For me it was a very 'okay' horror game, probably not worth $6 though, I felt like the visual effects got a lot better toward the end, and I wish you had that quality the entire way, where I feel like the first 2 areas were less interesting to explore, just not having enough detail in the environment. The game is about 30-40 minutes, and honestly half of it was due to tiny hotspots on the items, or just having a hard time finding things because of the darkness.
If I may give a bit of a suggestion, there are a lot of cheap horror games on steam that overuse darkness in the environment that is otherwise not very interesting to explore, and that is the vibe I got in the first house, just a few solid rooms without much detail, mostly one type of texture, it just feels cheap and makes a bad first impression, especially when you just constantly clicking on the same objects. What makes the environment in horror games fun for me to explore is the detail and character you add to location, and I think that third area looks a lot better, there is more color, there are more things that grab your attention, and you don't feel like I am in this plain 3D environment. Overall I think the second and the third locations don't look bad, but I would recommend adding a bit more contrast, focus more on texture and lights, just because it's a horror game it does not need bad visibility, when devs have this mentality where you can barely see **** to me it's a red flag. There are actually some cool effects in this game, I liked the moving rooms, and the meat monsters were actually nicely animated, but you need to give a bit of love to all parts of the game, instead of me feeling like some parts looked a lot better than others.
It's a relatively simple experience, and the game does not provide a ton of context for what it means in the end, you kinda have to put it together from what you gather from the puzzles. Most of the game takes place in 3 different houses, and to be fair, there were a couple of cool effects. The puzzles were not difficult, outside of having a few bad hotspots, you might have to double check the drawers and such, it's easy to miss things in this game.
[h1] Pros: [/h1]
(+) I think the visual effects got better toward the end, the game felt a bit cheap and without character at first, but I thought the last location had more interesting elements going for it, I just wish the entire game was like that. I thought the meat demons were nicely made as well. The overall lights and texture was not great, but I also felt the third location got better in that regard, I still think you need to put more work in contrasting and adding more things that grab your attention.
[h1] Feedback: [/h1]
- next time try making the objects and hotspots a bit bigger, I felt like I had to constantly click on everything in this game, even missing objects right in front of me
- like a lot of horror games on steam you doing this thing where you focus a bit too much on the darkness, just because it's a horror game, does not mean it's fun to explore poorly visible environment, like in the third location, I like the game more when it has more detail in the environment, or perhaps some interesting theme for a location (for example you had a music theme in the last area which was better) Also I think you need to play with the lights a bit more, more contrast, for example that shading you had going at the fire, I think that looked better, maybe place more light sources like that around, contrast the object and shadows more.
- I didn't feel like I got much closure with the experience, I can kinda guess what happened based on the puzzles, but overall I think you need to have a more satisfying ending for your games
[b] Overall Thoughts: 6/10 [/b]
There were a few nice visual elements specifically with the jumpscares, but you should focus more on making the environment more interesting, and perhaps improve on the light effects just a little bit so it does not feel like you can't see much, many devs use darkness to hide lack of detail instead of doing more work. Overall not a bad attempt, but didn't make a big impression, needs a little bit more love, focus more on individual locations and detail, don't make me feel like the game has sporadic moments of good quality, there were some nice ideas there, but it wasn't consistently good.
[code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]
