First up: holy MENU VOLUME, Batman! Probably the loudest game I have ever launched. Not the most promising of signs, but we're hardly in a position to judge [i]just[/i] yet...
Secondly: no options (aside from a Brightness slider, once in-game). Yup. The joys of "indie horror games", yet again. Don't get me wrong: I'm a huge lover and defender of indie games, but...credit where credit is due, and criticism where it's equally due. There's little to no excuse for this crap, especially when asking for real-world money.
Thirdly: functional if thoroughly unexceptional graphics, and a highly [i]un[/i]evocative note in the first room. But hey...early days yet, right?
A room, a set of stairs and a twisty corridor later: public restroom! We [i]have[/i] public restroom!! Definitely a horror game we're playing, then. And it's not like the "mood" is non-existent or anything; but it's nothing noteworthy as of yet.
A very simple door-code puzzle, and a room beyond with another locked door. I need a key, apparently. Ah, I wonder if that would be [i]this[/i] one, on the desk right next to the door? Um...no, actually, it isn't. Guess I'll try one of the other doors out in the corridor that hasn't opened for me yet, and...
Ah. There we go. Another room...with [i]another[/i] key in it. Ooookay. So in the first five minutes, folks, that's one door code "puzzle" ("solved" by reading a note), and two keys to open two doors. So far, so uninspired.
I return to the original locked door and...what's this? "I should wash the key"! Well, that's a new one, so points for quasi-originality at last! (Even if there's no explanation given for [i]why[/i] the key needs washing; but at the very least I can use my imagination and guess.) Good thing I spotted that restroom earlier...
I'll save you the further blow-by-blow and leap to the spoiler: this game is not good. The expected chase sequences, once they ensue, are fiddly as all heck (the "sprint" button a dodgy proposition at best); the AI is pretty poor (the title antagonist seems to know where you are, even when she shouldn't); and the lighting in the game is so preposterously dark that, even after cranking both the game's [i]and[/i] my computer's Brightness to max, I could only barely see what I was doing.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, the Brightness [i]resets itself[/i] to the mid-point every time you die or change chapters. The latter being something that I only bothered to do twice, since the constant chase/"stealth" sequences - and the cheap deaths that inevitably followed - soon became so frustrating that I quit. A quick YouTube search confirmed that I was about half-way through the game anyway - it's an hour long, at best - and [i]still[/i] I couldn't muster up the motivation to finish.
Sure, the titular "slit-mouthed woman" is fairly scary to behold, but only for the first few seconds that you see her. Before long she becomes little more than a persistent, nagging annoyance; always the sign of a poorly-executed horror game. There's a crap-tonne of superior stealth-horror titles out there, rendering this one worthy of the time of only the most helplessly addicted of horror fans...which used to include Yours Truly, but those days have long since passed, I'm afraid...
Verdict: 4/10.
(PS If you enjoyed this review, feel free to check out my two Curator pages: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9284586-ReviewsJustfortheHELLofit/
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/10868048-Truly-Horrible-Horror-Games/?appid=398210
Cheers!)
