Luckily, I never forget my Steam Review Note Taker…
Aug 19 2025 Today I have finished participating in what I can only surmise as a 2016 Unity Spanish Student MK Ultra Masters experiment. Coming out worst for wear on the other end, but still thankful having made it. Knowing all too well that others are still wandering the corridors shouting expletives to super hearing zombie children and Ian who may have walked into walls once too often producing some type of mental numbing effect on himself.
There are 3 commonly voiced opinions about the game made by others. First, is that the game contains really cheesy voice acting. I actually don’t agree with this. I cut them some slack here, as they are all Spanish and English is not their native language, so I could hardly see how monitoring the English translation would be an easy task for them. True, Ian who is supposedly an 8-year-old boy, doesn’t sound 8 years old, but more like a miniature adult, but Hollywood does this all the time, getting adults to pose as teenagers. (Scream etc.)
The worst voice acting would have to be Principal Bates, but yet again it’s only in two sections where it’s blatantly obvious that there is a mistranslation. One of them is when Mr. Bates tells Ian ‘Don’t Waste your time’, that particular sentence is not delivered properly in the way it would be in real life. The second instance of mistranslation is when Mr Bates informs via tape that his experiments are canselled, instead of announcing it properly as cancelled. These are small errors and other than that, I thought the voice acting was relatively fitting to the setting and theme of the game.
The second often voiced gripe against the game is that it is too hard and often vexes players to give up. I actually concur with this sentiment, but I would also like to add that it also is what causes the game to be so addictive due to its challenging nature. In fact, my run through videoed below contains 157 deaths and that is in a run where I knew what to expect in each room.
The problem is that the game increases in difficulty very quickly and there are very few moments in the game where you can simply stop and take a few breathes of air as scenes and zombie children often force you to keep moving. The game starts with a brief tutorial, then we witness the students turn into zombies and then the game immediately starts presenting us with expert mode.
On the run your expected to learn the skills of North which are that he can crouch (Stealth), run (Avoid), Small Bark and Maximum Bark (Attract attention). Dark Bark (Stun), Stand Still, hide in alcoves and behind items, drag and push items. The other saving grace to the steeped difficulty is that there are frequent saves and often you just need to make it to the next room or corridor segment.
The last often voiced opinion is that it has the worst ending to any video game of all time. The game was made by Sindie Games a seemingly purposefully constructed company to showcase what 18 students attempting to get their masters by enrolling in the Florida Replay Independent Video Creation Program had so far achieved, which was showcased in Madrid’s gaming expo by the games 3 lead designers. Since no one intended to keep going with the franchise, they simply finished the game with a ‘screw everything’ out of the blue event. Problem is, this will cause many players to simply resent their time spent on the game as they get robbed of anything achieved as loyalty among characters are proven to be fleeting and you only get to experience a bad ending and nothing more.
Story: The story is about an 8-year-old boy named Ian and his guide dog named North who are attending Blue Norholm Primary school located in the small US town of Wintreal (not a real school, or town) for their first time. The school is celebrating their centenary (1887-1987) by showing a slideshow which was buried in a time capsule back in 1937. Principal Bates has malicious plans for the school however by exposing them to a cognitive and behavioral experiment which causes zombie like behavior to those that watch his swapped slideshow of pictures instead.
Ian and North find themselves unaffected though as Ian is blind and the slideshow doesn’t seemingly work on dogs. From this point forward you are tasked as North to guide Ian through a labyrinth of zombie school children and teachers and occasionally disconnect from Ian so you can venture further ahead and look for safe passage. The longer North stays disconnected from Ian however, the quicker Ian frightens himself to death by imagining a grim reaper style of creature out to get him.
There are several things done really well here…
1) Plenty of eye candy: Each room is full of posters that would actually make sense to be inside a school room. Also, there are plenty of Easter eggs giving a nod to various popular franchises and movies. Some of them are Ghostbusters, Poltergeist, Back to the Future, Terminator, Labyrinth, Gremlins, The Shining, Game of Thrones.
2) The music is extremely fitting to the overall theme and various scenes in the movie. For instance, Principal Bates office has a slight Resident Evil tone to it.
3) The outside shot from the exit doors using a real photo cleverly helps with immersion.
There are several missed opportunities here as well…
1) The fact that there is NO good ending is a biggie. Personally, I thought they could have added a good ending back at the start of the game at the gym. After learning all of Norths tricks if you could restart the game and work your way to the Gym doors and open them before they are padlocked and be given an alternate good ending there.
2) They could have embraced their limited abilities as new developers and melded these flaws as part of the lore in the game. Since the game uses the same child design again and again. Could Norholm have been a special primary school for clone children?
3) While the story answers some things there are a lot of things that simply don’t make sense and needed better clarification. Such as… Since all the children and teachers are in the gym with Ian, how do all the zombies infest the school and get ahead of him flooding all the classrooms? Since the front door is made of glass, why not just throw a chair through it and escape? Why would principal Bates believe that a blind child and a dog could successfully navigate through a horde of zombies, pick up all incriminating evidence and destroy it, better than he could? Ian hears all the Cassette tapes and still trusts principal Bates until final reveal? Was he not really listening to the tapes? Why are there corpses of dead children with no eyes in the toilets? Were they once zombies? Do the zombies eat the eyes of unturned children or of corpses? Why, were their dead children barricaded up in a classroom? Fire alarm has the ability to stun zombies and horde zombies to a specific location? Why is there a deformed mutated corpse of Ian on the floor in the last room?
Enemies: Some zombies just act like invisible walls blocking access. They won’t kill you if you touch them. Other stationary zombies will kill you if they hear you close by and will travel and hover around the noise location. Zombies with an already established pathing route will always return to that route once they have finished being distracted. Yellow eyed children and teacher zombies are like heat seeking missiles and only stop pursuit if they are staring in the wrong location or their line of sight is blocked. This seems to indicate that Yellow eyed zombies have not entirely lost their sight yet. So, if you flip the slide show and show it in reverse could the yellow eyed zombies be saved?
https://youtu.be/JjdqMqc0KKE?feature=shared
https://youtu.be/cuE_mHJrbHQ?feature=shared
My Reviews: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6843548/
My Zombie Wiki Discord: https://discord.gg/cCCA44f
