Dread Weight

Oh, Dread Weight, how I really wanted to like you. I really wanted to be able to be the contrarian in the reviews who said this game is actually really good and other just don't get it. Sadly, in its current state, I just can't bring myself to recommend it. I will spoiler some specifics but be warned of some small unmarked spoilers ahead. I've now played the whole game. I have all the achievements, I have seen every ending. I have also seen the hidden developers note which talks about the cut content, and if any devs read this the one thing I want you to take away from it is that almost all of the things cut should have stayed in the game. The [spoiler]Max and Clover[/spoiler] endings for sure, if nothing else. I am also extremely confused by the fact things were cut because some players won't see it. If you're making a choice based game, you need to come to terms with the fact that some things just won't get seen by some people, even if theyre important to the story. Those of us who want to run through the game completely will see it, and people on YouTube, Wiki, etc will showcase it for people who didn't find it. This just doesn't feel like a good excuse to cut some of your interesting/world building content. Right now there are maybe 2-3 endings out of the 6-ish in the game that feel even mildly rewarding. The most difficult to reach endings are all joke endings. I was utterly slack jawed that all that effort I put into endings that were built up [i] by the game[/i] to be something interesting were non-canon joke endings. Even the canon/serious endings just fell very flat on their face in my opinion. Sitting through the same anime cutscenes to reach these endings was daunting at best. Some mechanics (or what look to be so) exist in the game and nothing is ever made out of them. The Radio that is built up and given mechanic explanation? I cant think of one point where that felt relevant to any situation. The beating heart in your inventory screen feels like it should be important, but if there is any relevancy to gameplay I completely missed it. Speaking of mechanics, as with many others here in the reviews, I am not a fan of the puzzles. Theres two of them, you get everything you need from one room, and those puzzles are only important to some very specific (and some unimportant) endings. They were annoying, particularly with the time limit. Finally, the horror and writing. I did not feel unsettled or scared playing dread weight. Cooking companions did a much, much better job of setting up its atmosphere and story. Dread Weight jumps around in tone and style so much its hard for the scares to even slightly bother me. The jump scares are cheap and the protag scream kills any fear that may have been left from it. Cooking Companions felt like it wanted to integrate its horror better rather than having horror and non horror scenes completely split up. When the lights go out in dread weight, I know its because the game wants to do scary things. Cooking companions would start to be unsettling randomly with little forewarning, which helped its case. Cooking companions also ran with a minimalist story with ties to Slavic folklore for those with a keen eye, where Dread Weight feels a bit too excited to show off how its integrated folklore (i.e. leaving multiple VERY long lore dumping notes around in discovery scenes, which reading them also serves to take you out of the experience because they're so long and info-packed). Also, nothing with the [spoiler]Chompettes[/spoiler] makes sense to me, no matter how many times I tried to fumble it together in my head. Overall, what I would wish to see in an expansion or sequel to this game is an overhaul to how its being written, a more atmospheric approach to horror, and some better game mechanics. I am glad I played it just because I wanted more out of the Cooking Companions saga, but its just not put together well enough for me to recommend other do the same. That being said, I do truly hope for a better expansion or sequel. I have so many more thoughts but I think this will do for a Steam review.

