Cult -Vein-

At first I really struggled to progress in this game. The old flashlight made it just impossible for me. Fortunately the game got a patch that fixed the flashlight problem majorly. I still can't say I'm a fan of how often you're in the dark in this game, but it is very manageable now. That aside, this is quite the difficult game with spread out saves, and I think you have to really enjoy long puzzles and a confusing house layout that is often changing to get into this game. If you are looking for a linear narrative-driven experience, this probably isn't it. But If you like to overcome a challenge, this might be for you. It is a beautiful game with a good atmosphere for the most part and runs really well. I'm not quite finished, but I think I'm close. I've played for at least 3 hours now, so I'd say the price to length is pretty fair.

指引太少，视野太低，纯走路走了几个小时。

Didn't get very far but it's not enjoyable. The graphics are okay and the music/ambiance is not terrible, but that's about it. The main gimmick of the little I played is about managing your light sources, a flashlight and candles, while you explore a dark home. The issue is that the flashlight is absolute garbage, it barely lights up a small circle in front of you and only projects forward maybe 3 feet - and I'm not exaggerating - and the candle isn't much better, as it only illuminates about 2 feet around you at most. So with the flashlight, you kinda just have to stare towards the floor if you are more than a few steps away from anything, and with the candle, you have to dry hump anything you want to see. Both light sources flicker and then go out periodically. The flashlight randomly decides it's not going to work for a section, but then starts working again shortly after with no warning. Then later, the game takes it away altogether. (I'm sure it's brought back later on, but I don't care to get that far.) The candle can only be lit by other candles that are already lit, but even that is inconsistent. You can walk by 12 lit candles on the floor and be unable to light your candle. There's a really nifty little game mechanic that resets your position if you are ever stuck in the dark. So you have to find a lit candle, but specifically one that you can actually light your candle from, then rush into the dark to try and find something new to collect or a door to unlock or whatever. If you take too long, boom, you're reset. So it just becomes tedious trial and error. There was only precisely one scare in the entire time I tried the game, and it's a very goofy looking big ol red guy popping into existence for all of 2 seconds at a time. I say it's only one scare, and it was, but it didn't happen just once, it was used like 4 or 5 different times. The very first caught me off-guard, and to this dev's credit, it's so brief that I couldn't see the guy well enough to realize how silly he looks. But then he kept showing up. And what made it worse was that he would show up when I was using the terrible candle, so I wouldn't even see him till I bumped into him, like some Scooby-Doo Velma shenanigans. Hard to be scared when he looks so silly and you don't even see him till you're right on top of him. He didn't put me into a death state or anything, usually just killed the flashlight/candle. I guess some doors close on their own from time to time, but that isn't very scary. The story in the early bits was unengaging. There are "notes" to find but they're literally like 6 or 7 words, and the text boxes that pop up when you interact with them look so cheap, like some default graphic with basic text. There were tons of typos as well, and I mean really basic things - one note spelled "knocking" as "knoking" for example. The only note that got any reaction from me was one that looked like it was attached to a can that a neighbor threw over - that was kinda funny and cute, I guess. But the rest of them are so bland and add nothing to the experience. "I had that dream about the candles and stuff again" like come on. There was no introduction to the game, nothing to get you into the main character's shoes, no real premise outside of "I'm having scary dreams where there are candles in my house", just nothing engaging at all. All in all, I've seen and played worse. But I didn't fork over $11 for it. Definitely not good enough for the price. You'll get the same level scares on old FPS-maker horror games. I don't want to be too harsh, but there are barely any reviews and I don't want people to end up wasting their money.

If you like Layers of Fear or Visage, this may be your kind of game — focused on puzzle-solving and horror moments. As an indie solo project, Cult -Vein- is a decent game. Honest review: The gameplay is slow and deliberate (it reminds me of Layers of Fear/Visage), focusing on exploration, subtle dialogue choices, and environmental observation rather than traditional challenges. The graphics are decent, and the ambience is good. The lighting was a problem at the beginning. The candle was terrible, and the flashlight was only somewhat manageable. With the latest update, this has improved (same with the notes), but I’m not sure if it’s enough. Story… To begin with, you need to read the notes to understand what is happening in the story and to complete the puzzles more quickly. I think the story is open to interpretation. From what I understood, the main theme is indoctrination, understanding the protagonist’s mental collapse and how their social environment changed them forever.