to find out why people are afraid to leave their homes, and if the established Guard is actually there to protect the citizens, or if their purpose is more sinister. In-game, there are only a handful of narratives, none of which amount to much from a storytelling aspect. The voice acting is good, but even the subtitles are unpolished, in that their script does not fully match what the narrator is saying at any given time. From a gameplay perspective, Beastiarium comes across as both drab and annoying due to its simplistic and uninspired puzzles. Throughout 9 chapters, you will find yourself answering some easy riddles, luring a monster to a preset destination, figuring out the navigation of two labyrinths, finding a keypad combination, and fighting an end "boss battle". All of the puzzle elements found in this game have been done to the point of exhaustion in other titles, and given the lack of story, or any real presentation that conveys a sense of purpose, the overall experience here just feels empty and void. After a while it begins to feel like a chore to even finish the game, which is another fruitless endeavor as the ending is underwhelming and vastly disappointing. The only things that Beastiarium has going for it are some pretty graphics and good optimization; sadly, the rest is a complete write-off. There are no horror elements, there is barely any atmosphere, and part of the store page can be misleading; it proclaims that it has "combination of plot-driven quest and action-horror" and "seamless game world with sandbox elements". There are no loading screens, so the "seamless" part is right, but the rest is simply untrue. As well, it's a massive stretch to say that the game has "charismatic characters", seeing as you will interact with 4 people for an amazingly short period of time. Needless to say, it's best to just pass on by Beastiarium, unless you can get it for about $3.00. The default $16.99 CAD price point is far too high for a game that lasts 45-60 minutes at best, and even at $6.79 CAD it feels like a complete waste. [h1]Rating: [b]2.0/5.0[/b] - It's not awful, but it's not great.[/h1] The Horror Network [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/28221963/]Curator[/url] | [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thehorrornetwork]Group[/url] Click for Gore

This is a three dollar game. If it were at that price point, I'd recommend it, but as it is you get 45 minutes of play time in a cramped, narrow-scoped world with tired tropes for monsters who have no connection to each other, an annoying narrator, and a barely existent story. The puzzles range from extremely simple to trial and error and nothing between.

+ Graphic + Atmosphere + Grassy Beast & Riddleman ^_^ (two lovely creatures in game) - Too short (u can beat game in 30min-50min) - Simple Puzzles - bugy 5/10

Geeesh, this was the weirdest adventure I played through for a very, very, VERY long time. I had a bunch of WTF moments but it was never extremely difficult to give up. But many plot lines ran into dead ends and showed that there was more planned originally like the first item you get like the cinnamon buns which I was never able to eat or the medicine for the girl you could never deliver. The whole adventure has more logical holes then a bedsheet you pumped full of lead and the difficult level of the 9 chapters goes up and down like a wild rollercoaster ride. The toughest ones I thought were number 2 (Vetala) and 3 (Park). A big Большо́е спаси́бо! to MakaRGAME who made a nice 3 video playthrough and which really helped when I had trouble in those two chapters. All in all I made it through the whole adventure in 4.3 hours which gave me the last WTF moment as the credits started suddenly rolling. Despite for making it through, I can't really recommend this adventure until you really not mind some most bizarre story telling with tons of logical dead end plot holes and the odd variations in difficulties. But if you have a taste for the bizarre and enjoy a game where you not blast your way thorugh monster hordes, you might give it a shot when it is on a big sale.

I must say, this game is very short, some of the puzzles are not quite as good as i thought. It's not scary, neiter are there jumpscares. Besides, BGM is quite weird. Anyway, I can only give 3/ 5 for the game itself.