Most people prefer things in nice tidy packages, we prefer our movies to have a start, a middle and an ending…. We expect our books to introduce a protagonist, have him face an obstacle and then overcome that obstacle in the finale… Our music has an intro, a chorus and then an outro… All pretty basic stuff, so what happens when something comes in and it’s completely out of the box. Strange, weird, complicated and a little bit confusing. Well those things either have a colossal crash and burn or they become beloved and spawn hundreds upon hundreds of theories, analytics and leave people talking for years.. Like the Sopranos cutting mid scene to a black screen, or the ending of Inception with the Top spinning, or Shutter Island where maybe something is real and maybe it’s fake. What does all that have to do with Dread Weight, maybe nothing or maybe everything. The sequel to Cooking Companions (which was a lot more straight forward but still kind of ugh what) can leave gamers a bit baffled and confused, I played through the game three times and I’m still a bit fuzzy on the whole thing. Trying to search for answers gives a lot of theories but sometimes you just want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Anyway, here goes The Story – Lost in the woods you stumble onto a mansion and get welcomed inside, or rescued is probably a better term, there you meet four strangers and hilarity, or death or something like that ensues.. It’s hard to really formulate the plot without ruining what happens, it’s kind of weird with a lot of really random stuff thrown together to create a semi cohesive storyline, with a few choices which you can take that alter the story one way or the other. Gameplay – normal visual novel game, you read text and look at mostly photos and a few videos, stuff happens and you make some choice which have minor influence on the game. It’s not the most complicated thing in the world. Aside from the normal Visual novel options, the game also has an inventory system, although most of the items are pretty much worthless.. Pro’s Fun game for a few hours, it took me 3.1 hours to beat the game, but I skipped text my second and third and fourth playthrough. King of interesting sequel to Cooking companions. Interesting story, and multiple different endings.. Easy and quick 100% if you care about those types of things (I do) Con’s The story is really kind of confusing, Many of the options have no real baring on the game. Many of the inventory items are completely useless Recommendation - Considering I liked Cooking Companions I went into Dread Weight with the utmost of anticipations, and while the story was a bit confusing, (maybe doubly because it was so long since I’ve played CC) I did enjoy it, and while the story doesn’t really wrap the ending up in some tidy package, it was still interesting playing, and talking about with others.. Tons of Youtube videos discussing the various endings and events of the game.. So I’d say why not get it, especially if you’ve already played Cooking Companions, the price might be pretty steep for the content delivered 3.1 hours, for all the achievements, a +1 and a 100% game to the account, but if you wait for a sale it might be a bit more digestible. Either way I’d say go ahead and take the plunge.

This is one of those cases where I'd post a "mixed" review if I could. Dread Weight isn't a terrible game. I don't even know if I'd necessarily call it a bad game. It is simply exceedingly "meh", failing to learn the right lessons from its predecessor and, ironically, lacking the emotional weight it would have needed to succeed. In many ways, it feels like a visual novel that really wishes it were a 1st person survival horror game instead. So, let's be specific: Given that I did like the previous game, what's different about this one? Cooking Companions followed a simple formula: You get to know and care about a (largely) close-knit cast of characters in a relaxed setting, tension begins to build, you watch them suffer and change. It's basic, but effective. Dread Weight, in attempting to get to the scares faster, pretty much skips the first phase, which significantly reduces the effectiveness of the later ones. And what's worse, the characters don't really care about each other either. In the whole game, there is exactly one character who gets sad about exactly one other character's death, and we don't even get to see all that much of it. Actually, we don't get to see much of what the characters go through in general. A significant part of what little even happens in the plot happens off screen and we mostly just end up with the protagonist looking for various items in the dark, alone, in service of ultimately pointless quests while occasionally being told about what happened to the other characters in brief one-on-one conversations. Those three factors - lack of downtime, lack of emotional connection, and the prevalence of telling over showing - combined to leave me utterly unimpressed with any of the supposed tragedies the story revolves around. So what about the scares these sacrifices were made for, then, are those any good at least? I'd say that Dread Weight is scarier than Cooking Companions, but still not that scary overall, and still very heavily reliant on basic jumpscares. The little animations for the ghosts are fun, I just ultimately found them more annoying than frightening. They were fancy little timers to keep you from spending too much time thinking or reading lore. And once again, there's so little "normal" built up at the start of the game that there can be no perversion of normalcy either. Had this been a first person survival horror, it would have been fine, a focus on finding items and retroactively learning things through logs is normal in that genre, but a horror visual novel primarily relies on its writing to be scary and Dread Weight's extremely basic plot, loose structure, and cast of calm intellectuals and solitary badasses do not serve it well in that regard. Despite its best efforts, it's still more "mildly spooky" than it is "scary". Ultimately, it's not like Dread Weight has nothing to offer - on their own, all the characters are decently interesting, and since I own it anyway, I will still be getting all the endings to see the probably pretty decent lore. But there are games on this platform, including horror visual novels, that have greater heights to offer than "pretty decent", that can genuinely make you sad or frighten you, that have things to say, or innovative gameplay that complements their story, or even just tell a fun, spooky, complete little story rather than just leaving you with a sense of "well, I guess I didn't hate it. But I also won't remember any of it in a couple months." Including the first game in this very series. I think it's better spend your money on those instead.

