Days Under Custody

[i]Dec 21, 2015 Days Under Custody Your recent Product code activation has been revoked due to a problem processing payment for this item. The games associated with this product code can no longer be played as a result. This could be due a problem with the payment methods you used to acquire this item from a third-party seller; or a problem with how the third-party seller acquired the Product code. Please contact the seller you acquired the Product code from for assistance.[/i]

[i]Days Under Custody[/i] is a horror adventure and a one man project; developed, programmed and produced by Abraham Carreola. Aside containing a certain charm with atmosphere, it fails to deliver any story twist or originality - or a proper narrative build up with decent enough English language; and somewhat odd control scheme doesn't come to be feasible either. As our brief experience takes a start, we take on the role of Duc Parkings, a man that we know nothing about - aside him living in an apartment complex and getting stalked by a creepy ghostly guy without a definite identity. As Duc, we walk around, solve a series of quite basic puzzles, dodge some stalkers by hiding in closets or running through stairs, doors etc. at the right moment and collect some notes around to get a clue on the nature of events. The ending revelation is nothing miraculous though. The story - or what could be deemed as a story from odd, short notes and uninspired monologues with badly broken English - isn't anything imaginative, interesting or consistently satisfactory. There is no build up, no narrative implication, no cleverly arranged symbolism. 2 puzzles (one narrative, one mathematical), 3-4 monster avoiding encounters and a couple of item usages; and bam! You are at the end of the game within half an hour. Depending on the number of notes you’ve managed to collect throughout your gameplay, you either get the good ending or the bad ending. Neither of those story revelations are satisfactory or fitting. The game plays on ideas like identity complication, mania, commitment etc. but neither the narrative nor the symbolic display are successful enough to present you a decent plotline. Talking about the gameplay, controls are needlessly disunited. On a side scrolling environment; you move through A/D, interact with E, lead dialogue with F, search with mouse and use space + direction keys for puzzle combinations and to use the menu. Saving system badly glitches, leaving your saved games corrupted with the main character not being able to move whatever key you'd press and only 4 saving spaces are given to begin with. Graphics are decent for a pixel art horror adventure, with not much diversity in display to enhance the setting though. There has been a bad misunderstanding between the producer and Valve during game's launch, that made legitimate game keys bought from indie gala to be revoked from people's accounts, and that mostly left everyone sour about this game aside the content itself. That has been corrected, and people got compensated. There has also been some updates to improve game play. But playing the game myself, I could sadly vouch that no one was missing anything wondrous here by not being able to play anyhow. Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ladystoryteller#curation]here[/url] - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!

It's OK. I get the impression English isn't the writer's first language, though, and it comes off a little too disjointed.

I only played 42 minutes with this game, but it was too much for me. - The English text is pretty bad - The story itself is just meh - The gameplay is slow and not really exciting - The puzzles are way too easy (which isn't a bad thing, just a fact) - There are two endings: a good one and a bad one. You need to collect notes to get the good ending. I actually got the bad ending, the game itself told me so, yet I unlocked the good ending achievement and not the bad ending one. So probably programming error I can't recommend this game in this form. If the English translation and some small errors were ever fixed, I'd say buy it on sale, at least for the trading cards.

Cool concept but not so great execution. I really love the idea of an adventure game where I'm always being stalked by a monster. It's kindof like a gothic version of Alien: Isolation. Unfortunately the translation is really poor and it's oftentimes hard to know where to go or what to do.

Honestly, I can't recommed this game - it's content has the potential to be good, but it's ridden so many problems, that it turns the okay experience to the unpleasant one. It's a promising step, but strictly based on price and value this game is far behind a lot of other games in the store. The positive things first: - It has a nice pixel asthetics to the game, as seen on the screenhots - Mystery stories are good by default, at least in my book. There's just something rewarding uncovering the hidden past. The negatives are sadly part of a way, way longer list. - The art style is nice, but uses extremely low-frame animations, and lots of recurring objects. Hiding in wardrobes done in 1 frame, turning also 1 frame, and I'm sure even the protagonist's walking has less than 5 different frames to it. - The story does make no sense at some points. Weird sounds from the outside? Better get a key from the second floor to close the front door (why is every other door closed but not the front one?). Then break the key in the lock. Worry not, spare key in the computer (????) - and when you're an arm's reach from it, sounds from the kitchen. So, we don't take the key, go to check the kitchen, but we have to hide from someone/something. What happens afterwards? Do we get the key, or check the kitchen? No, just go around, stuff will happen and continue in that direction. Kitchen, closing of the front door is forgotten forever. [spoiler] The game is a nightmare-ish sequence, but it's so inconsistent it's impossible to tell if deliberately confusing or badly written[/spoiler] -The controls are a huge clusterf**k. A-D to move left and right, E to interact, F to progress in text during descriptions (why not E?). When you need to enter a combination, or save, then you can't use wasd to move though the options, you need to use arrow keys and space. You have mouse support for clicking on environment (only to look for items, not for actual interaction... why?) and in the save menu, but not at the combination part. Also, you need to click on your notes menu by mouse, pick a note by mouse (you can't use keyboard here afaik), and then close them by mouse - or use C to close note and E to close menu. Why the hell does this game use a-d-e-f-c + 4 arrows and space = TEN different buttons + mouse when a-d-e-c + mouse would be enough for all the functions, and multiple buttons used in one situation solely? I don't know if this was a port from a console-written first version or not, this is one of the most non-intuitive system I've seen recently. - Tried to make a screenshot, chrome developer tools opened up. - If you escape the game to the main menu, the game repeatedly freezes. I tried to restart the game to get the bad ending after collecting twenty-few notes (and getting the achievement for 27 notes, I have no idea how) and it repeatedly froze as well when I wanted to start a new one. Options worked with arrow keys and spacebar, new game made the game stop working. Additionally, the game needs to be terminated from Task Manager every single time because it keeps running even after closing the window. Afterall, I got the game from a bundle, so it cost me a really small amount. The game is pretty easy to 100% because it's really short (can be completed in an hour or such), but considering how short, and lacking it is in several ways, there's no way I can recommend this for the asking price of 5$ - on a sale about 1$ seems pretty reasonable. And I wanted to add this to the end: it's not a *bad* game. It works, it just have a relatively low quality, which can be improved, especially if the developer is willing to look into the problems, and either fixes it with patches, or avoids making the mistakes in the upcoming game(s). While the game is not the best, don't give up on the developer!

[h1] Title of the game exactly describes what to expect. [/h1]

[h1] Pros: [/h1] [list] [*]Interesting concept [*]Creepy atmosphere [*]Couple good jump scares [/list] [h1] Cons: [/h1] [list] [*]Very short [*]Janky controls [*]Often unclear how to progress [*]Poor English translation (actually made it kind of funny though) [*]New notes often just duplicates of oldnotes - unsure if glitch or not [*]Wandered around each area for a long time and still couldn't find all notes [*]Continues running in background after exiting (reason for my high play time) [*]Option to interact with many objects, then told "don't need this" "can't do this" every time [/list] This game would be much better as a F2P game.

I gave it a try despite all the negative feedback this game gets because I really enjoyed Home that had a similar ratio of people disliking it. Unfortunately Days Under Custody is really bad and definitely deserves such reviews. Poor gameplay, terrible English translation, dull story. It doesn't even close properly when you click on exit, you have to kill application in a Task Manager. Don't waste your time and money on this crap.

This game is garbage, and the maker is a con artist who asks Steam to revoke your CD Key for NO REASON! I had to fight to get my key back, and I reccomend NO ONE buy any future games by this developer! The game also refuses to close & keeps running in the background & needs to be manually killed from task manager.