Tache Noire

The indie scene needs more games like Tache Noire. It's clear this game was crafted by a dev that really wanted to make something unique and full of charm & passion. I know "charm" is a weird adjective for a horror survival, but it's accurate. I really have enjoyed seeing the RE inspiration mashed into an open sand box town to explore. I didn't expect the story to grip me as well as it has. It's weird, spooky, and I'm eager to play more. The game isn't without it's rough edges. The controls are sometimes clunky, enemies can be clipped through walls easily enough, and the the gunplay can be a bit loose feeling, but none of has taken away from my enjoyment so far. Again, it's the "charm" this game has. If you want a horror that feels like you are playing a fresh twist on a PS1 classic, Tache Noire is a great game, and one I highly recommend!

To be frank, this is veering on "not recommended," at least in its current state. I can see myself recommending it without reservation, even in its janky state, with a few bug fixes and maybe some adjustments to the enemy AI, which is just too easy to bamboozle right now. As a handy guide, if there's a minus side I consider it a negative, and if there's a plus sign it's a positive. More minus/plus signs mean that I'm expounding on or adding to the original point. -There's a dearth of enemy types (I can think of maybe five - your basic zombies, who offer the most complexity when encountered in groups, which isn't often enough, and a few others I won't spoil. All I'll say is that *most of the time* they appear in singular instances, which makes them relatively easy to deal with). This leads to a lot of "sameyness" in encounters, which often become rote. ++I'll give the game its flowers in that, some of the time, the player is given the opportunity to create stage hazards that can kill enemies instantly -- and the player, if they're not careful. However, it's usually easier to just shoot your way out of every situation, since ammo is plentiful and enemies aren't very smart of durable. ++The "one-two-punch" mechanic of staggering enemies and then lining up a more damaging shot is quite fun and satisfying when you get the hang of it. ++A certain late-game section upends the familiar formula you'll likely fall into, taking away your items and forcing you to engage with mechanics you might have otherwise ignored. This ended up being my favorite part of the game. +The reloading mechanic for certain guns is very fun, albeit occasionally buggy or unresponsive. It seems precision-designed to heighten stress during combat, and I like that in a horror game. That said, you'll eventually start to favor guns that are easier to handle and reload out of sheer convenience. I would have liked having to spend more time with the jankier guns. +There are also weapon attachments, some of which are fun and legitimate game-changers, such as a magazine for a pump-action shotgun (reloading is much faster), while others are a bit less important, such as an extended magazine for a submachine gun (the submachine gun is absurdly powerful and it takes barely a handful of bullets to kill most enemies). -In addition, the game has an RE4-esque weapon upgrade system that's both easy to miss and, unfortunately, somewhat vestigial. You can tune up values like reload time, fire rate, recoil, etc., but the only ones I found worth bothering with were damage and clip size. You'll be able to deal with enemies just fine without even touching the upgrade system. (Note that this system is probably way more useful on the recently released hard mode.) -To call the game janky is to somewhat undersell how buggy it is. The entire map is simulated all at once, so bodies and objects are persistent, and I presume everything is being processed simultaneously. This probably leads to issues. --Enemies sometimes randomly appear out of nowhere, or fall through the floor/clip through walls. This can sometimes affect the player. --There are two elevator puzzles where you have to find new buttons. After installing said buttons --in both puzzles-- they disappeared when I reloaded the game. Thankfully I had backup saves, or had reached the point where I didn't have to worry about the puzzle anymore, but I can see some players getting softlocked. --There are sliding doors in certain spoilery locations that don't fully open all the way, requiring the player to press a corresponding button roughly a billion times to get them to fully open. I believe the latest patch claims to fix this, but I was still having the issue this morning. --Sequence breaking is very, very easy to do, either by sliding down (or climbing up) hills, and by using physics props to climb up to places where the game clearly doesn't expect you to be. I managed to access a mining facility well before I was supposed to in this manner, and made it quite far before running into a firm roadblock. I also circumvented a fairly critical puzzle and still managed to beat the game. The developer should consider using more invisible walls and instant death falls, much as it pains me to say it. ++Sometimes the game is fine with you sequence breaking, cause it's got immersive sim DNA (the first code you're likely to find is 0451, btw). Experimenting led to me find a powerful weapon pretty early, which was great, but sometimes the sequence breaking is clearly not supposed to happen. -The story is a little simplistic. More critically, the in-game narrative text is *riddled* with typos, poor grammar, and spelling errors. These issues never obscure the intended meaning of any text, however, so your mileage may vary as to whether this is a big deal. ++The prose is generally serviceable and even genuinely emotional at times. There are no big ideas here that you haven't seen before, but I ended up liking the sci fi horror trajectory the story took. The big twist is fairly easy to guess early on, however. -The gameplay loop eventually devolves into a collectathon that involves a lot of backtracking, with a sprint meter that drains *very* quickly, and a game world that's all-too reminiscent of a Garry's Mod darkrp map (this can be a good thing, if you're into that. I began to find it a little drab, but I can see liminal horror fans liking the vibe). ++However, I like that there's minimal hand-holding, and the game requires you to take honest-to-god notes a lot of the time (there's no mechanic for this, other than a robust, if messy "rumors" tab that logs any lore and hints you pick up - a lot of the time it's simply ideal to have your phone or a notepad handy to scrawl a code or puzzle solution. I enjoy that.) ++There's a lot of puzzles, none of which are impossible to solve if you're perceptive or clever enough. --... but many of them fall into gonzo Resident Evil/Silent Hill-ish logic, such as collecting emblems to get into locations that should be easy to access. Again, this may not bother you, and I suppose it generally supports the weirdness of the setting. I finished this earlier today and started playing the recently-released hard mode afterward, and I have to say - I think hard mode is much more satisfying to play. You're frequently at a disadvantage against enemies, being short on ammo (and enemies being much tougher in general - so tough that i think a stealth mechanic may be warranted), and you are forced to engage in more hit-and-run tactics, as well as traps. The "normal mode" should probably be tuned a bit more in this direction. Overall, I'm pretty torn on this. It's a very ambitious game for what I think is a first effort on the part of the developer, and it's clear they poured a lot of themselves into it. I just dealt with a lot of frustration while playing, which leaves a slightly bitter taste, despite the bones of a decent Silent Hill/Deus Ex lovechild being in there. However, I appreciate that the developer is clearly invested in improving the game post-launch. They're highly responsive on Reddit, and have been nothing but helpful when I've reached out to them. Bravo to that. Solid 6/10. For now.

