oneway.exe: Module 1.0

very unclear and buggy to the point where i couldnt tell if it was bugged or if i just hadnt solved a puzzle. same issue i had with the demo.

[h2]A labour of love[/h2] [h3]Oneway.exe is a multi-layer horror puzzle game, where the various constructs somehow manifest in a higher layer of reality.[/h3] [h3]Gameplay[/h3] Without spoiling, it consists of many puzzles each tailored to the "construct room" you are completing. Overall, they are great and diversified puzzles, with some that felt a bit unclear/too obscure, and especially one that did not provide feedback where you went wrong that could have helped make it feel like a puzzle and not so much a guessing game. It makes sense in hindsight, but not always when you are stuck in the puzzle (in my opinion and experience). This can be compounded with the fact each room can be completed in any order, but it helps to know the characters better in some puzzles. After having knowledge of those puzzles, many of them can be quickly completed, which can lead to a different ending. (The game has multiple endings.) [h3]Writing[/h3] The writing is where the game excels at the most, in how it presents its lore and characters. The various apps help you put together various pieces of who the main cast is and how they fit together and in the world. As completing each room unlocks more "chat history", it leads to one particular app becoming very laggy. The developers are aware and are working on it. Something that I enjoyed about this game is the community. I was asked to post my thoughts of the game on the official Discord server and they were read and considered, and the developers are aware of the puzzle I had trouble with. It is CLEARLY a labour of love and I think it is well-worth your purchase and time to experience the tragic story of TRIO8 unfold.

Game is cryptic to a fault. Once I got to the desktop parts of the game it stopped feeling like a game and more like troubleshooting through an OS that makes me miss Windows 11. I shamefully gave in and looked up a walkthrough that amounted to telling me to open fictional discord and sift through a years worth of chats between fictional characters for keywords and I was done at that point.

The art and sound are the game’s greatest strengths. The character designs are beautiful - I’m not talking chef’s kiss beautiful, I’m talking French-kiss beautiful. However, the game is actually weaker than its demo due to the added excessive padding. Some decent puzzles from the demo now last far too long, specifically Meaty’s, since the last leg is literally dragging file icons until the transition occurs. The desktop puzzles feel arbitrarily tacked on and aren’t executed that well. OneWay.Exe takes the excesses of meta and analog horror to their logical conclusion. Some of the puzzles are counter-intuitive and fly in the face of decades of game design. The storytelling is obtuse by design and if you want the concrete details of the game you spent $20 on, it’ll be at the price of admission to a Discord server and an hour’s worth of reading. The game is very aggressive in nudging you towards the ARG. It's as if the devs scrutinized the strengths of the past decade’s meta fiction without also analyzing the weaknesses of the genre to understand what didn't work and why. There’s a lack of mainstream coverage because the game cements itself as extremely niche and it's proud of the fact. Discord is baked into the game’s DNA, and that’s not taking into consideration the aforementioned ARG. Whereas AAA games feel designed by committee, this title feels as if it were designed by voice chat. There are so many references, both textual and visual, that I found it to actually detract from the horror. “Wouldn’t it be cool/funny if we referenced X” seemed to be the design mantra. The only time I felt fear was from the initial visceral reaction to the game’s first chase sequence. Said chase sequence happens every time you start one of the game’s seven routes. It’s the horror equivalent to Westopolis without Chaos Control. Speaking of overstaying welcomes, there’s Dolly. Dolly is a more chatty version of the Skull from Welcome to the Game and any ounce of discomfort it might have evoked evaporated after its first few wisecracks. Dolly is in almost every route to some capacity. The replayability would greatly benefit from options to either skip Dolly’s dialogue, skip the desktop puzzles, or skip straight to the desktop puzzles when you replay a route. To borrow a page from the VN genre, it would be nice to skip the pop-up chat boxes you've already seen from TRIO8 and the Restoration team. The game leans heavily on flashing lights and heavy screen distortion to establish fear. I’m talking 90’s Pokemon Porygon episode levels of flashing. I’m not epileptic but playing for an extended bit induced headaches. The devs were smart enough to have head-bob off by default yet kept the other migraine-inducers as the stock settings. This is tough to recommend since the gameplay formula is 60% walking, 35% puzzle-solving, and 5% meaningful horror elements. It's more cerebral than it is terrifying.

This game is fantastic. I could write a whole thing about how torn up I am about the tragic and horrifying stuff that happens to the characters but I'm just going to quote myself: It's horror in the purest sense of the word.

I LOVE THIS GAME SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MUCHIM TYPINMGTHIS ITH MY ACRYLIC NAILS SO IT JHIGHKEYU KIDN OF TYPED IS SI FBAD BUT THI GAME IS AGUAQLLY SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥ G GOOD PLEQSE PLAUY IKT THE CHARQCTGER DESIGNS AND LORE ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD ALSO I LOVE YOU KITTY YOURE LITTERQLLY M,EREEEEEEE E E E E E A<<<<#3333333 ^^^ ^_^

The storytelling in this game hit me like crack in the 80s. Jokes aside, I picked up this game during the winter sale because I was looking for games that would pique my curiosity, and I found this here entry in the psychological horror section. After doing a little bit of digging, I realized that these devs had gained an utterly goated status for following (and being followed back by Black Tabby Games,) and decided to give it a go. From what I've seen so far as of typing this (I have currently completed 5/8 of the total routes the game has to offer, missing Ophelia, Kitty and Billie,) for the price this game is labeled at it should genuinely be higher. Without giving any spoilers, this game has floored my expectations right out of the gate. Not yapping about the story, cause it's best if you experience it yourself. Go play it. Now.

this game makes me feel dumb (praise)

ya.. i cant get passed the first level. too laggy and no idea what to do.

after finally getting throught he horrid intro and getting stuck on the very next puzzle, I understand the reason this game is not good. the developers are unable to understand how their game looks from the player's pov. if you are given hints they are abysmal moonlogic, I even looked up the answer to a puzzle and it was wrong in my game when it was correct in there's so the hints remain the same but the puzzle's answers are different. I have no idea how this game is rated so highly, it is genuinely abysmal. an absolute shame as the atmosphere is pretty good and I wanted to like this game a lot