Sanity of Morris

[code]Curator page here-->[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/37670120/] DaRevieweD #104 [/url]<-- [i]New review every Weekend[/i][/code] [h1]INTRO[/h1] [b]Alterego Games[/b], creator of such works as the discontinued [b]True Tales of Bloodstreet 13[/b] and [b]Woven[/b] back in 2019 has been sighted once more with [b]Sanity of Morris (SOM)[/b], a mystery-thriller with psychological horror elements! I first knew about it through Keymailer and was granted a key to the demo- which is basically level 1 or a third of the full game. Which I was thoroughly impressed by, because of its novelty and just something irregular in the horror genre besides the usual ghost busters or hide-and-go-seek game. I was further gob smacked by how much I ruminated on the “alien” plot and that it seems to revive a once crazy preoccupation about those extraterrestrial beings being the subject of many a tv show, films and conspiracy theories, to name a few. It wasn’t flawless by any means but there’s something intriguing about it- that made me believe in it~ [h1]"HANK-ering For The Truth."[/h1] [u]The Gist:[/u] Johnathan Morris receives an incoherent rambling from his father, Hank telling, him to go to Greenlake. The former obliges because he sounds even more frantic than usual. Once there- a shadowy pursuer sideswipes his vehicle resulting in a crash. Then the chase ensues on foot as some third party wants him dead and the truth almost as elusive as the strange plants sprouting around there~ [spoiler]! Remember- there's lie in "believe"![/spoiler] [h1][+] PROS;[/h1] [b](a) A Growing Suspicion.[/b] The whole game has you finding and getting to Hank, who’s mysteriously untraceable after his message. To do so, you have to get in the mind of a paranoid individual a.k.a. codes and trails left by him! Really visualize your surroundings and embrace the dangers in order to progress! But even your own senses can’t be trusted… not always, especially when you’ve been spending too much time in the dark. Best part for me was going through the neatly organized journal inspecting collected notes, ravings and reports. Then making my own judgement and also giving eyerolls at every sentence uttered by the deluded Hank, he just makes it too easy!! Furthermore, creatures and agents will patrol the area with their color-changing lights to indicate their shifting wariness so don't get your signals mixed up! With three levels in total and about an hour+ each, SOM can take about 3-4 hours to finish. There’s not so much replayability as it is about double-checking for answers in case you missed out on crucial information! [u]TIPS:[/u] 1) Best to get all collectibles in one go! They reset with each playthrough! 2) No deadly consequences for depleting the sanity meter. Just messes with your vision~ https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2544741861 [b](b) It Isn't What It Looks Like!![/b] The visuals are in one word, majestic! As is a staple to the signifiers of aliens, there are countless lingering bright lights of various colors. Usually, they give me hope, something to head toward to… But here, I was always hesitant as some are emitted by the invaders, and others are just an everyday light- much like yours! Sound design is akin to how I assume obsessed alien fanatics would score it! Most of it are noises to make you lose your cool and others incur that deep, profound vibe of being “lost and floating around the galaxy” or “swimming amongst the stars”. I must also praise the voice cast for boasting enduringly entertaining performances with everyday joe tones to their performances~ [b](c) ...Or Is It? So It Goes-[/b] The plot is a more serious version of [b]Paul (2011)[/b] or any other sci-fi films that pose the big question of “are Aliens real”? But instead of focusing wholly on validating that claim, it takes a more self-aware approach. As a result, it can feel like they’re placed in the backseat but still it managed to rock my world by being so uniquely captivating in that regard! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2544743346 [b](d) Seeds of Uncertainty![/b] SCARY: 1st) The obsession with “Aliens” is an allegory for being so consumed with something that it becomes a hindrance to the things that truly matter in life; family, career and personal growth. 2nd) The title already hints at a vital foreshadowing! Whose deteriorating mind will we be subjected to? Is the “sanity” meant to be ironic!? 3rd) From start to finish, everything will be open to interpretation. Sure, it gets a bit stale once you realize there will be no resolution- but I’m beginning to think that’s overrated. Instead, it presents to you a seemingly banal question but one that probably remains to be definitively proven anyway~ [h1][-] CONS;[/h1] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2544747505 [b](i) If Less Is More... Then MORR-IS; Y'know!?[/b] All the mystery and alienating elements are short-lived by some wildly sporadic mechanics. For instance, with light where in frequent exposure to darkness or dimly lit areas will cause Johnathan to panic, hallucinate and his sight gets cloudy. But then in level 2- this doesn’t happen at all despite fulfilling these conditions. It then resumes in level 3… so I was just lost. Similarly, objects require the torch to be switched on in order to “see” and interact with them. Makes sense, but not so much when it’s in well-lit areas. Sometimes, they’re able to be fondled with in the dark and commented on perfectly! Even sound-wise, the “jumpscare” and creepy, lasting effects are noticeably absent in level 2. Then overdone in levels 1 and 3. [b](ii) Can’t Look Away!![/b] The stealth- which I thought was absolutely responsive in lvl 1 turned out to be deceptive. But that’s because it becomes a long mission revolving around sneaking past enemies in lvl 2 that I noticed how clunky it could get… Reminds me of the [b]Alien Isolation[/b] inconsistent radius of detection! When they should’ve spotted me, they didn’t! In lvl 3, it was almost broken where they can’t even see me right before their eyes; flashing them and teabagging behind the cubicle wall or past the glass walls. [h1]BUGS:[/h1] x Skipped a puzzle entirely in 1st level? x Checkpoints in 2nd level; spawning right next to the "things"... Also, their patrol routes glitched out. x Agents spotted me when they shouldn't and even knocked me right out through walls. x Chase / danger music playing when everything is fine. [h1]NITPICKS:[/h1] ~ Missed opportunity to include the ability to jump! Plenty of highly uneven terrain means it's a fumble for balance... And ridiculously tiny obstacles can't be crossed over. ~ Johnathan dies falling from really short distances. ~ A lot of objects are pretty much recycled. Some are given the honor of being examined for a "jumpscare" but nonetheless serve no purpose. ~ Same goes for enemy variety… ~ Started out as a throbbing mystery but ruined by uncertainty of ending. Nothing new~ ~ Typos; “Octobre” and etc! ~ No level select feature!? [h1]"But You’ll be Left Green With Envy~"[/h1] SOM is conceptually sound & atmospherically inviting. Implanting doubt in players even after the credits. Trouble stems from its implementation, which is as shaky as the protagonists’ conviction~ If you love to figure out the answers for yourself and follow a trail of breadcrumbs to the supposed truth. And question your declining condition, all while being mesmerized by soothingly distressing lights of many shades. Then SOM is for you~ [h1]7.6 / 10[/h1] [code][i]If this was helpful, consider following [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/37670120/] DaRevieweD[/url] for more reviews! Honest- I have proof~[/i][/code]

