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Recommended1h played26 found helpfulMar 2025

Жена сказала, что если на этом обзоре наберётся 10 лайков и 5 наград, то она подарит ящик пива. Мужики, выручайте!

Recommended70h played15 found helpfulJan 2024

[b] The Spookening (2013) PC, Android, Ios [/b] Developer: Modesty Creative Agency (Sweden) Originally this was a 20-level mobile game that sold for about $2.99. It was then later optimised for PC, had four more levels added and sold for $8.95. Regardless of the fact that the developers gave this game its own very unique theme and cleverly developed a very original novel and quirky game mechanic, it doesn’t seem to be what gamer's were interested in playing, at the time it was published and sadly the Swedish company called Modesty went bankrupt. The endless positive reviews and awards, did nothing to save the company from going bust. Now the game is completely free on Steam and only this version of the game is available for play. The protagonist of the game is an inventor named Herman who is trying to build his own flying machine. Unfortunate for him, he is somewhat a cursed klutz and seems to die every night just before midnight in absurd ways. This is where you, the player, come in. You get to control his ghost in the hopes of ‘scaring the life out’ of all the town’s folk of ‘Clifftown’. The goal is to collect their ‘soular power’ and use it to reanimate Herman back to life. Problem is, your given a very short window to do this in, as you have to get it completed before the midnight hour actually strikes or your death will become permanent. Hence the time your given to successfully reanimate, often depends what time Herman actually died before midnight. While the first five levels are relatively easy to master, levels six onward quickly steep in difficulty if you intend to get that perfect score. Each level from this point forward will require you to first collect a 3-skull target score of gold before you attempt a resurrection. This is achieved by exchanging ‘soular power’ for gold at the town’s cemetery crypt. The gold you manage to collect and save can then be later used in purchasing 8 different skills that make scaring villagers and dealing with death easier. While ‘scaring the life out’ of town citizens first means simply chasing after them as a ghost and screaming boo at them, later it entails a more elaborate trade off where you sacrifice some ‘soular power’ to create poltergeists to come out of inanimate objects. This in turn will profit you with bigger scares and better ‘soular power’ rewards. Learning what can be interacted with at town and setting up the scene for big scares is half the fun. Robbing you of that fun, is the various obstacles and enemies that you will eventually encounter. Very early in the game you will discover that your ghost vessel gets affected by radio waves which inverts your controls for a short period. This can be very dangerous if your short on time, or have an enemy pursuing you. Also, electrical voltage from power-lines can flip your point of view for a short period too. Angels, all dressed in yellow, apparently mean well and try to prevent you from accessing an inhabited part of the city. Problem is, if your being chased, your bound to lose lots of your collected ‘soular power’ to the enemy as you float into a dead end. If you scare a villager too much and they end up croaking it, like you, their ghost will become vengeful and they will try and track you down to collect various amounts of ‘soular power’ back from you. Unlike you however, they will quickly get absorbed if they ever go too near a street light. Why they are different than you are? Is never explained properly in the game. Street lights, if they do have harmful side effects to ghosts like radio waves and electrical currents do, you seem to be immune from it. Demons are also immune from street lights. Demons need to also be evaded as they will chase you down and drain you of large amounts of ‘soular power’ constantly. Finally, after 23 successful resurrections the Grim Reaper himself will appear and attempt to block you from making a 24th resurrection before the midnight hour. He is faster, chases longer and robs you of ‘soular power’ in a devastating manner. Why does Herman die every night? The answer seems to be in the way that he dies. Of particular interest, is that ALL the deaths only involve you. You don’t die from something contagious like the plague which would in turn infect other town members. Also of interest is the fact that you must already feel inwardly unlucky, since you chose the number 13 for your experimental helicopter. However, the biggest reveal is when you manage to thwart the grim reaper himself and his lethal crusade against you, trying to prevent your resurrection. As a reward your granted with a screen shot that entertains the idea that the whole ordeal is still not truly over. For one thing, the grim reaper has not lost interest in you and is waiting just outside your window for your next death scene and secondly the reason why Herman may in fact be unwittingly dying all the time is because of a cursed tattoo on the sole of his foot. Why is Herman’s ghost not aware of this tattoo? Because so far, every time Herman has died, he has died while wearing shoes. This is the first time he might die while in bare feet and reveal to his ghost self why this is happening. This would mean that to be truly free from the effects of his curse, Herman would first need to seek the help of a tattoo removalist. The Clifftown Villagers, other than cosmetic differences, there isn’t really much different about them all. Some of them may have less health than others and some may be more affected by certain scares than others, but they all seem to react similar and if there are differences then it seems to be negligible. Sadly, the developers missed the opportunity of including novel concepts using the villagers. For instance, since there is one mayor it would have been interesting having an achievement where you needed to locate the mayor each level and scare him personally. Alas, there are no achievements with the game. While the game was originally loosely inspired from the concept of Pac-man, it has evolved very much now into its own unique thing. Too capitalise on that fact, the developers chose to hand draw everything which was later coloured by Photoshop and then mapped onto models using Maya. This painstaking dedication to original artistic detail is what took a bulk of the games 6 months creation. It was then play tested by 50 volunteers and slightly tweaked depending on feedback. Strangely the game appears first in Steams alphabetical list order, due to the fact that it was titled in Japanese and an exclamation mark appears at the end of the title which is registered as coming first since Japanese is read from back to front. While the Steam store advertises that the game is not English supported this is not true. In final: A free 24 level ported mobile game which plays out well on the PC. It is possible to get 3 skull rating on each level if you first trade the equivalent 3 skull score at the Crypt. For instance, if a 3-skull score is 300 then you will need to trade 300 points of Soular power at the Crypt for gold before you attempt to collect more Soular power until you have enough to resurrect yourself. With a completely original concept, a dedicated and detailed hand drawn world and a unique game mechanic requiring skilful planning, this game is worthy of a place in your library. The down side is the game could have done with a few more easter eggs and the company has gone bust so further elaborations on the hidden cursed tattoo and its future implications on Herman seems very unlikely. https://youtu.be/dnvl8ntZg-w?feature=shared https://youtu.be/LJlfJcalqDs?feature=shared https://youtu.be/M37-x6bRg6c?feature=shared My Reviews: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6843548/