The game has a great atmosphere and a curious combat system, that requires you to stagger enemies to deal more damage. The rumour tab automatically recording things is also a nice touch! I think reloading the revolver is a stressful mechanic fitting for a survival horror game! The map is a little big for a survival horror game but It feels mysterious looking over the river and seeing the otherside of town. The environmental interactions with throwing stuff at enemies and ceiling fans are great fun. I will have to see how the other half plays out. As I am currently just in Dawn Apartments. The apartments are great little ''dungeon area''. I have come across some NPC's some of which have some very interesting things to say. Enemies come at you in waves, however sometimes I had to run away because I had no ammo which was interesting to say the least. Ammo is sometimes scarce and sometimes plentiful! However, the thing that piqued my interest the most was seeing the town at the start and then slowly walking down to the city as the sun sets. Also, the player character has an actual body instead of being a pair of floating hands which is something I like a lot in first person games!

This game runs like dookie. It looks kinda ugly. It's quite a bit buggy. This is a real gem of a game, with a very well written story, a ton of content and a very interesting approach to it's gameplay. It's a perfect blend of Survival Horror and Immersive Simulator, with extremely open ended puzzle solving and exploration. The game delivers it's atmosphere very well and despite the developer being from Turkey and not a native english speaker, nothing felt out of place or poorly written. Then, when you beat the game, you actually get a NG+ Hard Mode which changes the story, gameplay, enemies and puzzles for an even more put together experience than the first, with two new endings as well. Frankly, this is an incredible game that I think no survival horror fans should miss out on.

I'm not at the end yet but I can already say this is one of the best games of 2026 so far. The weird staggering combat is extremely fun and it feels natural to mess up. It is extremely tense at all times and the enemies are unique and unsettling. The overall game design is excellent, you are constantly engaged exploring and discovering locked doors, keys to other doors, creepy lore, etc and the town itself is a really great setting. I heard about this in an "imsim" context and among those sorts of games this one should rank with the greats imo. It is a special experience and a gift in the big 2026, ty extremely much basedgod dev u did a really awesome job

interesting story with a chilling atmosphere, great game overall.

Pretty fun & challenging game and I am pretty deep into the game as of right now since I am exploring everything. I really do like the zombies since they do things like grab you, jump out of windows, play dead, crawl at you when you shoot off their legs and so on. Design wise the game does well with levels for the most part and you won't really encounter loading screens but the game does run like dookie but not unplayable. Some places do have an indie game look to it especially the mountains / terrain. Character & zombie designs were pretty good too and I eventually liked the reload mechanic once I got the hang of it. Now for the bad: This game is going to devolve into looting / looking in every container, drawer, and so on for ammo or anything else. Adding onto this is that you will be back tracking quite a bit once you start getting key things. There is also no melee weapons in the game that I know of (not counting the melee weapons you can hold to pick up and throw but you can't keep them) so you will praying that you have enough ammo. I haven't run out of ammo yet in dicey situations but have gotten close and lucky. The game can also be pretty jank too especially the gondola going to dusk apartments and certain entrances where you have to force yourself in. Overall at the moment I would say this is a pretty good survival horror indie game. Very grindy though in the beginning and you have to use some brain power use traps / spinning fans if you want to save ammo. If you do explore everything you will be putting in quite a bit of time but I have enjoyed it so far. I will also be uploading gameplay videos once I get around it so I'll update below assuming I don't get distracted by anything else lol https://youtu.be/Adlg8lsG7tA https://youtu.be/S_UmN9sbHyg

It's buggy, it has cluncky physics, it has bad UI and sounds are sometimes terrible... I'm still in love XD It's an open-world horror game that doesnt cheat on the roaming aspect and let me explore on my own terms. I really need more games like this. Definitely a good surprise for me. Kudos! Note that I still need to finish it. EDIT: Finished it, I maintain everything I said. The story is better than I expected even if not told perfectly, some surrealist aspects are very cool and some surprises are very surprising.

Game is very very jank but also very very good, it just needs some love with bug fixes and patches.

The sense of exploration and atmosphere are certainly there and so far the hook of the story is intersesting. I liked that there are no order to things so you can explore the town at your own pace. So far it is so much better than the demo, which i have enjoyed btw :D (My Thoughts After Finishing): It was surprisingly good. When i was exploring around the town of Lucenille, I was constantly reminded of games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. That is because this game wears its inspirations proudly on its sleeve and manages to be a fresh alternative and an homage to those games without being an imitation. If you liked games like RE and SH with dashes of immersive sim sprinkled on top, i think you might enjoy your time with this one.