Best Friend

Update ~ In response to the developer: I know you will, most especially with your good attitude. Keep at it! If you change the game up, I'll definitely play it again. :-) Played this for a stream. I'll try to be gentle considering this is the developer's first game. Firstly, this game isn't worth $6.99, and I can't recommend it at that price. To put this into perspective, Welcome to the Game is $4.99 and there's far more depth, horror, and immersion to it. I recognized the Unity Asset house (HQ Residential House, also used in House Party and The Open House, as well as a lot of other indie horror games). As a survive-the-night indie horror game, it's really not anything new or groundbreaking. The game's threat, David, the doll, is also a Unity Asset (called "Evil Doll") that I recognized immediately, and he doesn't have the best AI: sometimes he attacks you, sometimes he doesn't, sometimes you can touch him and he doesn't kill you, but other times he hasn't touched you and you die. The candles don't have a point. They're supposed to give more light, but they really don't, and they deplete quickly. I found my view resetting every now and again. It happens when you pick up the notes as well. There's not much immersion here. There's even an entire bathroom missing, but there's a random soap dish there. I'm sure there's a reason the developer left it out, but it was odd. During the "eat all the cake" sequence, you can actually easily eat the cake while simultaneously running from David. I wasn't anywhere near it and the progress bar continued rising. There's a security camera and TV upstairs you can check out to see where David is, but it's honestly useless as a game mechanic. I will, however, state some positives, because I want to be constructive. It was actually sort of neat that David sometimes chased you while other times he just stood there and stared at you. Not being certain if he was going to start running after me did help build a bit of tension, and it would've stayed had he not been so easy to cheese. I also appreciate that the game saves often so you're not forced to go back through all of your progress again. That sort of thing is fine with more polished experiences, but it's just a pain in a lot of indie horror games. Also, the first time I saw David, he spawned on the stairs with his back to me. I slipped by him and he was just standing there in the darkness looking down the stairs. It was subtle and unnerving, and I actually quite liked it a lot. Subtle things like that are [b]huge[/b] in horror in building a tense atmosphere. Unfortunately, that occurrence was just luck of the RNG for me because the normal gameplay is just avoiding a Weeping Angel/SCP-173/etc. doll that sometimes starts laughing while running after you. I found all 3 items and ate the cake. The game told me to survive until 5am. I hung around and waited, but 5am never came and I wasn't really enthralled enough by the gameplay to stick around and wait. We ended up figuring out how to cheese David by standing on an end table by the couch and he just kept repeatedly running after me. Overall, no, I would not recommend this game, especially for its price. I'm used to this kind of game being maybe $0.99 or $1.99. I don't think the developer should just call it quits and never make a game again, of course. But I wanted to offer something as someone who has played hundreds of these indie horror titles on itch.io. It's not an original idea, and it isn't executed in an original way. Survive the night games like FNAF and Emily Wants to Play work well because they get progressively more difficult. More threats are added as you continue through the night. That might be something for the developer to consider if they're looking to improve this game.