Not recommended2h played13 found helpfulMay 2021

[h1]Disregarding the awkward and perhaps sketchy store page, this is indeed a [i]real[/i] game and is called '[i]The Spookening[/i]'.[/h1] [h1]Overview:[/h1] So what exactly is this strange game that doesn't advertise anything and is mostly in Japanese? Well from the thumbnail on the store page which is all you have to work with, you'll most likely be able to establish that this is a horror game. It is in fact a horror game although not a scary one but rather a comedic one. You play as a man that can't help but die all the time and in a silly fashion as well and you take the wheel of his ghost, tasked to roam around a small town and scare its residents so they drop what's called "Soular Power" that you could then use to revive your corpse. The overall idea is pretty unique and rather humorous and can provide a nice bit of fun for the casual player. [h1]Gameplay:[/h1] '[i]The Spookening[/i]' is a top down game where the goal is to revive your corpse by collecting Soular Power from residents of the town by scaring them. There are multiple ways to scare them and each method gives a different amount of Soular Power. These can range from possessing cars, manholes, monuments, wells and more. Activating these landmarks also require Soular Power so it's important to manage your bank and make sure you have enough Soular Power left over after everything to revive your corpse. There [i]is[/i] a time limit so it's extremely important not to dawdle so to maximize your Soular Power intake as it can be difficult to obtain enough to beat the level sometimes. As the levels progress, they also get harder (as they should), but there are some levels that require a lot of luck to beat and this is due to the fact that there aren't enough residents to scare and rack up Soular Power within the time limit you're given. You can press the M key to check the map and see which areas are most populated but it does little to help as you also need to be able to get there and find an efficient way to scare the group you're after. A lot of your success relies heavily on the random generation of people because if you get a bad generation, the level could be impossible to beat. There are also items you can purchase in a shop that can give you the edge in your scare-fest. Things like speeding up, teleporting, turning invisible and corralling residents are just some of the few items you can use to your advantage and all are relatively helpful. Despite this though, they also don't do much to help if you end up being shafted because you have a terrible resident generation. Later levels honestly need more residents as it becomes literally impossible to beat the levels near the end of the game. On top of the time limit, you also have to watch out for demons and ghosts. Demons are just beings that linger in the corners of the map and will pursue you when you're within range, sucking the Soular Power out of you if they catch you. Ghosts are created if you scare a resident enough to kill them. This gives you a LOT of Soular Power but spawns a ghost in the residents place that chases you down and takes Soular Power away in the same fashion as demons. Ghosts can be destroyed by luring them into a light source but demons will remain unkillable. [h1]Controls:[/h1] '[i]The Spookening[/i]'. has what I like to call "tank controls". Basically you can't strafe and can only move forward. This is honestly not a really good control scheme and can prove to be problematic when evading demons or ghosts as you're restricted in terms of movement. Not being able to strafe and only being able to move forward can be a detriment to the player and make the overall game harder but not in a good way. [h1]Graphics:[/h1] Honestly not very good either. It's reminiscent of early 2000 games and has a comedic art style. It's pretty colorful considering it's a game that takes place only at night and can be pleasing people who like the wonky cartoony look of games but for me, it's a bit weird. [h1]Audio:[/h1] Also sub par. Not terrible either but nothing really impressive. They sound like the typical sounds you can get from any free website. Despite that, they sound appropriate and fit what they represent. Music is also okay but I could live without it. It isn't horrible but it gets old extremely fast and thankfully there [i]is[/i] a volume meter you can use to adjust sound levels (Thank god). [h1]Conclusion/TL;DR:[/h1] '[i]The Spookening[/i]'. is a top down game about scaring people to obtain Soular Power to revive your dead body. Avoid demons and ghosts and watch the time as you frantically run around trying to rack up Soular Power as efficiently as you can to resurrect your corpse as well as buy power ups that can help up your scare game. Not a bad game but later levels become almost impossible and require a lot of luck in order to beat as residents become scarce unless you're lucky enough to have them all gather in one place.

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