STRANGERS

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure how to start this review frankly. 'DIVINITY' is a first person surreal 'experience' about a mysterious visitor arriving at a random household of which they start 'infatuating' the members, on the path to help them become divine. Based on the 1958 Italian film[i] 'Theorem' (Teorema)[/i] by director [i]Pier Paolo Pasolini[/i], the game is fairly short, structured around 'infatuating' people while standing close to them and completing brief sequences with the aim to fulfill each family member's 'desires'. I found this game by accident while searching for Divinity II: Original Sin and unsurprisingly, I am not familiar with [i]'Theorem'[/i] at all. There appears to be very little information about both the game and the developer which made me curious as to what this game actually is so I thought i'd give it a try. Since finishing it, I'm still unsure as to what it was about! On a technical level, it's a mess. There are a slew of issues including bugs in and during sequences which can cause hard-locks, saving not working, visual issues such as the indicator of your 'infatuation' being difficult to decipher whether you are actually progressing , the pacing of the game being particularly glacial to get through as 'infatuation' is very slow and repeating certain sequences which have no variation can easily become repetitive. Overall, I felt anxious as to whether the game was going to break or not just doing the sequences, which is the main method to progress. However, with that being said, I did find this game to be interesting enough to finish it. It feels as if there was some genuine effort put in by developer as, according to their Itch.io page, this appears to be their first attempt at making 3D game which is impressive. At the very least I could say, there seems there was a vision as from what I have found about 'Theorem', the game is heavily based on it to the point that the characters in this game use portraits of the actors from the film. The use of 2D sprites for objects/people has a definite style, which aids in creating a strange, surreal and slightly unnerving experience. This created limitations in how you interact with the characters during sequences which sometimes have puzzle elements which is different. There is no dialogue at all, so random events and music is used to highlight the story events. All of these elements listed above I could very easily see being adapted into another title by the developer. I truly hope the developer is still developing games as, looking at their backlog, they definitely have a 'distinct' style to say the least and i'd be curious to see what they would make next. In conclusion, I cannot in good faith recommend this game in a traditional sense as I found various issues in terms of stability and bugs that did prevent progress and honestly made me consider even actually finishing it in the long run. However, as the reader of this review, you probably have found this game by accident as I did. Since you are bothering to look at the reviews to try and understand what this is about, I would recommend giving it a try if you are as curious as myself. I understand that this is not exactly for everyone, but I personally believe that one of the best things about Steam is occasionally stumbling across something completely different to what you are used to and giving it a try. Overall, I found it engaging enough to finish it before I made my review and perhaps, I might try and give [i]'Theorem'[/i] a watch sometime. [b]Notes to the Developer:[/b] I thought i'd list a few issues I had during my play-though here as i'd like to be constructive. I'm unsure if this game is still being developed or having updates to patch issues. • In the Pause menu, I had some instances where there doesn't appear to be any mouse locking. To re-centre the mouse, I had to centre it to another window and switch back. I found it easy to click outside of the game which would minimise it to the task bar mid-game. This became an issue during certain sequences, such as the Son and Daughter, as different camera angles are used which changes the players perspective. This could just be a issue on my end as I use two monitors. • The audio mixing for reaching people 'desires' is exceptionally loud compared to the background music, especially after reaching multiple which are in close proximity to the player as the music layers. • The 'infatuation' meter is very slow. I understand this could be a design choice as this is a slow-paced experience but after doing multiple sequences for each family member, this can become tedious despite speeding up time using E.  • The tutorial lacks information about how many 'sequences' there are for each family member. From my play-through, [b]there are four each[/b]. (A helpful addition would be recording the sequence number in the pause screen to help the player keep track of which sequences they have done). • The indicator could do with some more clarification in-game. If a portrait randomly turns purple, 'infatuation' increases quicker if you are around the corresponding person. I had duplicate portraits appear which seemed to correspond to how many events that had been done but then they disappeared, presumably just a visual bug. This is quite significant as this is the only way you can track progress through each persons' events. • I believe that the Pause menu save button does not work. Saving using this method, quitting the game and restarting it just reset my progress to the start of the game which I have done twice. However, [b][i]pressing Q does seem to save properly which is important.[/i][/b] • I had some visual bugs during sequences (2nd Mother and Daughter) where the sprites disappeared. These did cost the play-through a couple of times as I would restart and lose progress as I was relying on the Pause save, not Q. • The Son's 3rd and 4th sequences moved the camera to an awkward angle depending on the angle you started the sequence at. I realise that this could be intentional to highlight to the player of a specific order that the sequence itself requires. However, this was not particularly apparent at the time. •  I cannot seem to get the 'Mum' achievement. [spoiler]This could be due to the Mother appearing back at the house after the 4th sequence as I reloaded the game due to an issue with the Son's sequence prior.[/spoiler] According to Steam, this achievement does appear to be obtainable so I presume that this was just another bug after all. (Edit- 22/05/2026. The game has now been renamed/relisted as "Strangers". DIVINITY was the previous name, apologies for any confusion that this badly-worded review has caused.)