Depths Of Horror: Mushroom Day

This review will contain spoilers for the entire playthrough. This game feels more like a hobby project than a game that costs money to play. There is no story, or at least I couldn't make any sense of it, which makes me wonder why the game advertises itself as "psychological horror", as apart from a few "jumpscares", there is nothing to scare or disturb the player. The game takes around 25 to 30 minutes to complete without rushing, and even despite being a short game (which is not inherently a bad thing, just to be clear), there were moments when I was bored and just kinda felt like closing the game and playing something else. Let's break down the key features listed in the description by the author himself: Unique system of hand-crafted caves - That is true, there is indeed a cave in this game. Frequent events will not make you bored - Well, they did. The frequent events are repetitive. There was a whispering pumpkin that had pretty much no relevance apart from showing the correct way, but why was it whispering? Who left it there? Enemies and screamers - Can't really say anything about this. There is indeed an enemy and a screamer. A few, even. Monologues of the main character - Which pretty much consist of repeating the same sentences using different wording. There is no deep or psychological narration; it's just our character repeating "be careful" or "what was that", or simply stating the obvious, such as "those are bombs" while we approach bombs, over and over again. Interaction with the environment, use of objects - 90% of the interactions in this game are, again, just stating the obvious. There is some weird ore and there are skeletons in the game, and the only interaction you get out of those is our character stating that this is a dead body or that they have no use for the ore. So why is it even here if we have no use for it and there is absolutely no way to know what it even is? Apart from that, we can tear down a few cobwebs or use a pickaxe to clear some rocks, which happens twice. Save points - ...Does a save system really have to be listed as a key feature of the game? It was released in 2021, not in the 1980s. Good graphics and great optimization - Well, the "good graphics" bit is subjective. It's a Unity-made game, so one can kinda expect what it might look like. Not every game needs to be photorealistic, don't get me wrong, but it looks like every other generic Unity game. The optimization is good, I suppose. I did not drop FPS a single time, but I can't see how a game about walking through a cave would even be supposed to be "poorly optimized". Atmospheric sounds and music - Yes, the sounds were actually good. I heard a spider crawling around me a few times, which made me look behind me in panic. The music, however, wasn't particularly atmospheric. Steam achievements - You can get all of them in a single playthrough, so that's great. An easy way to boost your average game completion. All in all, I can't say this is the worst game I've ever played, not even close. However, I can't recommend it to anyone who didn't grab it for free. It's not really worth the money unless you just want to support the author, for whatever reason you may have.