Dark Visit

Another night, another indie horror game. Deep breath, here we go... One of my first thoughts is that the graphics ain't too bad. There's an atmosphere, perhaps embellished by the tasteful choice of a black-and-white palette. Walk out of a bedroom and into a corridor, where a note written in Google Translate awaits me. So far, so unexpected, eh? But that's when the nightmare truly begins... My Lord...THE BREATHING. Immediately after reading the note, my character is so terror-stricken by the dev's infirm grasp of English that he begins to hyperventilate. Not only hyperventilate, but hyperventilate like he's wearing a frigging SPACESUIT. You think you've heard bad "heavy breathing" sound effects in a horror game before? Buddy, you ain't heard [i]nothin'[/i] yet... Then there's the headbob. It's not quite as bad as that in Shining Hotel, another no-budget horror game I endured recently...at least not until I hit the "run" button. At this point my character becomes abruptly [i]drunk[/i], rocking violently from side-to-side. Hitting the "jump" button further causes him to spontaneously ejaculate, if the guttural grunting noise is anything to go by. Footstep sound effects are, of course, suitably ridiculous, but that's just par for the course these days. Okay, so I'll save you the blow-by-blow, and a pointlessly long read: this game is CRAP. I can't even recommend it to die-hard horror fans, I really can't. I guess the...flashlight was sorta-kinda semi-realistic, for a change? And there [i]is[/i] a modicum of suspense from time to time, and a couple of effective scares; though these are decidedly less impressive when they're accomplished by suddenly doubling the volume, and all but blowing the player's eardrums asunder. Ultimately, the list of cons is far, far longer than the list of pros: clumsy mapping (houses with almost no furniture and bizarrely uneven walls), tedious gameplay (a lot of keys and locked doors for such a tiny home!), and a ludicrously short running time (about twenty minutes, if you get as stumped as I was at one point). The story's set-up at least showed a modicum of potential, but went absolutely nowhere from there. In the hands of a better writer, this may have had some potential. Alas... Look, I'm going to be kind. The dev of this game [i]could[/i] go on to do something worthwhile in the future, but there's a looooong ways to go yet. In the meantime, could the rest of you fledgling developers [i]please[/i] refrain from putting your half-baked first attempts at a "game" up for sale on Steam? At least make them FREE, for feck's sake. I wouldn't be giving this a thumb-up even then, but might at least be acknowledging the fact that everybody's gotta start somewhere... Verdict: 3.5/10. (PS If you enjoyed this review, feel free to check out my two Curator pages: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9284586-ReviewsJustfortheHELLofit/ http://store.steampowered.com/curator/10868048-Truly-Horrible-Horror-Games/?appid=398210 Cheers!)