The Eerie Surroundings

A clear case of a below average anomaly detection game. Probably made by an adequately inexperienced developer, which is fair, but with so many lazy elements, the entire game ends up feeling completely hollow. It's one of the anomaly games with the least amount of variation in anomalies period. And not only are the anomalies scarce, but also very stale in comparison to other games in the same price-range. In many similar titles, we get to experience lively, animated anomalies as well as occasional scares, something that we are not at all offered in [i]The Eerie Surroundings[/i], making the experience already inferior to many of its peers. The UI and the in-game overlay are built in an equally lazy style and are boring to engage with. The overlay in plain white text is presented in considerable contrast to all the in-game elements in-game, actually removing some of the attention from the screen while playing. For every map within the total of three, there will be a timer, and in order to progress and unlock the next map you'll need to complete your current stage within a set time shown in the in-game overlay. The timer is missing some basic functionality in the sense that it does not reset in case you fail a room and start over, requiring you to fully exit to the lobby every time you want to reset the timer. I don't understand why issues like these haven't been addressed or fixed. Walking speed is another point where the game shows total imbalance, given how small all the maps are, we really don't need this much amount of movement speed. It feels like we're holding shift down the entire time, even though there's no sprint feature, it's just the walking speed so fast that it feels like sprinting 24/7. It takes around 3.5 seconds to cross any map on its biggest axis. A way slower walking speed here is not only a missed opportunity for some better immersion, but it would also have removed some of the arcade feeling that the game is plagued by. [i]SURPRISED HOTDOG LIMITED[/i] who's behind this title has a few titles quite similar to [i]The Eerie Surroundings[/i], and after trying this one, I'm not left as drawn to try out any of his prior work. Simply put, if we assume that any developer is evolving and improving their skill set along the way, then I'd rather look ahead for future titles than go back and likely witness projects that are even more unsatisfying. It seems that there's upcoming titles on the way from the developer, and I'm really hoping to see some improvements in those projects. Otherwise, partly based on all of the above mentioned points, I'll have an easy time deeming the developer as someone growing into a notorious asset flipping con artist rather than a creatively improving developer. [table][tr][td] [b]We aim to celebrate the horror genre, support the developers and create a haven for horror fans — Join us:[/b] [h3]🔗 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45181118/] Steam Curator page[/url][/h3][h3]🔗 [url=https://www.youtube.com/@officialhorrorvault/videos]YouTube channel[/url][/h3] [/td][/tr][/table]