Dark adventure game with lots of stealth and puzzle elements. It begins really strong, but gameplay gets steadily weaker about half-way. Watching a playthrough video of the mid-game will give you a better understanding. The lovecraftian storyline of "secrets man was not meant to know" and alien-camp is enough for me to give a thumbs-up, but your tastes may differ. In fact, according to the Steam Achievements, only 26% of owners finished the <6 hour game. This game has exploration-heavy gameplay with no combat, no inventory management, and no jumping puzzles. The voiceacting and storyline is very good, and I liked how collected hidden objects created a conspiracy-type timeline, with pictures and notations. I reservedly recommend this game at full price. I searched the tunnels of Greenlake with an Ubuntu Linux desktop computer and an xbox-type gamepad controller. I had trouble getting acceptable framerates, and I turned down graphic settings, such as the lighting effects. The game uses the Unity Game Engine, and it takes up 2,200 MBs of diskspace.

Sanity of Morris is a story-driven stealth/flight like Sir you are being hunted game but with a story. John, your character arrives at his father's house Hank who had been researching alien presence. Forced into early retirement by his company Hank investigated alien presence and kept logs of his work for John to discover. John learns that alien life had been spying on humans through plants since the 1970s. The game can be completed in around 4 hours. The game is all about flight, hiding and simple stealth. You can avoid dying by crouching and avoiding the creatures light source. You can also easily die by not following certain path or jumping from one level to another. The voice acting and story is very well done. Overall for the price the game deserves a 75% grade, If you are lost check out my full walkthrough on my youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/IndieFury or spoilers below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kegevw4MQkM&t=1699s