J'ai du mal à comprendre tous ces avis négatifs, à moins que ça ne vienne que de moi... Peut être ai-je des goûts bizarres en matière vidéo ludique, mais je m'attendais à une belle bouse et en fait j'ai bien aimé. La musique est super sympa, les graphismes sont très bien eux aussi. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=17♥♥♥♥9485 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1714879477 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1714879421 Niveau gameplay et durée de vie, c'est très simple et cela ne vous prendra pas trois plombes pour le terminer, ce jeu est je dirais plutôt étrange, grands trouillards ne soyez pas effrayés par le tag "horreur" et ne vous attendez pas à vous faire pipi dessus, rien ne fait peur ici, ni l'ambiance, ni les sons, ni les monstres... Le bestiaire n'est pas énorme, ni gore, ni flippant mais original, le premier petit monstre m'a bien fait rire, je l'ai même trouvé mignon. A chacun sa vision des choses, mais j'ai bien apprécié tous les éléments du jeu et ses particularités qui en font un titre difficile à décrire mais bien sympa. Moi qui cherchais de la nouveauté, de l'originalité j'ai été servie et en suis satisfaite, il manque juste le côté qui fait peur, dommage. Pour ceux qui râlent en disant qu'il n'y a pas d'histoire, c'est du grand n'importe quoi... un monstre a pris possession de votre cerveau et vous parle (façon stanley parable) dans votre tête et ce tout au long du jeu, là au moins il y a un début et une fin sensée même si elle n'est pas très poussée. Les personnages sont peu nombreux et "invisibles", ils vous parlent à travers leur porte... Donc à ce niveau si vous cherchiez un jeu d'horreur bien gore et flippant avec des monstres à trucider à grands coups de fusil à pompe et d'adrénaline, ce jeu n'est pas fait pour vous. Mais si vous recherchez the titre sympa, pas trop dégueu et surprenant sur les bords, je vous le conseille en promo. Pour les points négatifs il y a quelques légers temps de chargement entre les épisodes, et le jeu crash sur la fin. Le mot de la fin : Un petit jeu original, facile et court mais qui change de tout ce que l'on a l'habitude de voir. NB : Merci à la personne qui me l'a fait gagner sur steamgift. [code][h1][b]Si vous avez apprécié cette évaluation et souhaitez en lire d'autres venez suivre ma [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39072619/]page de curation[/url].[/b][/h1][/code]

It`s terrible. Graphics are nice, and that`s all. There`s simply no story. It`s a short, buggy, senseless experience of walking around with weird creatures roaming and killing you once in a while. It is depressive because in the first minute of the game it felt like the game had huge potential. After you get past Olga (1 minute and 10 seconds) it turns into a terrible, terrible, experience. I really hope the developers learn from this awful game and use their talent in the correct way now. Even at 3 euros this game is way too expensive. Play it if it is for free, otherwise you will just feel like I am feeling now.

Bestiarium is one of those games that looks better than the average indie game, but has nothing going for it gameplay or storywise. What the developers claim in the description is misleading. There is no worldbuilding, you barely see any of the city, and calling the characters charismatic or deep is like saying Google Translate is person, when you activate the text to speech function. When it comes to deciding what's worst, the voice acting or the music, I'd have to choose the voice acting, Characters deliver their lines with as much emotion as a traffic light. The game also claims to have sandbox elements, which is like saying an inventory system is a sandbox element. ...but what about the beasts? Apart froom the first monster, most creatures are just lazy and lacking any creativity or interesting gameplay mechanic. Beastiarium is nothing but a puzzle game, with puzzles other games did a hundred times better, Some seem to be broken, others are just boring or uninspired. The game crashes a lot and has various bugs, especially with the final tuna monsters. In short, don't bother.

I do feel I have to recommend this, but only with some reservations. First off, this is done by a small studio, and the limited budget is obvious, but I don't want to dump on a new studio that holds some amount of promise. The game is incredibly short. I finished it in an hour flat (the rest of playtime for cards only). However, I have to say that I enjoyed that hour, and it kept the variety up. The story is kept deliberately vague. Something about an attack taking place on the people of Petersburg and the guards are absent and it's down to you to save the day. This sets you off on a remarkably varied, albeit disjointed adventure. In the course of the short playtime you will lure a gem-eating monster to smash up a grate, escape hordes of the crawling undead in a maze-like sewer system (one of the first sewer sections in a game to not actually be crap!), keep your eye of a spikey centipede like monstrosity which only moves while you look away as you search parts of a dismembered guard to find a key, hunt down what essentially is a headcrab with IR vision and a taser for a spooked farmer, navigate a maze which changes depending on what door you enter, answer riddles, escape electricity-laden flying fish through cramped corridors, and face off against the end boss. There is certainly no horror to be found here so not sure why this game got that tag. It's surreal fantasy only. There is a well voiced creature who has more than a passing resemblance to No Face from Spirited Away, who acts as a narrator and introduces this strange world, though the dialogue is a bit odd and even more distractingly so, the subtitles stubbornly refuse to align to the dialogue constantly. I only encountered one bug where I accidentally fell outside the play area after going through a scripted floor collapse, but a swift reload solved that. So despite the game's brevity I think it's certainly worth it on sale.