Heather Wreath: The Reporter

I am updating the review to reflect the first patch, the devs fixed most of the issues that I had with animation, text reading, and save points, so I don't think you will find it as contentious as in my original review. On a subjective note, even though the game has a lot of interesting ideas with the psychological effects, it does not handle sound effects and certain aesthetic elements as well as it could, that said, for a $5 indie survival horror, I think the game is in a decent state now. Takes about 2 to 3 hours to finish with no hints. Admittedly a big part of the game was backtracking, the main area is abnormally large, very lengthy runs just to check every area, and then try to figure out if you missed anything. Initially I was going to say that the areas were way too big, but at the same time it kinda reminded me of the original Silent Hill a bit, the farm area had some nice long camera angles which I liked, the main issue is that you didn't gate the roads enough, as well as the camera often pointing right at the character, making it hard to see the direction. There are basically only 2 main locations in this game, as well as some psychological locations in between, the first one is somewhat open for exploration, it's kinda like a big circle and you have to figure out the order. The puzzles were not very hard overall, however because of the size of the farm, putting the hints together could be challenging, but for the most part the puzzles are straightforward once you have the items. The visuals is something that I felt was not bad, but also sporadic with detail and quality, sometimes the game felt very cheap looking, but occasionally you had some neat looking areas, even that nice spinning effect inside of the mill which I assume could be the Silent Hill reference. The big farm area actually looked decent, and when the camera wasn't being a *****. I didn't mind exploring it. The caves were a bit more simple looking, it felt like you were taking Qs from Silent Hill with the visibility distance, not as good obviously, but I felt like you at least tried to capture that feeling, somewhat decently. There is limited combat as well as some "resource management", it won't really impact your experience a lot as the game is pretty easy overall, the enemies are very basic, and you can kinda stand your ground, sometimes move back a little, but I like some of the death animations. I don't have too much to say in regards to the narrative, I like that you added a lot of psychological effects and it worked well enough for a small game, it's just that overall suspense of the game wasn't as heavy as a few similar titles. [h1] Pros: [/h1] + There were a few moments with the locations that I really enjoyed, yea the overall consistency wasn't great, but the few times you get those long shots and a few angles in the structures, the game didn't look bad. It often reminded me of Silent HIll, not with the same attention to detail, and the game usually didn't have as much texture as I wanted, but overall, not bad for an indie game, I have seen a lot worse. + The puzzles were relatively intuitive, aside from just having too much distance between them, the only one that annoyed me a little was a random death in the corn, yea there is a clue for it, but you might get there before you find it. + The story and vibes were decent overall, it's nothing special to be honest, but at least there were several attempts to create psychological depth to the narrative, I just didn't really like the font of the text. Some of the scenery like the graves part and the totem were adding to the mood, even if the music was a little off sometimes. + Actually a couple of nicely made cutscenes as well [h1] Feedback (outdated): [/h1] - Usually when you rotate in these game the character kinda walks in place if you know what I mean, but you didn't have any animation for that, which I think breaks the immersion a little, I think RE1 had it, so why not use like a shorter version of the walk animations to have it on a rotation as well, just so the character does not look like solid asset. Also I thought the rotation was a little slow. - So the way you save in this game, you lite the lanterns kinda like using the ink ribbons, but at the start of the game, it creates a checkpoint before the chase, and if you die in a corn field before finding the save location, it feels frustrating because you are reset to that point before the clock puzzle. Why not put another checkpoint after the chase or before the chase - Navigating the farm was a bit frustrating for 2 reasons. First, you will be hugging the walls to make sure you find everything, but you didn't gate the locations enough, so you can kinda find a lot of bad camera angles. The camera also often points in a way where you can't see where you going, especially if you backtrack. - I would add a little text after placing the dynamite, that it's still missing the line. It said use the plunger before I even crafted the line. - For the pages, I think it should default to right side of the page after pressing a button. Maybe you had 2 for each side, but I think it will confuse players trying to press through them. I was not a fan of the font for the text personally. You could also color code hints maybe - I feel like you should make all of the monster noises louder, including the "Trapper". Even if you hit them, I think they should make more screams. Music choices were not always great, I think the chase could use something more intense for example. - Some scenes could use a little more light, like I could barely see that raven on the poll [b] Overall Thoughts: 7/10 [/b] When I originally wrote the review I didn't expect most of the issues to be fixed so fast, there was a good game there that had a lot of obvious problems, but to give the devs credit, they patched my concerns in a day. It's pretty decent for a smaller game, often reminded me of my favorites like Silent Hill with certain camera angles and narrative beats. Again, it's a deep rabbit hole with these games and it depends on your expectations, I feel like the devs got the structure down pretty well, but they could use a little help with how they handle the sound effects and music during danger scenes. [code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]