I usually like indie horror games, but this is a no for me. This game doesn't value your time. No part of it is handled well: -stealth part is annoying af, enemies often see you when they shouldn't, in which case you instantly die; at least there are a lot of checkpoints in the game, but still I died a lot which made it super frustrating -story is just some conspiracy theory sh*t, like aliens landed in small town and the government or some evil corporation keeps it secret and wants to benefit from it, blabla. Really that's the story. -Terrible pacing: the game has so many cutscenes, but usually it's just your character looking at something while nothing is happening and just talking and talking, btw. the voice actors are bad and the writing is cringe, at the same time your character just comments on every little sh*t; the cutscenes are way too long and are unskippable -or how about the fact that after you inspect an item, which you have to do regularily to pick stuff up, your character first talks about it and then it still takes like 5 seconds till the item is picked up; everything in this game feels so slow and boring. Oh and that, every time you inspect a non-story item, there is a (high) chance that you will get a cheap jump scare of it, that is the item transforms into something "creepy" like a heart or so. Those repeat way too often, are not scary at all and just annoying -I got stuck multiple times in the game and had to look up the solution because it's often way too hard to tell what you are supposed to do -even if you "pause" the game, it still continues in the background which means you have no option to really pause it, which sucks -I missed one collectible in the game and because you can't load an older save and because there is no level select I had to replay the whole game with every collectible again to get that stupid last achievement for finding all collectibles in one run -graphics are also kinda bad, but that isn't a big deal for me And btw. I looked up the developer of this: First of all this is team of a bunch of people. I played a lot of games made by a single dev that are way better than this one. And the dev of this game just made two other games, one of them is "Woven", which I never played, but the other one is "The True Tales of Bloodstreet 13" which is a horrible game too

It's a pretty amateurish game. The sound and voice overs were good, especially Hank. There were some serious brightness issues during gameplay as well. You get about 3 hours of gameplay. Maybe try it out on a big discount?

Great atmosphere, and game feel. I got into it quite quickly and am looking forward to the coming hours of game time. It manages to get you interested in whats going on almost immediately! Definitely a Recommend

This game combines action with puzzling, horror and stealth. It has some in game movies and a good story. I played around 1 hour and the game looks very polished. https://youtu.be/nFnWNlRck28

Tutaj ewidentnie przydałaby się recenzja neutralna. Gra to co najwyżej średniak na 5/10. Do "Sanity of Morris" zasiadałem z przekonaniem, że dostanę grę przygodową, w której będziemy wędrować i szukać wskazówek w kolejnych lokalizacjach i tak poniekąd jest, ale jednak dominuje skradanie, szczególnie od drugiego rozdziału, w którym unikamy kosmitów. Ogólnie pierwsze wrażenie było negatywne. Brzydka grafika, tekstury, modele postaci, dziwne sterowanie i coś na wzór QTE z dziwnymi ruchami kamery (przez co na początku dwa razy zginąłem, bo nie byłem na to przygotowany, jak i nic nie było widać). Na szczęście na późniejszych etapach takie rozwiązania pojawia się bardzo rzadko (i próbuje dodać chwile grozy, które wypadają w ten sposób groteskowo). Wcielamy się w Jonathana Morrisa, który przyjeżdża do Greenlake na prośbę ojca. Niedaleko domu jacyś mężczyźni taranują nas i dochodzi do wypadku, z którego wychodzimy bez szwanku i unikając agresorów docieramy do domu, w którym nikogo nie zastajemy. Dowiadujemy się jednak, że ojciec pracował dla lokalnego rządowego instytutu badawczego i odkrył, że pod jeziorem i miasteczkiem od lat są obcy i z tego powodu związane jest jego zniknięcie. Naszym celem jest odnalezienie rodzica. Jednak nasz bohater bardzo łatwo się stresuje i cierpi na urojenia, które w dalszych etapach wzmagają się podczas przebywania w ciemności. Dlatego wyposażeni jesteśmy w latarkę, której światło nas uspokaja, ale może zwrócić uwagę wrogów. Jest też niezbędnym narzędziem do przeszukiwania pomieszczeń, tym bardziej, że twórcy z niewiadomego powodu sprawili, że wszelkie interakcje z przedmiotami mogą zajść tylko wtedy, gdy najedziemy na nie światłem z latarki… Widzę akta czy inny przedmiot, ale nie mogę go podnieść lub użyć bez skierowania na niego światła z latarki. Bez sensu. Kolejnym mankamentem są słabo zaprojektowane lokacje. Poza pierwszym rozdziałem i domem ojca reszta zrobiona jest beznadziejnie. Lokacja z obcymi jest monotonna zaś instytut badawczy wygląda jak jakiś magazyn – długie tunele, ogromne puste pomieszczenia… Osoba odpowiedzialna za poziomy powinna zmienić pracę. Żeby nie było, że tylko narzekam: Gra ma fajną, ciekawą historię, którą lubiłem czytać, bo w młodości dużo czytałem o teoriach spiskowych związanych z UFO. Skradanie choć mechanicznie i gameplayowo ubogie - nie jest takie złe, potrafi usatysfakcjonować, gdy przemkniemy tuż za plecami kosmity i ogólnie nawet trzyma w napięciu. Dźwięk podkreśla klimat tejże w sumie mrocznej historyjki. Do kciuka w górę przeważyła cena. Grę zakupiłem za ok. 5 zł więc w takiej kwocie może być, ale nie ma co spodziewać się cudów.

