The Land of Pain

Could have been an interesting indie horror game. Unfortunately to pad out the playtime the dev sticks in lots of stupid chase scenes where you're followed by a monster that kills you upon touch and you have no idea where you're supposed to be running to and then get stuck in a dead-end. After the 5th or 6th one of these I just got fed up and uninstalled.

Such a poorly made horror game. Right of the bat, I was greeted by an ever-present mouse cursor that never hides. The game fails to build up any atmosphere, all you get is occasional royalty free sound effects that I assume are supposed to make you scared, boring story and long stretches of road with nothing to explore around. Half the time you don't even get any hints where you should go next or what to do.

Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.

The biggest issue with this one is that all the points of interest are too far apart resulting in overlong periods of nothing. Just getting to your cabin in the opening of the game itself is an exercise in tedium, and every area is like this. It all ends up feeling like filler, because that's likely what it is. A means to pad the runtime so it's longer than 2 hours so people won't refund. It's not even like a slow, long build towards something can't work well. But here you just end up sprinting everywhere. And nothing sucks the tension out of a horror game more than a lack of threat and getting through areas as quick as possible. The game even has a crouch button, complete with little icon on the corner of your screen implying stealth might be a mechanic. Even tells you about how you lantern attracts attention. But non of it matters. It's a ruse. Turn your lantern on and sprint everywhere and you'll reach the credits just fine. I got this for I think £1.69 and I would say even that was too much to spend. Avoid.

имба

Not scary, not interesting, boring, dropped...

This is a game that left me nothing. It's a very short experience and yet it's filled with padding, mainly walking long distances to go from point A to B, with some "puzzles" even designed so you have to go back and forth. The puzzles are pretty intuitive and even enjoyable at first. Story may feel interesting at first, but the more you get towards the end, the more it feels random. The horror elements are a mixed bag: through sound design and lighting, the game overall feels immersive, but then you see some animations and hear screams that are so cheap that made me genuinely laugh. There's this monster that follows you that has such bad 3D model and animations when seen up-close that it stopped being scary when I saw it climb a ledge. The "monster" is not scary at all, it just has an annoying, very loud music that plays whenever it's chasing you. Wouldn't recommend, buy on sale if you really want to play this game.

[h1]Симулятор бэктрекинга [/h1] Первый блин комом. Понимаю. Но это не игра, это симулятор глупого бэктрекинга, который необоснован и очень сильно раздражает. Сегменты, где надо долбиться в темноту тоже не добавляют энтузиазма. Люблю нишевые проекты, но The Land of Pain, к сожалению, не тот случай. Разработчик очевидно хотел искусственно затянуть игру, чтобы в ней дольше посидели, но увы, это только раздражает. Завязка истории возможно и интересная, записки=база, но глупый и беспощадный бектрекинг по откату - увольте. Игра не уважает время игрока.

Honestly it's a decent game. Bit of a walking sim, fetch questy / back tracking type horror without any real scary stuff. But the story is appealing enough to get through it in one sitting. Best part. Half way through the game, while stranded on an alien earth like planet, you just break into a house .. and just .. casually take a dump on the toilet. 10/10 .. would poop on planet Cthulhu again.

I did enjoy this game and spent the time to look into little nooks and crannies and such along the way. This game came out almost a decade ago, and is apparently the developers first game, so with that in mind this is very well executed! Positives: The story was interesting and doesn't ask you to know a whole lot about Lovecraftian Horror to understand it. I found myself trying to piece the puzzle together and used the little exposition at the end of the game to make sense of it all, which was amusing. There were some good components that raised the blood pressure such as a train scene. But what really shined here was the sound design. I could absolutely tell where things were coming from and the general atmosphere the sounds made was unsettling, and well designed. Usually sounds in indie horror games are cheap and "the best I could do". Negatives: This is a great first draft, and I did buy the sequal "The Alien Cube" since the combo was on sale, so I'm curious to see where this goes. The story needs to be written out bullet point form, given major points, and each of those gets supporting details and additions to the game that provide to those major points. The biggest issue I found in the game was finding myself asking repeatedly "what's the point here?" There is entire areas in the game that add absolutely nothing to the game. You just run through a swamp area, and there's nothing to explore, no lore to find, no challenges, just straight up running through it while possibly being chased by the same bad guy that you can get away from by, surprise surprise, running away. There are buildings with obvious lore implications that never get explored, monoliths and obelisks that act as ritual sites or otherwise that lead to nothing except "being cool/scary". There are entire buildings and shacks that you have to find your way into all for a piece of paper. I also did have a hard time understanding who was talking, perhaps changing out the writing font or paper texture to help differentiate who is adding to the story, that did muddy it a little bit. Lastly the gameplay. I'm not going to harp on it seeing as most of the other complaints in the comments talk on this as well, but still worth a mention as it is the single reason this game was hard to play for me. It is a walking sim. There are large swaths of land you have to trek to get anything done, and when you do reach the end of an unnecessarily long path, you find a board, or key, or another key, or another key, and then you have to walk all the way back to the beginning of this area to use it. Then you walk all the way back to the other side of the area, you get it. Towards the end of this game exemplifies this perfectly, as you need to walk back and forth between two areas a minimum of 3 separate times (The graveyard to find the boarded shack, to the house to find the hammer, to the graveyard to remove boards from the shack and find the oil/shovel, can't use the shovel yet if you tried so back to the house to oil the attic and find a paper, BACK to the graveyard to use the shovel, BACK AGAIN to the house to continue the story, is that really necessary?) The entire game is a fetch quest, the only puzzle you really get is at the very end of the game in the house, otherwise it's all walking long distances to find items. I did like this game, but the biggest take away should be utility. Respect your players time and energy. When I write horror, I use the Chekov's gun approach, if it appears in the story, it should be used. I always think to myself, "that's a really cool idea and would fit perfectly, but does it add or take away from the story/narrative I'm trying to tell?" If it doesn't add, or if it's really cool and I still can't even force it to add, to the experience it doesn't go in. TLDR; great bones, great sound design! Fun story. Just, pay attention to how the players have to experience it.