My Safe House

Alright, here's the usual video insert here for a visual playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbu5x-z_v44&t=9s With that said and done, here's what I think of this tiny lil' project... and of course, [b] there's spoilers. [/b] -Story? What story? It's just a home invasion scenario. There's some idle chit-chat between you and your sister, but as far as I could tell, that's about it. -The audio was alright, in terms of how it was designed between ambience and cues. The cues could've been executed better in gameplay, because it was pretty difficult to tell where the enemy was in terms of closeness more so than direction. -With the very little voice acting only coming in for the occasional cue from the threat, it served it's purpose here. -The visuals were pretty simple in regards to a house design, and even included a map on your phone. As a slight knit-pick, the locked door I discovered lead nowhere on the map, and the study was missing a door icon. Back to the house itself, it was very large, and could've worked well with seeing a threat, but that's where this game comes as a slight disappointment. -The threat is the intruder who barges into your home and locks you both in, assuming he's only coming after you and whatever valuables you have like the kidnapper he is. The two major problems are that there's a lack of visuals for this guy, assuming it's not anything supernatural, and that there's no fleeting chance of you attempting to escape it's sight and hide away as intended. In fact, if you're anywhere close to it, for example hiding behind an opened door or through a wall, he will always find you. It's more of a game of, "stay away from the invisible being prowling," over, "hide, run away if caught, attempt to hide." It shouldn't be easy in the slightest to escape him once he discovers you, and it should be almost near-impossible, but I feel like there's wasted potential here. If the developers were on a time crunch with college, that's totally understandable. I just feel as if the AI should have an overhaul and some random variations between him and the map to make the gameplay more interesting for each attempt. -I pretty much summed up the gameplay in terms of the AI, but the basic overall goal is to hide and wait for fifteen minutes, give or take. After seeing the threat (or lack there of), it was way less intense and more of a bore to sit and wait. If there was a goal to instead reach the front door or collect your valuables that you don't want stolen that are hidden away, then that'd be way better and require mobility around the threat. Again, this is only if you choose to expand on the idea. -Forgot to mention, but as of when I update this review, neither of the achievements that come with the game work, and they also lack images as far as I can tell. It captures what you'd expect from a home invasion. Even if the game was stale after the first two or three tries, it's initial tension had me at the edge of my seat for a while. With an expansion, this could possibly compete with Welcome to the Game's real-life scenarios to a degree. The price is fairly reasonable for it's current amount of gameplay, and I appreciate that; I'd say to give this a shot if you want a short experience. Thank you all in StoryTale for makin' this, and I can't wait to see what you do with your later releases!