Side Alley

从未想到一款视觉小说能带来如此深入骨髓的恐怖体验。 主角Dave在被调至失踪同事的阴暗办公室后，便频繁遭遇各种超自然事件袭击，并逐步被三位灵体追杀，历经七种死亡。尽管jump scare数量与前作相比大幅增加（且多数由老板提供，令打工人会心一笑），本作吓唬人并不靠突脸，而在于如何把一个阳光开朗、坚定自信的科学教信徒，缓缓拖入了那个扑朔迷离、恐怖怪诞、不可理解的神鬼世界。在后期主角进入后室迷宫时，只能在高压下不停的试错与迷路，加上惊悚刺耳的bgm，氛围达到了一个毛骨悚然的高峰，简直是诡异到要起鸡皮疙瘩了。 本作对于规则怪谈的熟练运用逐步蜕变为某种机制性的关卡设计，非常惊人。在上文提到的后室里，主角要遵守禁止左转和后退的规则，否则就要直面Jasper的生吃威胁。再比如地下室十秒断电机制，你必须在点亮灯光的十秒内找到下一个开关，探索区域并抵达出口，否则就会被女鬼突脸死亡，限时找路极大增强了压迫感。而所有这些玩法机制都仅仅通过简单的指向点击实现，要我说众多3D独恐都达不到这个效果。 本作新增用指向点击完成转向和前进的“步模”玩法，前期我是有点反感这种繁琐操作的，后来才想明白是故意为之，与反复擦拭咖啡壶同理，反映打工人的步履维艰、重复劳作偏离自我价值实现的无意义感、荒诞感。主角因效率低下不合规矩遭老板冷落、同事排挤、房东嫌弃，依旧是讽刺现代社会优绩主义对于人的异化、物化。剧本多次涵盖“越努力越是和目标失之交臂”的情节，公然挑衅天道酬勤的传统美德，这很像85年的电影《下班后》，甚至直对原办公室的油画就叫做同名的After Hours。（这里推荐同题材游戏Man I Just Wanna Go Home）简简单单一栋办公楼，竟然容纳了神秘同事永远隔着门说话的厕所隔间、永远上锁禁止通行的紧急通道、空闲招租却频惹电梯停靠的诡异二楼、拥有断电机制的漆黑地下室等超自然空间，其不可名状的超现实感仿佛继承大卫林奇的衣钵。三位灵体除了提供追杀刺激，又具备了执着、玩世不恭等象征意义，还可看作主角对于自身精神世界的解析。 缺点：内容和标题联系不太紧密，结局依旧缺乏力度。不过关于擦拭咖啡壶的收尾呼应我是很赞叹的——Dave最终拒绝了老板的无理要求，这意味着他在经历这些灵异事件与自我审视后，不再盲目地向外讨好，而成长为一个懂得拒绝、拥护自由意志、升起主体性的完整的人。另外，我刚在前作说电视机转场像今敏的《红辣椒》，这作果然又用到经典的电梯转场，甚至起到至关重要的作用。本作虽不及Psycholog的即时反馈惊艳，但拿下接近满分也是毫无压力了。 最后提出本作唯一卡关和bug同时出现的点位。在得到去二楼后室的钥匙后，可以选择再找Gloria谈话，由此触发回档到首次谈话的恶性bug，所以千万别再找她。同时的卡关是绝不可能通过自行尝试走出迷宫，需要先去美术馆找Emerson拿到一枚卷筒芯，然后再对着一楼的地图使用，你将得到一份秘籍。

It seems Nimavoha was aiming for a very odd and uncanny game, and uncanny game it certainly was. Maybe it didn't make the best first impression, but overall I enjoyed the characters and I think it had some unusual narrative ideas, I dare say somewhat original gameplay experience. I think the office parts gave me the wrong vibes initially, when I was in a military we used to do some cheap online courses that had a similar art and dialogue progression, which I found a little cheesy. That said, the game is definitely more clever than I initially anticipated, maybe the duality of mundane office work and arthouse horror was not always as smooth in transition, and how much I enjoyed the backgrounds and the character art was not always consistent. In the end, I do think the story and the immersion gradually recovered for me, with a nice storytelling combination of psychological horror, existentialism, arthouse, casual office humor, and supernatural events. I thought the half of the game that didn't take place in the office was handled mostly perfeclty, the jumpscares and the tension building were generally very good, I also like how the game was bouncing seamlessly between horror and comedy. The character was often on the edge but he kinda went along with it which I thought was hilarious, often treating the figures like annoying furniture. To be fair, I understand that the office levels were there to set up psychological events and the tension, as well as having that location duality, I just didn't feel like they had as much going for them visually, and that goofy dialogue music, while likely intentional, was not very consistent with the overall vibes that I wanted to get, honestly I would have preferred silence or just ambient music. It felt like you had various techniques for the backgrounds and the characters, and I enjoyed those outside the office more often. The game is technically a "graphic adventure", which is sometimes mistaken for its point&click adventure cousin. You navigate the game by bouncing between the images by clicking on the edges of the screen, so it has some limited exploration and several optional achievements. There are a few other gameplay elements but generally I would still say it mostly plays like a graphic adventure, almost controls like a dungeon crawler now that I think about it, just because you have to make 90 degree turns. It takes about 3 hours to complete the game, took me a little longer due to a few specific glitches. There were some narrative choices, but I also felt like most of them were cosmetic, giving you illusion of choice but seemingly not changing the direction or the outcome, while wording it like