it's okay for what it is, the problem is there is a lot in the game that is distracting from the things it does well. the premise is simple, you're hired to delve into a cave searching for crystals in a big mechanised miner/tank/thing, you have to collect ten crystals, navigating the caves with the mole's slow, clunky movement, and keep track of the oil, coolant, and battery levels so you don't end up stranded
the movement of the mole, slowly making my way through the caves, felt great for what it's doing, i always had this underlying sense of dread due to my limited mobility. however the resource management didn't feel entirely polished, i felt like resources, namely oil, drained too quickly and because you're limited to one crystal at a time before returning to base to restock there is little room for decision making in terms of the resources you bring (at least one crystal at a time is what i did considering when i tried searching for a second one after getting the first i got a game over), your storage is limited to about 5 items being stored at a time (2 in each of the 2 containers, and you could hold 1 in a hand to keep another spare for the crystals) and so long as you dedicated enough for oil and filled the rest with coolant you probably wouldn't have any close calls or anything, it wasn't the slow drain on resources i was expecting the game to have, nor was there any instance where the resources were used for anything substantive, just a bar to be maintained
there are multiple characters that i feel the game could have done without, clarence and your daughter (who i don't think is even named at any point) have incredibly cliche story beats that you could probably guess the moment you are introduced to them if you are at all familiar with indie horror games, and their performances are not helped by the voice acting clearly being done with ai voices, as you spend more time with the characters the seams in the deliveries become more apparent and it did more to take me out of my immersion than anything, the ai voice acting felt like it was trying too hard to be human and so was held back by the shortcomings of the technology rather than being at all creepy or unsettling
there are various events which i felt subtracted from the game, not to say they didn't scare me, who wouldn't be scared turning around and seeing an eyeless little girl standing in front of you? but when you find out the imagery is largely meaningless outside of 'wouldn't it be scary to turn around and see an eyeless little girl?' it feels cheap, especially when the game goes for the indie horror game classic of surrounding you in scary character models
in fact pretty much everything with the story felt lackluster, stories about corporate greed and loss of loved ones have been done significantly better elsewhere, i felt the game was at its best when it was focusing on the eldritch lovecraftian horror with its core concept, towards the end you're left alone to explore this alien cave system and the game becomes a lot more engaging, i was worried about what new thing could pop out, with little direction other than the mysterious throbbing boulders blocking your way and/or opening up new parts of the caverns, you hallicunate stepping outside to a mysterious door, the mole's camera screen flashes with strange images in the corner of your eye as you're trying to make your way back to base, and a strange alien humanoid figure stands in the loading bay area watching you, all the other stuff with clarence and your daughter detracted from the game's much stronger core concept
the sound design was phenomenal, the low hum when the mole's interior becomes comprimised, hearing things through the walls of the mole, the rumbling of the cave sounding like screams echoing through the caverns, the atmosphere was great and did a lot to build the horror, and the interior of the mole changing over time did great to induce the feeling of safety within the mole being slowly eroded, i was sufficiently tense when the daughter and clarence were absent
the ending felt lackluster, again you probably could have guessed the twist before even starting the game, and i thought there was going to be significantly more to the final scare. i don't know if i just missed something in the intro text but i didn't learn about the things like apparently there being an eternal winter or anything at all about the dystopian setting, which felt strange to not have in the intro
it's games like this that make me wish you didn't have to give a recommendation or if there was something less binary than yes or no, all in all it was a fine enough horror game, i wouldn't go ranting and raving about it, it's short and sweet at a little over an hour for about five bucks, and what is good here is really good all things considered, i feel like all this game needed was a tighter focus, reaching deeper into the concept of an eldritch cave system rather than the horror game dad simulator stuff that has been plaguing indie horror games for around a decade at this point
