"OH BOY! A new free spooky game! I bet this'll get my heart pumpin', and not kill ANY braincells at all!"
The goal is to investigate the Red Haven "Complex"...as for what this complex is supposed to be, I don't know...There are a few vague notes lying about, but they don't provide any real story, or even clues as to who you, the player are, or why you're here.
The game opens up with you in a courtyard, and two things are immediately off...The environment around you seems WAY too big, and your feet stomp like a metal boots on a metal floor...but only in that first courtyard... After walking through the enormous grass, you come to a building...and then ignore it completely and crawl through a pipe to a DIFFERENT building, THIS is Red Haven....so yeah, the first impression here was not great.
Now it's explorin' time! ...but it's super linear, so not really.
It's not long before you encounter the first Ghoul, so let's talk about them.
There are two colors of Ghouls, the white one may hit a bit harder, I'm not sure, but otherwise there's no difference.
They're very dumb, and fairly easy to outrun, but do a lot of damage if they hit you...when you're near them you can hear loud breathing, but it's not proximity zoned, so who knows where they actually are...they're just somewhere near. There are certain zones they can't follow you in, and various places you can hide from them...They usually leave after a moment...usually...but a few times they'd stand right outside my hiding spot and never go away...so I'd have to bolt past them, taking more damage...also if they're too close behind when you enter a locker or gap, they can usually get a hit in as you're trying to get inside....as you do so VERY SLOWLY...
...But now here's the thing about hiding, as you do so, you regain HP, and there are plenty of spots to hide...it usually takes at least three hits to kill you, so it's actually fairly hard to die, as you can just duck in and heal up whenever you get low...so because of how easy the bads are to deal with, they're usually more annoyances than threats.
As you go through the building, several problems pop up...for one, when you unlock doors, you have to hit open twice...once to unlock it,and wait for the click...and than again to actually get through...this is unfortunate, as most locked doors are near enemies that you need to get away from.
Another issue is that Crouch and Crawl are 2 DIFFERENT THINGS. Ctrl crouches, and while crouching you press c to get even lower, as most crawlspaces are too small for the regular crouch. To get out of the crawl, you have to press jump twice...it's SO WEIRD, and it takes a moment to do...which once again, is bad if enemies are near.
Elsewhere, there's a sheet of paper with three codes, and a padlock in another room, only one code is correct...That's not too bad...
...BUT THEN, COMES THE DRAWERS.....GHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
I almost gave up at this point.
You find a room full of dressers with a White Ghoul on patrol, in the only unlocked drawer, there's a key...what does it open? Another drawer! What's in that drawer? Another key! What does it open? ANOTHER drawer! What's in That drawer? ANOTHER KEY!!! what does IT open? ANOTHER FRIGGIN' DRAWER!...but wait! this key is for the cabinets out in the hall! What's in the cabinet? A KEY. WHAT DOES IT OPEN? ANOTHER GODSDAMNED DRAWER.
...if this sounds obnoxious, I remind you, an enemy is on a very short patrol path, and you only have time to try a few of the MANY drawers before you have run out in the hall and hide...there's a barely noticeable sound when you actually find the right drawer, and much like doors, you have to "Open" them twice.
If you can get thru that with sanity intact, you find a voodoo doll in the FINAL drawer, it unlocks the door outside the drawer room. Why? Dunno. Inside, you once again become a short-king, as the furniture is HUGE, you have to get on a bed and take a skull...which you then take back into the hall and use on a...facial recognition scanner...
... Wat?
...Past that is the final area! You go out to a small labyrinth, after doing some JANKY platforming, you find a shovel and use it to move a rock and drop in a hole, there's a note with a sequence on it, and that's for the final "puzzle"...one of those endless maze things with only one right path, there are a number of bones on the ground that correspond to that last note, just duck down the halls in that order and you'll make it out...but a sloppy thing here is there are bones on both ends of the hall...so for example, you ducked down the 4 bone hall, but there's 2 bones at the end...does that mean you messed up? no, only the bones at the beginning of the hall matter...so why are there more at the end? SHRUG EMOJI.
I got through this part on the first try, but I was wondering if i was doing it right the whole time.
CONGRATS! You made it! And what is your reward? Answers about the complex? Escape into the cool and peaceful night? A GRUESOME DEATH? ...nope. It's just another courtyard with a horse statue like at the beginning of the game, with a big "THE END" plastered on the sky...the game doesn't even end, you're just in that courtyard now until you hit esc and quit the game.
...so before I wrap this up, I'll try to say a few nice things, and then mention two SIGNIFICANT glitches I encountered...
Nice things:
1 The regen was helpful...but a little too helpful...since there were health packs already.
2 The flashlight is actually really good! It has a bright beam, batteries last a long time, and there's a good amount of batteries to find...the light even dims as they get low, which is a nice touch.
3 You have a good amount of stamina for running, and it replenishes pretty quickly.
4 The moon at the end was really pretty. A dumb, but honest opinion.
...Now the glitches:
1 When you enter a new area, you autosave, but you can also save manually, as some areas are pretty long...I made the mistake of saving while hiding in a gap...when I died and reloaded, I was stuck completely...you have to press E to get out of a gap, but the prompt to do so didn't appear...and it apparently overwrote my autosave, so I had to start the ENTIRE GAME OVER AGAIN.
2: Enemies could get stuck on drawers, which warped/stretched their models, but didn't immobilize them...at one point White Ghoul got his body stuck, but his arms became seemingly infinite, and killed me in another room. It happened again in reverse on my 2nd playthrough, where a Red Ghoul got an arm and a leg stuck and stretched, but went about his business normally...
...So If you actually read all that ^... bro, why? But you can probably see the problems here.
The game is very plain...like you could've found on Desura in 2010... that would be fine, but it's bogged down with nonsensical decisions, TERRIBLE "puzzles", obnoxiously lame enemies, and some major bugs.
Listen...I'm not tryin' to be mean, but this sucked. Even if the bugs got ironed out, and the enemies were improved, those DRAWERS alone would be a hard thumbs down...this would need a major overhaul to be decent...
...As is, steer clear, unless you somehow love locked drawers and fumbling keys.
