Carnival Massacre

Although we certainly aren't pushing the boundaries of the genre here, Carnival Massacre lands firmly in the short and sweet category of classic style survival horror. Lovely fixed cameras, colorful low poly environments and models, serviceable tank controls (not the very best, but far from the worst application of the control scheme) and basic old school survival horror combat. I love that the game takes such clear inspiration from Alisa, it's a great aesthetic and the creator did a good job of making the game its own thing despite the obvious and unavoidable comparison. I never felt like it was a rip off, more of a love letter. It's pretty easy across the board though, so maybe a worthwhile entry into the old school format of fixed camera and tank controls for those of you who love the idea but struggle with the gameplay (people like that exist, right?). The puzzles, the combat, the resource management, all pretty easy. For genre veterans, it would be really nice to have a hard mode - preferably not locked behind a first playthrough, I'd have much rathered my first playthrough be notably more challenging. Also...although I enjoyed the game as a whole, that part with the nutcrackers felt realllllllllly slow and awkward. I also quite liked the voice acting. Obviously, that's a matter of personal taste, I kind of hate modern "serious" video game voice acting, but I felt like it was nice and intentional rather than cheap and thrown together, (although I don't think the audio clipping on the dialog added anything and it would be much better without it). Overall, it's not going to make the biggest impression, everything about it is simple and bitesized, including the lasting impact it has on the player, but it's earnest and honest and knows what it is. This is not a game that is trying to break the mold, it's just having fun within it - and there's a real place for that. So if you dig fixed camera survival horror, this game will absolutely do it for you. Enjoy the ride. If you are looking for more 3rd person survival horror games on steam, many slip under the radar, so come check out my curator page and see if there's any other curious indie gems that pique your interest. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45050657/

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.

A mediocre survival horror title that does nothing to really explain what is going on, has minor issues with controls and puzzles, plus doing what it can to imitate Silent Hill's music in an off putting way. Play as Harley, a teenage girl looking for your sister Chloe who has gone missing at a local amusement park. Blast your way through enemies, solving puzzles along the way, managing your resources in the traditional survival horror manner. It seems like some kind of demonic Jester might be behind everything, but it is unclear if it is the Jester itself, someone in a suit, an automaton, or what it is that is going on in terms of the kidnapping. Your usual survival horror mechanics are present in Carnival Massacre: inventory management, safe rooms, etc. There is a key difference in that you need to spend money you find around the park and obtain from kills in order to save at fortune telling machines inside of safe rooms; ammunition, plus healing items, can be bought from the same machine in limited quantities, with a random 50% off popping up on an item here and there. Enemies come in a limited variety, taking the shape of Alice from Alice in Wonderland wearing a bunny mask, wielding a knife, a jack-in-the-box packing an automatic weapon, and teeth filled iron maidens that come hopping after you. Boss segments do exist too, having to fight a suit of armour, giant nutcrackers, both halves of a sawed in half woman who is packing a rifle, and Pebble, the scissor-legged jester that has been stalking you around the park. All the bosses are super easy to take down with the weapons you have on hand (a pistol, shotgun, rifle, flamethrower), especially the end boss since you can just lean on the flamethrower non-stop to burn his health away pretty rapidly. I never ended up using the rifle due to space limitations and the short duration of the game, but the shotgun and pistol get the job done against trash and bosses alike. There is a camera you find at the beginning of the game which can stun enemies so you can run past, you'll just be throwing it into storage pretty much immediately though to free up space in your inventory. There is a minor issue when it comes to the controls, mainly getting the controller to work, since you do have to have Steam Input enabled and start the game twice in order for it to actually work. When it comes to puzzles, I did have a small problem with the handsaw puzzle; since I was playing in a window, two of the buttons I needed to press were cut off on the sides of the screen - which I didn't realize straight away. This is an easy fix, just playing in fullscreen, but I can see it throwing people for a loop at first and wondering what to do exactly if they are playing windowed. Visually, the game looks fine, doing what it can to replicate the feeling of PSX era survival horror games. The audio department is where things get a little rough, the voice acting being a weak point, plus having some audio issues on top of it, needing cleaned up or another recording on the whole. I did notice that the developer did their best to try an imitate the music from Silent Hill titles, doing so in a way that I found rather off putting, the music itself being a little bit too on the nose in terms of copying from Silent Hill. Carnival Massacre is firmly average in pretty much every way it can be. There isn't really any explanation as to why Chloe went missing, what is going on at the park, no lore of any kind really either, so it kind of feels bland the whole way through. If Steam had a middle option, I'd put this one there, but I am going to have to lean on the side of not recommending this one, even though it is on the cheap side of things at $6.49 CAD at the time of writing this review. [quote]Follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45701624-CthulhusMonocle-That-Next-Fest-Guy/]CthulhusMonocle - That Next Fest Guy[/url] for more game and Steam Next Fest demo reviews.[/quote]

This is the first time I’ve ever felt the need to leave a negative review because of how bad a game’s camera and controls are. They aren’t quirky or something that just takes time to adjust to—they’re simply bad, even with the modern control scheme. Because of this, I have no desire to push through the game, which otherwise looks decent despite these issues. The graphics looks passable but the UI is base bones. Just a lot of initial impressions to steer clear.

