Yada yada, some link to a video of mine for this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtB66jY-alI&t=8s
[b] UPDATE: So... a dead community with a developer who only gives out keys... that sounds really odd. Why, it sounds odd enough for me to switch this review result to a Not Recommended. Communication, man! You need the communication and the actual changes to show within the game for reviewers like us to provide more constructive (and generally better) feedback! My thanks go out to the Horror Network and Fragnostic for pointing that out, and aditional apologies for not digging into the grave that is the game's community. The original review is right here, and it still pretty says what I want to say, but adressing this matter was my priority after what I discovered. For a straight 10-20 minute run without being a completionist, this is not worth two bucks, sorry. [/b]
Now with that said and done, let's get right into this game. Given to me through Steam Curator by Matthew, I was delighted to provide feedback for someone who spent so long working on this series in conceptualization, but how well did it perform during it's execution phase? Welp, let's find out... and yeah, [b] there's spoilers [/b] of course.
-The story... well actually, this is only the first chapter of a series, so I can't really say much about the overall story, including backstory. I can keep it simple by saying that a mother passed away due to some reason, and her husband blames their daughter for their loss. Additionally, there's some shadow figure that bothers the daughter, who's the main protagonist. This being convinces Kara to betray her abusive father's trust and steal the family's car to drive to, "Paradise Park," which I could only wonder what [i] that [/i] could mean. However, I'll reserve my overall judgement of the story until I experience an entire story, m'kay?
-The gameplay reminded me a bit of My Safe House, a game I played to provide feedback to the developers. This game, much like My Safe House, has a pretty realistic setting with decent gameplay to boot. However, it's only a bit less minimalistic. While there is something looking for you, it's only your father. There's no real tension or build-up to give a real reason to fear Kara's father other than, "He's abusive," which just isn't enough for me. [i] Show [/i] me a very good reason why I, the player, should fear this man that I can't outrun. Which also reminds me, it's strange how he just forgets about you once you lock him out, and he especially pretends like you never exist if you enter his bedroom. Lastly, this particular chpater is just way too short, and should be free so people can get a taste of what's to come before they go all in, like how Telltale handles some of their content as of recently. Other than these flaws, I'll give credit where credit is due: there's some humor sprinkled in to boot with multiple ways to distract the father, which is always appreciated for gameplay variety!
-The audio's generally alright. I can appreciate an original score and voice acting to boot.
Yeah, there's not much else to say really. This first chapter is generally too short to provide a great deal of feedback, but this shows promise if the game's steered in the right direction, especially one covering such a topic as abuse. With all of this said, thank you Matt for letting me try out your game, I hope ya'll thought of this as a good review, and I'll see ya soon!
