The Empty Inn

Interesting Puzzle Game. That being said, this is more something I would expect to find on Kongregate than Steam. 10-15 minutes of playtime, tops. I hope the developer takes the profits from this game and attempts to develop something with a bit more meat to it.

So I bought this game on a whim, being that it is only a couple of dollars and I like supporting indie developers. I can't say that I recommend buying it, but I haven't fully completed it yet. I played it on normal mode, and beat it within 20 minutes. It seems that based on the game description & achievements that the hardest difficulty has a longer story, and that there is probably a secret ending as well. Pros: I actually like the core gameplay mechanic, which revolves around finding matches to keep your lamp lit, and finding keys to progress through locked doors. Since there are not too many matches, you have to keep moving at all times and search everything you can. It ends up giving you a nice mild anxiety as you try to find the next match. Cons: The game length is pretty short, although again I only played it on the mid tier difficulty level, not the high level. Another thing that was mildly annoying throughout the gameplay was collision. The doors you must go through are basically just big enough for you to get through, so I bumped into the walls a lot.

Not worth $4. The controls are really, really bad: Move with WASD, mouse button for actions... No, you don't move the mouse. Just the button. There's a remap in the options screen, but it doesn't work. You can't remap it to a keyboard key. The gameplay itself is also vacuous. A small area surrounding you is lit up and you navigate through small, not very complex rooms to find the next key, to open the next door, repeat, etc. Not worth money.

The graphics are nice and retro and the game sets the eerie atmosphere well, especially on the harder difficulties! The game may be short but the secret ending pretty much doubles the content. It's a challenging game and I've enjoyed playing it :)

Nice NES-stylized graphics and 2.79$ price won my attention, but I was wrong. It would be better if this game was a freeware, like the other projects from Candlelight Studios' website - no matter how much money you'll spend on it, you will be frustrated. Lack of content, poor gamedesign choices, primitive level-design, confusing plotline, imbalanced difficulty, repetitive gameplay - all you need to do in this game is to search the small rooms for keys and matches for your lamp (they makes the flying enemy disappear). Do this for 10 minutes and the "Easy Mode" ends - with a cliffhanger instead of ending, or, to be clear, with the beginning of the story at the very end of the mode. Spoiler:[spoiler] for some reason our hero wandered around the empty inn for 10 minutes, looking for a keys and avoiding an enigmatic flying thing, and then someone killed him! What a twist! Do the same thing on the "Extreme Mode" and don' t forget to find all the purple orbs to get the second part of the story![/spoiler] The "Extreme Mode" unravels a new layer of repetitiveness - now you have only one life and the flying enemy kills you on the first touch. If there was no bug that erases enemy from the map after pressing "Escape" button (or was it a feature?; anyway, press "Escape" every time enemy appears on the screen) the whole mode could be simply unplayable. It's absurdly hard to beat the game on "Extreme" without it - maybe even impossible, because level design with claustrophobic rooms and corridors always helps the enemy to clamp you in a corner with lethal aftermath. After 10 minutes of pressing the "Escape" button and clicking on every object of the every room to find the orbs (remember that some orbs are just lying on the floor, and they are invisible), when you will get to the same scene that ended the "Easy Mode" and enter the portal, you'll find out that there is another 10 minutes of gameplay on a different map - and for some reason it's easier then on the first one, because now when enemy touches you, you respawn not too far away from the place of the contact. You have to walk around the convoluted maze-like levels with the same textures and color patterns (that makes it pretty confusing to navigate) in the search of keys, switches and doors, also you have to dodge the randomly appearing ghosts. And then the plot starts to move on. Spoiler:[spoiler]our hero was dead the whole time, he died in another place, and The Inn is just an artificial world for the tortured souls who seeks "more meaningful death". The entity who made it have its own plans for the protagonist, and now he must meet it in "After-death" world. When hero does so, it offers him a chance to hide from another entity who we never heard about before and who is, suddenly, eager to "collect" him. There is a hint in a dialogue that the entity he met is malicious, but actually we get another cliffhanger instead of an ending.[/spoiler] While "The Inn" world is colorful and at least intriguing, the "After-death" world is bleak and low-detailed - there is literally nothing in it but floor, walls, doors and switches (and some ghosts that appears randomly); it's funny that this fact is not represented in a screenshots. This game is neither "awful" nor "so bad that it's good". It looks like the result of an author's first try on gamedesign that ended predictably, despite the fact that Candlelight Studios already made some short free games. If "Empty Inn" was freeware, I would say "It's OK"; as a game that wants your money - it seems to me that you will want your money back. P.S.: I replayed "The Empty Inn" for a number of times hoping to find some secrets or easter eggs, but found nothing except a bug with the opening of The Inn's front door - if you will try to get the hero away from there, he will simply go off the screen.