The game starts as a psychological horror with very simple item collection puzzles. Then it becomes focused around creating new paths by manipulating the environment, but still very simple. Finally it becomes a very weak stealth game. QTEs are thrown in occasionally, but they're so simple as to be almost unnecessary. The individual mechanics never really come together except in the most basic ways. The only connection is how little each of the mechanics are explored. There are multiple endings but it's just a choice from a menu to pick one at the end, it doesn't matter how you played. It's as if the developers got bored of making the game halfway through. Maybe they had to make sure a checklist of features had every box ticked off to make the publisher happy. The environments aren't particularly inspired, but they're fine for what it is. Human models and animations are particularly bad, but there's not too many of them. The protagonist's voiced internal monologues get annoying very quickly. It's not a matter of being realistic, of course somebody might tell themselves to "keep it together" and "they have to find a way out" when they're scared and lost. In a game it just breaks immersion. Either the experience is scary to the player or it isn't. I don't need the protagonist telling me how scared he is. If his ramblings were completely removed, it would actually make for the better experience. If the stealth sections in the last area of the game was replaced with environmental puzzles, the game wouldn't be perfect, but at least it would be something I could recommend.

Complicado de engolir o que o game deixa explicito desde o inicio. Sanity of Morris coloca você na pele de Johnathan Morris. Ele não vê o pai há alguns anos, mas graças a uma mensagem de voz muito peculiar dele, ele faz uma viagem até sua casa para se certificar de que está tudo bem. alimentado por documentos e gravações coletados pela casa e pelo estranho diálogo decente falado pelo próprio Johnathan, há o suficiente aqui para mantê-lo pensando. É uma pena que a apresentação menos que estelar do jogo lute contra isso. Graficamente, este não é um jogo bonito. Você passará praticamente todo o tempo de execução percorrendo salas escuras, com apenas o cone de luz de uma tocha para guiá-lo Ainda assim, há uma reviravolta intrigante que vem à tona perto do final de Sanity of Morris , que vai fazer você questionar tudo o que aconteceu de uma forma um tanto satisfatória. É real? Tudo isso foi uma invenção da imaginação de Johnathan? Você tem a oportunidade de tirar sua própria conclusão - não que isso tenha qualquer impacto no resultado da história. sua apresentação gráfica não é das melhores e isso acabou dando uma caída no game, mais pq gráfico?? por que os escuros apresentados no game são frustrantes e partes dos escuros é pelo gráfico; escondendo falhas. na lista de games de 2021 fico para baixo como uma das decepcões e jogando verão que faz total sentido isso. história se desenrola, mais desenrola para um lado errado e o que se salva do jogo é a parte sonora que funciona tudo bem. winter sale 2021 ele esta custando R$2,89 preço justo e de boas pra ter uma jogatina legal. eu paguei R$8,00 na nuuvem na sale de férias de julho... e achei dinheiro mal investido. deixo a indicação positiva no valor 2.89..vale por esse preço