Mmmm, joy. Solo developer indie horror game. Gonna jump into the review since, like the game itself, it's very basic and to the point. Plot's simple: You're a teenage girl named Harley. Your little sister, Chloe, went missing at a haunted carnival. Go rescue her and kill the monstrous figures keeping her captive there. There's not much else to it besides that. With games like these you really don't need to focus so much on the story, although I am wondering if the developer intended to flesh it out more. There's messages and parts of Harley's diary you can find scattered throughout the game, but at a point it felt like the story kinda...stops? Even if you get all the achievements and unlock the secret door, that still leaves some questions that were unanswered. But again, the story isn't always the selling point with these games so long as the gameplay holds up. And the gameplay holds up! ...Mostly. I do like that the game offers old-school tank controls or more modern controls; my stubborn ass stuck with the old-school controls. I'm assuming gamepads are for the modern controls because I kinda struggled moving around and just wound up using the mouse and keyboard. But that's on me for not changing the controls. This game is what you expect from most survival horrors. Gotta find clues to unlock doors, solve puzzles here and there, occasionally find door codes, conserve ammo, etc. There's no stamina meter (thank you), the puzzles are easy to solve, it's fairly manageable wandering around the carnival and backtracking, and the game encourages you to kill enemies by giving you money you can spend on more ammo and/or health upgrades. As for the weapons, they were kinda meh. I spent the whole game using the shotgun and revolver only. The rifle has crazy sensitivity when you try to aim--to the point where it's a detriment. There's probably a feature to turn that down, but even so, given the controls, I just found it easier to whip out the shotgun or revolver. I also didn't bother with the SMG because the revolver is shockingly very fast to fire and does decent damage. It's very easy to plow through this whole game with just the shotgun and revolver--plus it costs less money to buy more ammo for those guns at the supply shop. I enjoyed the tone of the game. It's not trying to be super spooky and scary and there's surprisingly no jump scares (or cat scares) in the game. Some creepy visuals such as that one enemy that's a body mouth [i]thing[/i]? That was unsettling. But this game felt more like it was aiming for the [i]fun[/i] kind of horror, not the kind of horror that will traumatize you to the point where you don't wanna play it. The developer made that very clear with the coaster ride where you shoot knights and then you're thrown into a boss fight with a giant knight that can summon fire. Does this need to be in the game? No. Is it scary? No. Is it wacky and loads of fun? Absolutely. There's just little things like that which made the game fun and entertaining for me. The medieval knight boss, having to saw a body in half, only for it to turn into two separate bosses you fight simultaneously, the whole nutcracker boss in the ice rink, the jack-in-the-box that summon a tiny puppet that [i]shoots a machine gun at you[/i], the fortune teller that acts as a save point, the music as a whole--it all really culminated really well for the aesthetic this game had going for it. And I'm glad the developer just stuck with this one aesthetic and didn't try to do too much; some projects end up falling flat on their face because the developer tries to do [i]everything[/i] and they don't succeed at [i]anything[/i]. Couple bugs to report. The game's volume is automatically set very low. So if anyone buys the game, make sure you turn up the volume in the settings; there is voice acting as well as music to listen to in the opening cutscene. I'm guessing the developer naturally kept it low so no one's eardrums get blown out when they start the game. There's a glitch where you can spend five coins before a boss fight, but if you die and reload your save, the game will ask you to save again. [i]Do not[/i] say yes again; you'll end up spending another five coins. Alternatively, save at the fortune teller before a boss. It's cheaper anyway. Also, if you're trying to get an "S" rank, [i]close the game completely[/i] before starting a new game. I found out the hard way that if you beat the game once, then immediately start a new game, then all the time, saves, and health you used from your previous run will carry over and lock you out of getting the "S" rank achievement. Really my only biggest gripe with this game is that it's a bit too short. You can speedrun this game in under an hour if you know what you're doing; I managed to do it in under forty minutes to get the "S" rank. I brought up some issues with the story earlier, there's the bugs up above, the game can get a bit [i]too[/i] easy in some places, and the final boss fight is laughably pitiful. The game gives you an overpowered new weapon with infinite ammo and you just spam the fire button. The first time I fought this boss I literally stood in one spot, got the final boss locked into a corner, and fired until he died. That's not good considering you built up this villain early on with how he can stalk you throughout the carnival and he's got this cool design and scissor legs and whatnot. But then you fight him and it's like "Oh, okay. I guess we're done. Whoo?" So yeah, those are my thoughts. Pretty straightforward and simply survival horror. I can't even be upset over the price of the game either. It's only five dollars. And this game was primarily made by one person who hired three voice actors, had additional help with the music, and used some pre-made assets during development. I've come across (and played, and subsequently got pissed off about) games that cost twice as much, sometimes even [i]three times as much money[/i] as this one, had the same amount of manpower (if not more) and yet those games in question had [i]half[/i] the passion and effort put into them. A twenty-minute key hunt simulator should not cost ten dollars. So I'm very glad that this developer took the time into making this fun little project the way he wanted to, even if it's a bit on the short/easy side. Apparently BEDTIMESTORIES has more solo games on itch.io. And after playing this, I may go check 'em out.

Randomizing and clearing my backlog 50/343 I just couldn't... I ran for 20 straight minutes doing nothing but picking up ammo. Then I killed the first enemy in one shot... I knew it wasn't for me after that.

Neat game for one or two evenings. Giving off old PSX era vibes, especially Silent Hill or RE. The music reminded me of MediEvil lol. Also loved the guitar at the end.But there are a few pains in the neck. The major issue is that the character moves however he wants Anyway, wishing best of luck to the dev