You Left Us

A game of building suspense. For fans of classic psychological horror with some modern twists. The main game is a relatively short play through, but packed with suspense and moments of curiosity and fear. Love the graphics and audio! Be sure to find all the cassettes to enjoy the nice soundtrack.

Decent short horror game for the Halloween night with a bunch of broken achievements. You play a soldier stationed in a remote listening facility. The only communication you have with the outside world is via radio, where your commander directs you to your daily responsibilities. If you are not sure what to do next, there is a clipboard with all the task. The facility is small, but it has numerous rooms, including a radio, toilet, boiler, and a few more. Fortunately, you can visit other areas that are not immediately available. Movement is a little slow, but it never feels like you need to go anywhere quickly. There’s only one chase sequence and it’s over in a few seconds. Except for some music tapes, there is no need to explore because you cannot interact with anything other than the key objectives. Objectives must be performed in order, so you cannot skip. Fortunately, crucial items are highlighted with a yellow outline, making them apparent if you keep your eyes open. Your primary responsibility will be to listen to stations from all across the world. The mechanic is simple: select the specified place and try to match the frequency. Naturally, strange things begin to happen after a while. First, stations around the world fall dark, and then something else appears in the facility. The most visible are anomalies that can be identified using a special flashlight. There are eight of them, each containing sounds from the past. Although they can be ignored, finding them will shed some light on the story and reward you with an achievement. The retro pixelated style contributes to the atmosphere. However, it appears that the effect is excessively powerful, making many details difficult to recognize. There are also some issues with shadows; your characters does not have it, but the flashlight in your hands does. This is a short experience that can be finished in less than half an hour. Sadly, three achievements are broken.

What an awesome experience. Eldritch and alien, reflective with great music, and atmospheric in the most amazing ways. For a first game, this is an absolutely solid start and I can't wait to see what the studio comes out with next.

👍

This one is about two steps away from true greatness. The vibes? Immaculate. Everything in this game, from the graphics to the slight distortion/static on the voice tracks, makes you feel slightly off-kilter and isolated while playing it. Where it falls short, IMO, is that it explains too much. It creates the perfect situation for an unknowable horror and then wants to explain everything about it to you. (Major story spoilers ahead.) [spoiler] The hook for this story is that feeling of isolation. It's when the lights on your radar board turn red and the broadcasts get weird and you have no earthly way of finding out [i]what the hell is happening[/i] that the game is at its peak.[/spoiler] If the story had ended [spoiler]around the time of the final radio broadcast, or even with the protagonist trying to flee after the broadcast but being stopped by something - and this is the important part - [i]the audience never gets to see[/i], that would be perfection. The game would've lived in my head rent-free forever after that. Maybe an implication that the protagonist got grabbed, followed by the house/dream section that's already in the endgame, but then smash cut to black when the lights go out and the door starts rattling.[/spoiler] But the audio log anomalies and everything that happens in [spoiler]the sub-levels / research base[/spoiler]...it's just too much. It explains everything and, in doing so, takes away everything that makes the game scary. I'd argue for cutting [spoiler]the first dream sequence as well. It's just kinda goofy nonsense, not to mention foreshadowing for stuff we never really needed to see to begin with.[/spoiler] Gameplay-wise, your walking pace can be a touch on the too-slow side sometimes, and juggling inventory items is a little fiddly at times. And, personally, I had issues with getting the scanners in Act 3 to work correctly--not sure if that was on me or if it was a bug, as it felt like you had to [spoiler]line up the flashlight beam[/spoiler] just [i]slightly[/i] off-center or in one case completely below a scanner, which...can't be right? Optimization might still need a little work, too. It's much improved from the demo (and added v-sync is a nice plus), but it will still pin your GPU utilization to 100% if you try to max out everything when the graphics...don't really reflect that level of usage. I also experienced some hitches and frame drops in spots on a system that well exceeds the recommended requirements. At the end of the day, this is still a game I'll recommend, with the above caveats, just because of how slept on it is. If you've got $5 and an hour to spare and want some above-decent horror, this is still worth picking up. Just be aware that, if you're like me, you'll come away a little frustrated with the final act and just [i]how close[/i] the game came to sticking the landing. Maybe in the devs' next game!

Simple story but very tight, would have liked to spend more time in that world. Overall satisfying experience.

Fun lil horror game. Glitched at the end for me, so I wasn't able to finish it. Tried closing and opening the game a couple times.

Cool spooky game with mild spooks , love ice deserts