[h1]Bring Earplugs: More Loud Than Scary[/h1]
[i]Ramona is a first-person psychological horror set in the 1970s. Use a camera to reveal the invisible, follow Ramona’s rules, and explore rooms filled with puzzles and disturbing memories in a house haunted by secrets and remorse.[/i]
[h2]Story[/h2]
You play as Samuel, a young journalist who is investigating a former caregiver who was involved in a tragic crime. When you arrive at her house, you discover that things are not quite right, and Ramona is nowhere to be seen. Surreal events start happening as you investigate the house. Some of the story is narrated by the main character, and some is told through the environment, like finding drawings and notes from children, revealing more about Ramona’s past.
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
Ramona is a first-person psychological horror game. You have no weapons, only a camera, candles and matches at your disposal. Staying in the dark starts a fear meter that builds up, and if it fills up you die. To counteract this, you can light candles to illuminate your surroundings. You have a pretty large inventory, so you can collect a lot of candles, matches and film rolls. Items respawn after five minutes so you can always collect more.
Your goal is to solve a variety of puzzles while avoiding the darkness and Ramona. Solving puzzles triggers scripted events and scares. However, Ramona has a set of rules you need to follow in order to survive. Paranormal events will occur, like the TV starting by itself or the phone rings. This will start a gauge with Ramona’s Rage. You need to turn these objects off before it fills to max, otherwise Ramona will come for you and the only way to survive is to take a photo of her, making the gauge reset. It will continue to fill again until you turn off the cursed object.
[h2]Environment & Scares[/h2]
The game takes place in the 1970s in a two-story house. The house is easy to navigate through. Candlesticks are placed throughout the house where you can place your candles to illuminate the surroundings a little better, as it’s very dark. This is basically the only interaction you have with the environment besides the puzzles.
The atmosphere is creepy and haunting. There’s heavy use of harmless jump scares throughout the game to scare you, and occasionally you get chased by Ramona.
[h2]Visual Design & Sound Design[/h2]
The game is very dark. The developer uses this to create fear. Even if the lights are on, they are not visible from too far away, but they light up when you get close. The walls of the house are decorated with many surrealist paintings to create discomfort, which I think the developer did a good job with. The HUD is very minimalistic and only shows what you need to see. When a cursed object is active, a small icon will appear in the corner, showing you which object it is even if you don’t hear it. It’s obvious that AI has a huge role in some of the visuals of this game, especially the paintings. The developer states this as well in a disclaimer in the main menu, and I’m fine with that.
Jump scares are often followed by a loud noise to enhance the fear. The cursed objects you need to turn off are very loud. When the Ramona’s Rage gauge is full, a scream can be heard, indicating Ramona is on the way. As the fear gauge fills, your heartbeat grows louder and faster the closer you are to death.
[h2]Constructive Criticism[/h2]
First of all, the audio design is very uneven. It’s very hard to hear where the noise of certain things is coming from. Especially the cursed objects. Is it in the next room? Above or below? It’s uncomfortably loud and poorly balanced. The voice acting and the sound of certain entities was kinda silly as well.
There are way too many puzzles at once, especially early in the game. With so many puzzles appearing simultaneously, it’s unclear where to start or if you even have all the pieces, which led to lots of confusion and downtime running around without knowing what to focus on. Even with four of us playing, it was confusing and delayed the first jump scare, it didn’t happen until an hour in.
Many puzzles feel unclear, illogical, and poorly guided, like the four-book bookshelf and the sink valves. Under the shelf are four cabinet doors, each tied to a row of books, yet door #1 can’t be opened after placing book #1. If each door is linked to a specific row, why can none be opened until all books are found? It would also have been a nicer touch if you had to arrange the books on each row in order so it forms a picture, as it feels more complete then.
A sink needing to be drained before you can retrieve a book? Why can you not just pick it up? Draining the sink was tedious since you have to memorize a 10-digit combination and run across the house. It would be better if you could photograph clues to save them, or if the character automatically noted them in a journal.
The scares are mostly cheap jump scares and not really that scary. I mostly got scared because of the loud noise that comes with it. Ramona herself was not scary either and just looked ridiculous when she ran around. The encounters with Ramona were way too easy as well. Her behaviour is predictable and monotonous. You can hear her miles away and she is very slow..
Ramona’s Rage isn’t visible during some puzzles or in certain rooms. For example, when you peek through the wall where you hang the pictures, the gauge disappears, then when you exit, it’s suddenly almost full.
At one point you can access two TVs, one tied to a puzzle and another in the starting room that can become cursed. While we were solving the TV puzzle, the first TV (which we couldn’t reach anymore because the path was blocked) became cursed and was so loud we could hear it through the wall. We assumed it was the second TV that was cursed since that’s where the noise seemed to come from, but there was no way to turn it off. We either had to endure the noise while solving the puzzle or reload a save. This seems like a bug, since the first TV can activate even when you no longer have access to it. It was very annoying, especially since it happened again after reloading.
The lighting feels odd, with lights lighting up as you come closer. I get that it’s meant to make the game darker and scarier, but I just found it weird.
[h2]The Verdict[/h2]
My friends and I set up my PC on my parents’ home theater system in their basement, which has a 100-inch projector screen, surround sound, cinema armchairs, soundproof ceiling, and fold-down wooden panels covering the windows, making the room pitch black, creating the best possible environment for a horror game. Still, it did not scare us that much.
The story was okay, but the characters were not interesting enough. The environmental visuals were fine but the monsters and their animations looked kinda silly, and the audio was mostly annoying. The scares rely heavily on loud noises rather than tension. The gameplay was too limited and easy, and only a couple of the puzzles were fun.
Ultimately, it’s a decent indie effort with some good ideas, but one that didn’t leave much of an impact on me or my friends. Even if some of the jump scares got me good, it’s not a game I will play again.
[h2]Rating: 5/10[/h2]
