First things first, before my actual review for the game - I saw a negative review above that I cannot help but need to respond to, but comments have been disabled on the review. I don't dispute the entire review, but there is some false information that should be addressed both for transparency and clear messaging to future players, and for the reputation of the developer, so I will be responding directly to those. If you are not interested in this, then skip below to the the actual review.
The reviewer before claims the game is not optimised because it runs their GPU high (90%+) when playing. This is perfectly normal for any modern game, indie game or not, if it is well optimised. I see in their edit they posted that Phasmophobia and other indie games do not run their GPU that high... to which i respond that for me, on both my £3000 gaming PC with an overclocked RTX 2080ti and overclocked i7 9800x to 4.6ghz all core 8 cores, 16 threads and 64gb (8 x 16GB) DDR4 3200mhz ram and also my gaming laptop with a GTX 1070 and i7 8750H, 6 core, 12 thread CPU (both not OC)... both Phasmophobia and this game run at above 90% GPU (as do almost all the games I have played on both systems). Again, this is normal and expected. A quick google search will answer this, a quote from toms hardware was my first result posted here:
How much GPU usage should a game use?
You want to use 100% of your GPU while gaming. If you aren't at 100% at some point while playing the game then you are either playing a much older game, using too low of graphics settings, or your CPU isn't strong enough (you're totally fine). It is completely normal for the GPU usage to bounce around during a game.
That quote pretty much sums up my answer and my experience to this negative point made. Only games I have ever experienced that do not run my GPU at above 90% are games that are actually old i.e built for much older hardware limitations where they possibly only use 1 or 2 cores of the CPU, thus creating a bottleneck for the GPU regardless of your PC specs because the GPU is waiting for the CPU to actually process the frames. Or alternatively.... the games are poorly optimised by only using limited hardware available, again, like limiting CPU use to 1 or 2 cores (looking at your elder scrolls online). In those scenarios... GPU usage will drop below the 90% to 100% usage.
Other scenarios that can cause this to happen is frame rate limiting such as a fps cap in game or in your GPU control panel or vsync/gsync/freesync. The reason for this is that by limiting the frame rate, the GPU will not work or pre-render more frames than is needed to hit that frame rate. In this game... there frame rate is unlimited, meaning the GPU will simply just keep pre-rendering future frames as fast as possible and as fast as they can be processed. Therefore, GPU usage will remain constantly high. Even playing on the lowest settings as described in their edit will not change this, in fact, it will just allow more of the GPU's resources to be dedicated to processing more frames. That is quite simply why in demanding games, if your fps is low, you are recommend to lower the settings so that your GPU can focus more resources to rendering frames.
And one more example is simply a poorly optimised or unbalanced PC spec. Yes, you could be the problem. Just because you have a good GPU and CPU does not mean your PC is well optimised or running correctly. Bottlenecks can occur for the smallest of reason sometimes as simple as a power management setting, a bios feature you didn't turn on, memory issues, component not connected properly or in the wrong slot i.e GPU ins the incorrect PCIe slot or memory not paired in the correct DIMM slots on the motherboard. Lack of available power output from your PSU. And as i mentioned above too, optimisation - not having your PC settings, power management, control panel settings, drivers or many other things correctly installed or setup can cause bottlenecks also. There are many reasons that can cause your PC to run a game at less than 90% GPU usage, THEY are the things that are NOT normal. For a modern 3D game running uncapped frame rates (especially one that even has ray tracing etc), above 90% usage is perfectly normal and actually is desirable for the best in game performance. I ran the game on both my PC and laptop as mentioned above and even on the max settings (both epic and cinematic) even my poor laptop got an average of well above 60 fps until the last level (understandably but no spoiler) and was lovely and smooth to play. And the reason the GPU does not dip on this game is because the map border is so large, that the GPU is rendering the textures and animations and lighting etc for everything in the entire map (as you see, there are no walls at the edge of the maps, they appear endless) even when the game is "idling" as you say. And even in the loading screens (which are impressively short), the GPU is rendering the next level and all the textures.
TLDR - for a curator, reviewer, streamer and game developer.... this whole point you made in your review is unfortunately misinformed and nonsense and you really should have done more research before posting this. Also, your "joke" about being a cryptomining app is quite frankly insulting to any developer who has spent their time and effort into creating something they are proud of. Reddit posts for games are full of people complaining about a game not utilising all of their GPU, why? Because it creates poorer performance ingame i.e frame rates, lag, stutter etc... for people who don't understand this, above 90% GPU usage is a good thing! Not a bad thing! Unless the game is limited frames and not very intensive, or the game is old or very poorly optimised... you should expect these gpu usages and be happy for them as it increases your frame rates/ ingame PC performance.
Its quite disappointing to see a curator/ streamer and proclaimed qualified games developer review with this sort of misinformation to be honest. But what is more disappointing is the (in their words) joke about being a secretly cyrptomining. This is very poor taste and can ruin somebodies reputation in todays' online climate. Joke or not, it is simply insulting to the developer as you may as well be asking them if they are a scammer. Furthermore to that point, if the game was a secret cryptominer.... they would have released it as free so more people would download it. Just because you have a 3070 doesn't mean everybody wants to steal your GPU performance.
That said, on to my review:
I have played this game through its Beta and now on its full release and i am very impressed with how far the game has come along, especially since the last beta version i played over a year ago now. The game (despite above reviewer) is very well optimised. Being able to max out the settings in a fully open map on a GTX 1070 laptop and still average above 60 fps is very good going.
The gameplay, I like to try and speed run. I would love to see a timed mode added where you are given a time for each level you complete (possibly with the money requirement removed and a 5 second penalty for each death in a level) and those times are posted to a leader board. Trying to speed run this game can be infuriating (in a good way) much like most well made platformer games. Yes, some of the hit boxes are frustrating (still damn those lasers) but that only adds to the challenge of the game and is a nice quirk. Continued in comments...
