Nightmare Crawler

A surreal short visual novel. Lose yourself in dreams, abandon all logic, and confront pure sensation. This game is perfect for: 1. Visual novel enthusiasts 2. Fans of short experiences 3. Denpa game lovers 4. Dreamcore players And you — if it resonates. [quote=Core Culture]If you like [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45994067/]CORE CULTURE[/url][/quote]

I didn't know anything about this developer or game going into this experience, so I thought I would leave a review for others in the same position. First of all, I do believe this developer's alias is a reference to the strange edifices (wrongly translated? as edifications)/structures in the dream that makes up the game. For those unaware, [i]Hugelkultur[/i] (or 'mound culture') is a technique in gardening in which a core of decaying organic matter (primarily logs) is used to provide nutrients, warmth, and moisture to plants on top of the mound. This is where your dream starts in the game, at the top of one of these structures and it continues as you explore the core of one of the two available mounds. The dark, pre-rendered backgrounds do a good job of conjuring up half-remembered dreams and complementing the text. The narrative content of the game is impressive, despite its short length, and features statues possessed by impossible emotions, sinister escalators and elevators, a tree ripped from a forgotten theme park, half-finished apartment complexes inhabited by a figure of pure dread, decaying malls, and endless hilly landscapes of no escape. It's cheap - just grab it!

I found this game at random and played the demo, got intrigued and tried it. The atmosphere and narrative is quite intriguing and gives an immersive feeling and description if you allow yourself to immerse, I particularly liked the plaza area with the fountain. The world and areas you explore have a liminal space vibe which is quite interesting, works good on a visual novel style but I would love to actually explore these places in 3D, it sures makes you use your imagination to expand what it's shown. Speaking of show, the pictures are fine and mysterious, but I wonder if making them clearer to see would help or go against the atmosphere proposed here, because it makes me wanted to see these places on more detail and better lighting. The game slightly reminded me of the original 999 for the DS, I would say if future games come more in that direction would be interesting, putting some puzzles there would elevate the game-aspect of it. Also the game is quite short, it leaves a taste of wanting to explore more of that world. Anyway It's worth playing and shouldn't take more than 1h for most people to get all endings. I hope the dev expand on that concept with future games, could be promising. also I do recommend you to take it slowly and try to immerse yourself as much as you can to fully enjoy the experience, no rush.

An interesting short visual novel, I like its atmosphere!

Found this on nextfest i think, but i never actually played the demo. Nice little VN

This game has a unique take on horror. The writing has quite a bit of intrigue and interesting world building, unfortunately the visuals and overall story feel undercooked, however the experience is rather short (you can get all three endings within an hour) so it doesn't outstay it's welcome. The game paints a vivid and hopeless picture of a unique environment, that the player traverses. It has flashes of real and surreal stuff mixed with liminal elements. The descriptions and their accompanying images don't always work together, the writing is far more descriptive and describes a much more interesting world, than what the pictures look like and I would have liked a few more images, because I feel like the the creator's vision wasn't always what I saw. There are only a handful of scenes. The game is slow, because the text takes a while to appear, I am fast reader, so waiting for the animation to finish was really frustrating. Thankfully, you can skip the texts scroll in later runs. There is not much of a story here, more like various nightmare scenarios with basic interactibility. The stories just end without much payoff. Player choice barely plays a role, as the outcomes of our decisions feel rather random and meaningless. Meaningless really is the operative word here, because that's what the game is all about. We are just a small, insignificant part of a larger world and even understanding and comprehending the environment is beyond our reach. That's what cosmic horror is all about. For such a short adventure, this works, if it were any longer, I'd complain.