Vigil: Blood Bitterness™

Awful game. Every in-game video tries to change the screen resolution, and due to a bug the subtitles are not displayed. The gameplay is pretty bad, slow and boring. Every time you click on something you must wait for an animation to finish. I don't want to play this game again. Avoid at all costs!

Avoid this game unless you're running an ancient computer with Windows XP. It does not work on modern operating systems, even in compatibility mode. I'd be upset if I paid for it, but since it came with a bundle of good games no harm done. I just wish we could purge garbage like this from our libraries.

Well what can I say about this game? Lets start on how to run it: Compatability to XP/2k, play now in steam, that will take you to "RIP-Trilogy" page. Hit the download demo button (even if like me you already own the full version). Don't download, just keep the pop-up up. Hit play now again and there you go. Hit ALT + Enter when it locks up. If you hit F12 for a printscreen it will lock up. Now the good: It's usually free in a bundle It's weird and abstract looking When it runs ... it runs. The bad: Hard to get to run Crappy controls Good concept, but the actual game sucks How would I rate this? Better than getting a prostate exam by freddie kruger. About as useful as a penguin with explosive diarrhea on a school bus. I now know to avoid anything by freegamer or meridian4

Don't waste you money on this. I really don't know if they game is incomplete or is mean to be like this... when i installed it it send me to the page of the game "RIP - Trilogy", i did have to clic on the download demo to be able to start the game. A lot of black screens where you only hear weird sounds, poor graphics, my monitor was constantly attemping to adjust resolution. Could get to the first level trying to click some parts of the scenery, send me to a dark screen... go to the menu, click on clues, the game crashes. I suppose my PC is not compatible with this game... i suppose it may work on olders machines.. i suposse the dark screen are the pre-render videos... do you want to try your luck?

To properly review this game, we have to travel back in time a little... Welcome back to 2007, where the most popular game on Steam is Counter-Strike Source, where your game time isn't tracked, where badges & cards don't exsist. It's also where, hiding in the deepest, darkest corners, indie devs pushed out games on Steam without Early Access. I like to call this epoch "The Dark Age of Indie Gaming on Steam". Ironic since it's in this epoch indie gaming boomed to-the-max. Dark, obscure titles were pushed out on Steam which made Ricochet look cool. Enter Vigil:Blood Bitterness, a game I bought July 2nd 2007 for 2,49USD during a "normal" sale, y'know, not like the ones we have today. This game is a point & click "adventure"... erm... not even sure what to call it. All I remember was walking a few screens away from the starting point and not being able to progress further. If I recall right, it had something to do with the screen resolution ratio or whatnot. I clicked everywhere on the screen and pushed all my keyboard button. Nothing worked and I just kept dying out of nowhere while this spooky volume-increasing music played in the background. The art style is the reason I bought this game, nothing else. I though "hey, this black & white thing looks kinda cool, imma give it a try". Even 11 years later, I still regret this descision and I still think about it sometimes like it's some sort of cursed game or something. I won't ever know what this game was about, how it ends or what's in between. Maybe it's best I never know... Today, you cannot boot this game since it was coded to be used with Windows XP and lower. The software used by the devs could only be used for a limited amount of time and since then, the software was updated, making it so updating the old game could not be possible. This game, these ideas, are lost forever in a digital abyss, a perpetual limbo of obsolescence. Cannot recommend since it's broken and outdated. I rate this game ##ERROR## out of 10. Rest in peace.

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Just don't. Even if you do actually manage to get the game running, the game itself is garbage. It feels more like a mediocre student project than an actual published game. [b]Controls: Garbage.[/b] Point-and-click movement with fixed cameras is always questionable, but in Vigil it is unquestionably a nightmare; the camera frequently switches to reverse shots that cause you to click back in the direction you came. It's even more frustrating in the last two acts when [spoiler]timed elements are introduced[/spoiler]. The transition areas between cameras are often small, forcing you to "search" along an edge of the screen until it finally switches. The character does no pathfinding - it always moves in a straight line to the clicked point, so going around corners is a chore and you get stuck on obstacles. Interactions are slow and uninterruptible. [b]Gameplay: Garbage.[/b] No save system (unless you consider the acts "checkpoints") means lots of repetition, made worse by long load times. Puzzles are either really obvious or so obtuse as to be hopeless without a walkthrough (lots of unclear cause and effect). Unskippable dialogue boxes slow things down. There's no sense of progression or accumulation of skills/knowledge; the only generally-consistent mechanic is doors, everything else is some weird one-off mechanic that you struggle to figure out and that never comes up again. [b]Narrative: Garbage.[/b] Environmental storytelling completely eschewed in favor of tedious text dumps. Minimal plot/character development, no coherent theme/message. It is made obvious pretty early on that [spoiler]you're the bad guy[/spoiler]. The ending is incredibly disappointing; it's literally just [spoiler]a blank video with some voiceover[/spoiler] that tells you [spoiler]you're dead (but like for real this time or whatever)[/spoiler]. Also, typos all over the place. [b]Visuals: Actually okay.[/b] The minimalistic style of the 3D visuals is tonally spot-on and character/environment designs are solid. Too bad you can't enjoy them in any resolution above 1024x768. Some issues with visual language inconsistency, but that's arguably a game design problem. UI/2D design is pretty atrocious though. [b]Audio: Garbage.[/b] The small number of music tracks and audio cues quickly become repetitive and annoying. Audible popping when music/sfx are abruptly stopped or switched.