Ya sea por su estética o simplemente por su premisa, "The Empty Inn" parece ser un juego sumamente interesante. Sin embargo, no lo es. Y es que los problemas no se hacen esperar: En el apartado de controles puedes configurar los 4 botones direccionales a tu antojo (WASD es el predeterminado) pero no tienes posibilidad de cambiar el botón de acción, siendo obligatorio utilizar el botón izquierdo de el mouse o ratón. Evidentemente ésto no es un problema que arruíne la experiencia, pero cuando te das cuenta de que ésto no se debe a una desición impuesta si no a un problema de programación es cuando te das cuenta de que The Empty Inn augura terrores que van más allá de sus intenciones iniciales. La jugabilidad...bueno, es pésima. Es llana hasta el hartazgo. Y es que el "Inn" en el que se desarrolla el juego parece más una conexión de estrechos pasillos que un verdadero "Inn" y además, es muy fácil quedarse estancado entre dos paredes o el pomo de una puerta (Por tonto que esto suene). Ésta aburrida conexión de pasillos nos llevan a distintas habitaciones que rápidamente se tornan repetitivas por carecer de personalidad propia, siendo réplicas casi exactas unas de otras, con muy pocas variaciones, como si no existiese amor por el detalle y el único objetivo en ellas fuese encontrar la llave que nos permite avanzar a otra habitación de cualidades similares hasta llegar a la última. De vez en cando recoges objetos como botiquines para curar tus corazones o fóforos para tu lámpara, pero es imposible saber qué estás cogiendo exactamente pues no hay ningun tipo de representación gráfica más allá de un signo de interrogación sobre tu cabeza. Los puzzles, o debería decir ÉL puzzle (sí, solo hay uno), es...bastante tonto, no quiero darmelas de listo, pero el juego literalmente te dice como resolverlo y no presenta ninguna dificultad. El resto de los "puzzles" de éste juego consisten en tener la capacidad intelectual necesaria para llegar a la conclusión de que la llave roja evidentemente no puede abrir la puerta azul o presionar un interruptor para abrir una puerta secreta. Magnífico. Pero ya que estamos hablando de un juego de terror hablemos del terror. Bueno, la parte más escalofriante es pagar casi 4 dólares por éste juego. Tu único enemigo es un fantasma al cual no podremos enfrentarnos de ninguna manera y que si nos ve, nos perseguirá sin descanso hasta atraparnos, éste elemento podría haber estado bien ejecutado, como lo estuvo hace años con titulos como Clock Tower, Sillent Hill 2 o el más "reciente" Amnesia, pero lejos de que ésto suponga un reto para el jugador toparse con el espíritu en cuestión significa perder casi automáticamente uno de tus 3 corazones de vida, puesto que a no ser que estés muy cerca de una puerta que te lleve a otra zona del "Inn" tu personaje no tiene capacidad de reacción ya que no solo careces de armas como ya dije anteriormente, si no que pase lo que pase éste camina como si estuviese dando un tranquilo paseo por el parque... Aunque tampoco importa realmente. El fantasma te alcanza con una rápidez tan absurda y desaparece tan pronto una vez te halla quitado un corazón de vida que es una experiencia demasiado corta como para resultar significativa, hasta el punto en que ésta se siente solamente como una leve penalización temporal y nada más. La ambientación sonora consta de un efecto de lluvia permanente muy bien logrado pero lamentablemente está acompañado con sonidos casuales que pretenden ponerte los pelos de punta pero que fallan miserablemente. Lo mismo pasan con los jumpscares, los cuales son demasiados breves y de muy poco impacto. La historia es infantil e intenta "asustarte" de una forma tan molestamente pretenciosa que es muy díficil tomarselo enserio y para colmo los textos de diálogo avanzan tan rápidos en el juego que aun teniendo un nivel decente de inglés cuesta mucho alcanzar a leerlos. En definitiva, The Empty Inn es un mal juego, un pésimo exponente y me atrevería a decir que uno de los peores juegos de terror que he jugado últimamente. El verdadero y terrorífico misterio de todo éste asunto es preguntarte como es posible que semejante juego halla conseguido salir en Steam, creo que de toda la experiencia es lo único que me causa pavor, y lo único que probablemente me impida dormir ésta noche. ¿Quiéres sin embargo, saber lo más gracioso de todo? En el tiempo que has tardado en leer éste análisis ya podrías haber terminado el juego.

First off to note, this is not a very long game. It also has a couple of bugs here and there. However, if you understand that, then I'd definitely say it's worth a play if you can maybe pick it up on sale, because it's quite innovative for what it is, and the retro vibe is very well done. It's a puzzle-focussed exploration game, with a little bit of a story. I have yet to reach the secret ending, and extreme mode has posed a challenge for me - so if you want to replay it with a bit more challenge, there's a bit more meat to this little gem.

Ok the first thing red flag was right after I'm launch this game. I even thought that this game is broken because no key on keyboard choose options in menu. Than I've relized that's left mouse button! Strange decition, I didn't recall it from any other game. You can't rebind keys and game has no support controller so it's just add to the problem... Oh btw if you click right mouse button you've just see your cursor he he "nice" coding. Main character has no diagonal animations, so it's look very ankward then you're going this direction. You're just collect stuff and there is no indication which key or item you had.

Le coté graphisme pixel est sympa mais le reste est moyen. Pour la musique c'est très simple, pas beaucoup de bruits sonore et musique inexistante. La jouabilité est a chier , on galère a bouger des qu'il a du mobilié et que le clavier ( zqsd ) et souris ( click G ) disponible. Ensuite viens la durée de vie qui est de moins de 30 min ( en easy mode ) en prenant son temps. je recommande pas vu le prix, ou le prendre en solde ou bundle.

What?? 2/10 - The Empty Inn wasn't so Empty. She should just take the frickin matches and burn the place down.