maybe it could make a difference. Despite all of the context that the game provided, I am honestly not convinced if the characters [spoiler] were real [/spoiler] one way or another, but maybe it's a good thing, if you wanted to interpret that literally or from a perspective of the character, I think both versions can work. The last cutscene with the shadows is what made me question it, and yet, there was already a lot of context to take it literally, so... hard to say. Overall the game is kinda playful, it's a horror game but it does not take itself very seriously, and there were many weird and creative design choices. [h1] Pros: [/h1] (+) Well, I do think the story was good overall, maybe some parts of it didn't click with me initially, mostly because the game has a very unusual feel at first, almost casual and generic in the first 20 minutes or so, but it gets a lot more complex as you make progress, and I think most of the characters were enjoyable as well. You can get a lot of different vibes from the narrative like comedy, horror, existentialism and even some video game deconstruction, almost a meta experience. (+) Had some creative gameplay elements, various puzzles and events that are not traditionally within a graphic adventure genre, it will play around with your perspective and such (+) Good achievement support, there were some funny optional things. There were also many narrative choices, but I didn't notice and huge impact overall aside from those achievements (+) Not sure why, but I liked the art and the animations outside of the office, more than the office levels. Not sure what the difference was, were they manually drawn or something, it felt less artificial [h1] Feedback: [/h1] - the second labyrinth was a bit confusing for me, [spoiler] I figured you had to indirectly follow the directions, but that is kinda true and not true at the same time, as a player you assume you have to walk right next to the writing, which was not always the case it seems. [/spoiler] You also force the player to take the elevator every time they die, which was not enjoyable after the first 2 times - I think I just didn't care for the music choices in the office, and the art in the office usually was not as good compared to whatever you did after work, so I think that kinda gave me a wrong impression. The game recovered eventually and I accepted it as part of the narrative, I just feel you could have given a little more love to the aesthetic elements as I felt the other half of the game was always better in terms of overall vibes - I will say that you mostly never gave the player too much information, which is a good thing generally speaking, except... the parts with Gloria(?) which just felt like an exposition dump, soured the mystery for me a little if I am being honest. There were some interesting dialogue parts with figures, although I still feel like they didn't harass you enough, I wish Jasper(?) and the dancing girl had more screen time because interactions with them were the best part of the game - Also, it feels like the game often teases you with dialogue choices, but they felt mostly cosmetic with optional achievements. You probably could have hidden more optional interactions in the office just to be playful [b] Overall Thoughts: 7.5/10 [/b] It may feel a bit strange initially but I do think it's a cool narrative with many creative ideas, the game is bordering on being great, even though some parts of the narrative and the vibes probably could be handled a little better. Aside from some consistency issues with the quality of the art and the soundtrack, I enjoyed the game, I think the characters were interesting, and I liked how the game was both scary and funny at the same time. Could be better with a little more attention to detail, but still somewhat original if nothing else. [code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]