Carnival Massacre

Считаю своим долгом отметить игру позитивным обзором. Низко-полигональный оммаж, есть tank contols, 2 часа на прохождение, золотой узи за Rank S. А главное, чувак, судя по титрам, и музыку сделал, и напрогал, и надизайнил. Торжество соло-разработки. И еще отметил каждого, чьи модельки он потащил со сток-сайта с для PSX моделлеров. Ну прям гармония и Айн Рэнд. Получил удовольствие, прошел за день, за 200 рублей советую всем кому по душе поиграть в настоящее инди, вдохновленное тропами survival-horror.

Carnival Massacre as an experience is sadly just 6/10. I loved the demo as it had a Silent Hill / Resident Evil gameplay and vibe + secrets, lots of areas to explore and way more scarier scenes. The full version sadly is more linear, adds enemies you need to run away from and it just feels off and short. I do love the graphics and the music, but the gameplay was better in the demo. I hope the dev will learn from his mistakes and prepare a sequel more in the style of the demo. It was actually a big shock for me how different the full game is from the demo. Stay safe and do not waste your time on goth girlfriends. Respect yourself, go and play some Quake. Bye.

Pretty neat light survival horror game. It's yet another game going for PS1 horror and has fixed camera angles, tank controls etc. As far as the power rankings of PS1 survival horror throwback games, it's middle of the pack. Enjoyable, but it's not going to become a classic. I liked the cutscene direction. It's minimal in a positive way, it gets close to that silent hillish vibe they're going for. The story is thin but that's fine, I'd rather thin than bad. It skews easy, and there are some bugs (especially interface bugs) but nothing showstopping. The biggest irritant is that when you're using a gamepad, the map left/right controls are inverted, but up/down aren't. I can deal with fully inverted maps, and I can deal with fully normal maps, but I can't deal with it in that combination. They could also stand to allow you to use the d-pad - it's analogue stick only despite the tank controls. All bar the final boss fight is an ammunition checks, which is sort of true to classic Resident Evil. Enemies drop money when they die, and you find a little bit around. It's pretty generous. The guns are balanced in an interesting way - all of them are powerful, but the shotgun is the first weapon you get and it's main drawback is that it's slow firing. You might kill regular enemies in one hit, but if you don't, you risk taking a hit. If you fire from range it definitely takes 2 hits to kill, never 1, but that's safer. Shotgun ammo is extremely cheap to buy, whereas all other ammo is expensive. The final balancing factor is that the shotgun and rifle take 2 inventory slots AND need a 3rd slot for ammo (there's no magazine capacity, it's fed straight from the inventory into the gun). The Pistol only takes 1 slot and holds 6 bullets before you need to keep the reloads in the inventory, thus it's a great side weapon even on top of it's damage characteristics. There is an infinite ammo stun camera. I suspect it's useless for bosses but it can help you run past enemies. I quickly found enough regular bullets to not need to use it and I eventually stashed it for inventory space, but it's a neat idea. The final boss is an anticlimax. I think it's supposed to be cathartic but I loaded up on bullets expecting something tough, only to discover they are unkillable with normal weapons and the weapon that does kill them is just handed to you seconds prior. Some of the puzzles and design is solid here, but I'm not sure if I missed the final stage of something optional. I'd written down a bunch of notes but never found anywhere to use part of it. Overall, pretty good, but a few issues and bugs lost it some points here and it also lacks that certain something that propels some games in the genre to true excellence. The price makes it pretty easy to recommend.

Really enjoyed this game. cant wait to try to devs next game. Game ran flawlessly on my PC, Steam Deck Oled and even the AYN Thor using game native.

Un juego corto de terror con gráficos de psx de los 90. Para haber sido hecho por 1 persona lo veo bien. Diria que parece mas una demo que un juego completo. Aunque la jugabilidad es casi igual a los clásicos de terror de la psx (resident evil, silent hill, etc) puedes elegir los controles entre el modo "tanque" o modernos, yo elegí moderno, aunque también es algo dificultoso de usar debido que al tener cámara fija cada vez que cambia de Angulo los controles de movimiento como que se reinician y empiezas a moverte para cualquier lado. El resto, los enemigos, las armas, puzzles, historia y música es simple pero bueno al final, capaz la música destaca un poco mas. En fin, bueno, bonito, barato, un pequeño flash a la nostalgia de los juegos clásicos de terror. Recomendado. Nota: 9/10, la prota es una gótica culona que va en búsqueda de su hermana menor desaparecida en un parque de diversiones que se volvió siniestro asi por que si, y fin.

I absolutely loved Carnival Massacre! It is a brilliant, spooky love letter to classic PS1-era survival horror that kept me completely hooked from start to finish. The creepy, neon-lit carnival setting is incredibly atmospheric, and the retro low-poly aesthetic nailed the exact nostalgic vibe I was looking for. I really enjoyed the old-school combination of fixed cameras, classic tank controls, puzzle-solving, and tight inventory management. It’s short, tense, and doesn't waste any of your time. If you love the eerie tension of classic Resident Evil or Silent Hill, you absolutely have to check this out. It’s an easy 9/10 for me!

The Good: - Retro PSX style graphics (if you're into that sort of thing) - It only costs $5? The Bugs: - Character costume changing multiple times throughout the playthrough and in cutscenes for no reason - Auto-Aim toggling on and off randomly - Enemies can walk through walls separated by load screens - Enemies can attack you during cutscenes and kill you (I lost an entire S rank run due to this) The Bad: - All enemies, especially the final boss suffered a lobotomy prior to release - UI is absolutely garish and even painful to look at - Map lacks player location and most other QoL rendering it functionally useless - The amount of fiddling around just to put items in and out of storage is just tedious - Quite possibly the worst run animation in recent memory, both in terms of the terrible animation and the absurdly slow run speed - Tank controls force the character to turn agonizingly slow when running, which can be an enormous issue in certain boss fights - Modern controls (analog stick) do not cooperate with the camera the way you would expect in a game like this making them feel less viable than tank controls in the majority of exploration - Unable to skip cutscenes - Some of the gameplay prompts and tutorials display mouse/keyboard buttons even when using a controller And the worst offender is the OST. Normally these games come stock with the "Yamaoka At Home" soundtrack but what's weirder is that when this game doesn't have generic out of place rock music or royalty free circus music, Carnival Massacre has tracks that are straight up rip offs of Yamaoka's work in SH1 and SH2 down to the literal chord progressions and drums sounds. What's weirder is where these tracks play, it is almost shot for shot/beat for beat how and where those tracks play in those respective games, almost as if the developer is relying on those games as a reference point, but the player having the knowledge required to trigger that particular nostalgia will instead trigger the comparison. And the last thing you want to do when releasing a game in this genre is be compared to the best, especially when you barely manage to succeed the worst. The TRUE best you should strive for is to establish your own identity and do something we haven't seen before. But these games continue to draw on Silent Hill and Resident Evil as reference points and I'm tired of seeing people infantilize these developers. I don't care if your game costs $5 of $70, there is no excuse for unoriginality. This developer does have another survival horror game in the works, so here's hoping they can take the feedback from this one and make something better.

I liked this game. Short and sweet. Big Resident Evil fan. Edit: The bug that prevented a second playthrough got patched the day after I posted this review. Got the S-Rank :) thx dev, Looking forward to your next game!