The story revolves around journalist Ed, who wants to write a huge piece about a mysterious carnival and unsolved cases. Even when the locals warn him to stay away, he remains determined. He soon gets more than he asked for. While sticking his nose inside a barn at the location, he is knocked out by a brute in a mask. The game uses old-school "tank" controls, which means the character turns on the spot rather than moving left or right. The rest of the controls are fairly normal, including buttons for interacting with objects in the world, running, and attacking. The run works good, but the animation is a little odd, giving the impression that the character is power walking or running for the first time. You must be careful not to hit the interaction button during cutscenes, as this will skip everything. While this function is usually appreciated, it should be modified to long press. Except for a brief stop at the gas station, the primary locations are a farm and a mine. The farm is dark and foggy, but you can still see quite far. Although you always have a lantern active that glows a few steps in front of you, it is barely functional. The farm has a nice size, but you can only take trails to significant spots like a house, a mill, and a few others. It is painful to navigate because there is a lot of backtracking and you are running slowly. The mine improves the experience slightly, but it can be difficult with all the tunnels. Overall, the game offers just a small taste and can be finished within 2-3 hours. The perspective is fixed and features cinematic camera angles. If you have played old horror games, you know what to expect. The most basic feature of this approach is that you rarely see what is directly in front of you since the game frequently chooses the least effective view. Unfortunately, the fixed view has a few blind spots. One of them is near a mine entrance; if you do not backtrack immediately after going off screen, you will lose your character and have difficulty returning. Indoors are not much better because you will have to hug walls to avoid missing a hidden hallway. Nothing in the game's world is marked, so you must interact with everything that appears interesting. This also includes important objects that are not identified with a visual cue or a sparkling effect. While the game's grainy graphic design makes it appear to be from several generations ago, it is easy to make things blend in with the environment. On the one hand, it makes sense because you are in an unfamiliar environment and are not supposed to know what is useful. However, this makes the game more tricky to play. There is no item management. If you have the item and interact with a hotspot, you will use it automatically. The only annoyance is having to press yes or no every time you want to do something. This is pointless because you must choose yes to proceed anyway. Combat is hardly worth addressing. The farm has only one enemy, whereas the mine has a few exploding miners and freaks coated in smoke. All of them are slow and can be easily killed with your bat. The only problem is the last boss, who can kill you in two hits, but even that can be overcome if you save all medkits for the final battle. Because enemies are not dangerous, there is at least one cheap shot that kills you instantly for investigating something you shouldn't. This can undo a lot of progress because saving is only possible at special lanterns. There is one at each location, and it requires limited matches to save.

The Reporter has a terrific start where you're introduced to an over-the-hill journo desperate to make his big break, hell, desperate to make any break, just looking to put food on the table. The fixed multicam is well-handled, with relatively few blindspots and the atmosphere is appropriately moody. But just as the forces of the uncanny start to coil their tendrils around the neck of our playable curmudgeon - the game gets bogged down with an enormous fetch quest section - something I've seen in a few indie games (eg. Order of the Snake Scale). I'm fine with long walking sections in games (eg. Silent Hill 2), but having to wander back and forth across an overly large play area in search of puzzle items and places to use 'em is ultimately wearying and annoying. Worse still is when there's a constant accompaniment of discordant strings and wails on the soundtrack - I can dig what the developer / musician is aiming for, but I'm afraid that I found the current arrangements and tunes on the soundtrack more annoying than atmospheric. Controls are also... odd. While WASD, tab, spacebar and E with the mouse represents a fairly common keyset, the application of the keys to actions in this game is fairly nontraditional and sometimes more than a little mystifying. Perhaps if there was some kind of key guide during play (eg. Tormented Souls constant face buttons glyphs for interacting with the world) there would be less confusion, but I regularly found myself mashing keys desperately to make some menus go away. Text dialogue boxes also take forever to scan out - having the text appear immediately on key press and dismissing the current dialogue box on a second press would really help. However! I mostly liked the exploration, the atmosphere, the puzzles and the combat isn't too bad. As I say, the fixed multicam is very well handled - and I think you could have a fun time here if you like fixed multicam survival horror. The price is definitely right...! If you enjoy fixed multicam games, consider checking out the [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/fixedcamera]Fixed Camera Appreciation Society[/url] on Steam - a great bunch of people, and a lot of resources for these kinds of games!

Played for a bit and I liked it, reminds me a lot of Lake Haven Chrysalis. My biggest complaint is... the game just kind of feels a bit slow. So these are related to that: - Needs increased movement speed - Ability to press "next" for cutscene lines. I can read a line in like 1/8 of the time the line hangs on screen, so then I'm just sitting and waiting for it to continue - A map... I jgot to this big open farm field, and it really starts to crawl because it is SOO spread out, you move quite slow, and the things you can actually interact with are very few and far between. Obviously the best fix would be a level design revamp, or populating it with more puzzles and items and enemies... But increasing movement speed and adding a map would go a longgg way too. Especially if the map has markers to know points of interest, or allows you to put markers yourself so that when you need to backtrack you're not wasting a ton of time just slowly moving through a field... Otherwise, enjoying it a lot. Haven't gotten to the combat yet, but I like the clock puzzle and I like the story and atmosphere and music