It's generally not a good sign when you see the words "Made with Unity" come on-screen before anything else, but at least this is one effort which was clearly made with a bit of love. Which isn't to say that it's "good", exactly - it's not - but at least someone cared enough to spend longer than four-and-a-half hours putting their "experimental" masterpiece (read: tech demo) together, and had enough respect to make the resultant "game" free for all bar those who choose to make a donation. A donation, one presumes, mostly intended to show support towards whatever project the dev decides to undertake next.
My own assessment of the developer's potential? Yeah, there's definitely potential here. The graphics are spiffy - even if you feel a bit like a dwarf running through a forest at times, despite no clear indication that your character is anything of the sort - and the sound is generally well-realised (though some differentiation between paved footpaths and the surrounding grass would have been nice). The sounds of the legion of weeping female voices following you in the caves is especially effective, if a tiny bit shoddily mixed. The atmosphere, on the whole, is really quite applaudable.
The gameplay, unfortunately, is not. Wander about semi-aimlessly, stumble upon a map to some caves you're supposed to visit, find what you're looking for in said caves, die several times trying to escape said caves, then die several more times running around in circles once you're outside again. I didn't see the very ending due to my impatience with this latter part of the game - you really do get thrown back quite a ways when you die, just to end up getting lost all over again - but I have a strong suspicion I saw virtually everything on offer anyway, in well under thirty minutes. Other reviews claiming to have finished the game certainly seem to back me up in this assumption.
So why the recommendation, you ask, for a short game I couldn't even be arsed completing? Well, it's free, and given that Steam only gives me two thumbs to choose from, it doesn't really seem fair to choose the downward-pointing one. I've certainly PAID MONEY for far, far worse, especially on Steam. Take this product for what it is - a brief, atmospheric experience predominantly designed to show off an aspiring game-maker's potential - and it's not "bad" by any stretch of the imagination.
Would I go so far as to call it a fully-fledged "game"? That's a bit of stretch. It is what it is, really, and I would at least be interested to see what the dev gets up to in the future. He's already half-way there - only the mapping leaves a LOT to be desired - and if people insist on inflicting their half-baked learning experiences on the general public, the least they can do is not charge people for it.
Recommended, if only barely, and only for the genuinely curious and/or financially destitute.
Verdict: 5/10.
