I do not remember when I picked this title up. I wish I could say I did and why I had to have it, but I honestly don't know. What I do know is I have a taste for "mess with your head" horror, so when the dice rolled this game among the possible to start, it was one of the more interesting choices int he list. I decided "what the hell" and hit install.
And while the game started slow, it was just a false start... this is a hidden gem for horror fans. Come on inside.
Anthony Beechworth is gone from this world. In a desperate plea to escape something, he hung himself in the attic of his mansion. As part of this horrific act, he sent his suicide note to his childhood friend Jeremiah Devitt. But even beyond the disturbing content in that envelope, a single odd sentence would sink the stomach of that friend: "Videte ne quis sciat."
On top of the note suggesting that something horrible had happened, this single sentence was the motto of a secret society he and his friends ran in their school days as children. With the need to understand what just happened, Mr. Devitt heads for his friend's residence and the start of a macabre adventure. From here you will guide him through his childhood friend's mansion to not only confirm his fate, but to find that this gruesome discovery is just the first step into a much larger journey into the unknown. Unfortunately to explain this is to ruin the 4 episodes that make up this adventure, but if you have a taste for Lovercrftian style horror, you are in for a treat here, if not a complete one. The reason is that this game is only the first of two seasons, so if you enjoy this, you are left with an ending that, while it could be an ending, intentionally leaves a everything not really tied up. Rather, the game was designed to lead into a Season 2 which continues the story.
But a dark story is not the only thing this game will stand out for. Many games today are designed to have a "retro" look and this game is definitely one of those. But where most use it to give a feel of a bygone decade where you might once have sat in front of the family room TV with a controller that only had one or two buttons in you hand, this game takes the motif as part of the feel of the world it will thrust you into.
At first glance, this does not look like a very good choice as you will use a DOS-like resolution for the bottom third or so of your screen for your inventory (always visible) while the rest uses so few pixels that old school Atari games might just be (a little) higher resolution. But it doesn't take long before these limitations begin to force you as the player to be more attentive to the details provided, reading any description for clues about what you need to do as well as what is going on. As such, you are made to engage it all that much more carefully to proceed, making this apparent weakness into a story-telling strength! And then with you invested, the game throws the creepy-dial up to 11 with scenarios that force you to back up in shock. To be blunt, it is very impressive despite it's own restraint.
But as any horror fan knows, even the best visual work isn't worth half what it could be without a good sound design to back it, and here the game does not disappoint. Music will fall to the background when it is there (which is actually quite often), but it helps lay out the the depressive feel of the world you will find yourself in or the intensity when shit is hitting the fan. In addition, this game does know when silence is better, letting the ambient noise of of dripping water in a dark and damp sewer or creaking boards when you are all alone in an all but abandoned mansion do a lot of the work. There is no voice acting in this game, so it relies effectively on the use of all of this.
And all of this will back up classic point & click gameplay to move you through your adventure. For the most part, this is actually the weakest part, but not for the reasons you would expect. The game is actually designed very well and as such really does not have the classic "pixel hunting" issue the genre is known for. Rather, it suffers from how easy it is to figure out. Most of the time, you will be dragged by the nose through a direct path of what to do next based on what you just found and picked up. Yes, you will get stuck once in a while and have to figure out what's next, but it's so rare, it's actually a bit of a stunning moment when you need to actually stop and think. Add this to it being a game that will not actually let you kill off Devitt and do not expect this game to really challenge you, at least not for long.
Bugs: Honestly, this game ran almost perfectly, but the only issue I had was a single crash to the desktop. There were no messages, the game's saving system had me one room away from where I was, and I'm pretty sure it was shut down by the gog launcher asking to update, but it did happen exactly once, so I have to report it.
Overall: While the puzzles were a little too easy most of the time and there is definitely more to the story then we have so far, what you get here is still worth your time in pure story-telling and atmosphere alone. At it's $10 asking price, it's far from a bad deal, and if you can get it on sale, it's a downright steal. However, this is also not a game for everyone. If you do not like cosmic unknowable horror, you are not going to get into the themes of this game at all, and if you are looking for an action title, you are not looking in the right place.
Score:
7/10
System Requirements:
- Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz
- 1 GB RAM
- Anything with at least 64 MB of VRAM
- Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10
- 200 MB hard drive space
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
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