I feel bad writing this, as I loved cooking companions and even own a potato plushie, but I can't lie about how I felt playing this. I only played it for two hours, and that was a while ago. I just couldn't bring myself to play much more of it. The endings are okay, I think I got quite a few of them. The first problem lies in the fact that this game is so nonsensical it just feels like a chore to continually play scenes over and over again trying to figure out what to do. The first game was similar but it felt mysterious and it hooked me in, this one annoyed me with its confusing story that jumps from one topic to another and timed sections that mean you end up clicking blindly to avoid being pushed into the wrong scene AGAIN. Honestly, this game is not fully playable without a guide beside you. It feels disconnected from the original and ANY sense of mystery around the plot is shot down in the first 10 minutes with the reveal of [spoiler] the baba yaga and general folklore that was simply a theory until this point. [/spoiler] It feels rushed and sloppy, and I feel bad saying this as I couldn't dream of making something to this level but I just feel disappointed with this sequel. Overall not even mad just disappointed.

Oh boy, I really wish I could give a neutral rating for this one, but in the end of the day, this game is a huge step down from its predecessor Cooking Companions. It aims to widen the lore, worldbuilding and gameplay, but manages to make everything worse, somehow. Everything is WAY too convoluted. Character relationships, character backgrounds, hidden paths in the story. Dread Weight seems to be meant to be played with a walkthrough and explanatory text on your second screen. Heart ratings did nothing for me this time around, since I did not care about any of the characters. The inventory holds either irrelevant objects or things that need to be used precisely at the correct time after stumbling through a precise story path. Without prompts. Playing multiple paths in Cooking Companions felt good - you knew where to go another way and the bits of lore you got were pieces of a cool puzzle; in Dread Weight multiple runs feel like busywork. At one point I simply stopped and did not care about lost bits of story.

Quite a bit shorter than the first game. Characters are bland and forgettable, not enough time getting to know them to really care about their deaths. Story feels rushed and a bit more erratic and all over the place compared to Cooking Companions. All in all it was still a fun read and if you've played the previous entry you should still give it ago. Maybe wait for a sale to buy it. I hope the dev goes away from the "world ending" kind of threats and stays with a smaller scale instead, like the first game did. To put it in numbers i'd give Dread weight a 6.5/10, compared to Cooking companions 8.5/10.

Had a blast playing through this and achievement hunting in it. The story and characters are much more developed that the first game, though confusing at times. The folklore and antagonists are interesting and fun to try to piece together. The jumpscares fell a little flat, and the horror parts felt much less scary. Having the second PoV in the additional content was a lot of fun to step back into an old pair of eyes. The art feels more polished than the first game but can be inconsistent. The animated scenes were gorgeous but some characters feel disproportionate compared to it. (Gisela's hair / forehead seems strange in the sprite but wonderful in the CG / animated parts) Definitely check it out after the first game, a super fun sequel and I hope there will be more to come.

dimitri is so cute please play

I think the 1st game is better, as this one feels like it has less structure, and it's less scary since the horror feels more jumpscarey and less creepy monster staring at you from the darknessy. Regardless, it is definitely still worth checking out.

Me enseñó dos cosas: 1) Siempre revisa detrás de la esquina 2) La munición es más escasa que tus ganas de ir a clase un lunes