When I picked this game up, I did so because it was highly regarded on Steam as a really good horror title, and one that even as it was only a few bucks normally, was on sale for about as much as I might have payed as a kid to play some arcades. In short, it was worth the risk, and sometimes the old-school games prove to have something special to them. In this case, I am now wondering how high those reviewers were. Avoid this one, my friends... avoid it at all costs.
Story: David has had a rough time of life as of late... enough so his friends suggested he move to just change his scenery, and even helped him find a new apartment he could afford to rent for this purpose. Hell, they even helped him move in. But unfortunately, they chose a place that would only make things worse as right from the first night, weird things started happening.
It was only small things the first night, like the bathroom sink turning on on it's own and hearing a woman crying in the hall when no one was there, but it did not take long till blood-caked words began appearing on the walls scaring the wits out of David. But in addition to this he also found things left behind by the previous renter... pieces of scrap paper and pamphlets... little hints of who he might be. Of course the landlady couldn't remember him, but an address in his writing sent David on the hunt of a lifetime... after all, if something was haunting him, he had to figure out why.
With this initial and very well done build up the game will take you across a couple abandoned locations, dividing up the story into one scene for each, at least for the most part. Although scene isn't so much the right word as is episode. In each location, you will explore to learn the connections it has to the apartment's previous tenant as well as try to help another lost soul who for their own reasons is also there with you. In each case, the story is relatively simple, but each also adds a building block of the total picture. It's actually rather well done until scene 4 when you change characters entirely for an out of left field explanation that not only lays out what the game has hinted at so bluntly it removes all real effect of it, it also drops the total explanation of what is going on (and why this guy knows) with the subtlety of an anvil on a cartoon's head. All the skill showed before just evaporates.
Now if you want to see this story for yourself I won't ruin it for you, but the game just might as you begin to reach it's conclusion.
7/10
Graphics: If you are coming here for graphic prowess, then you have just picked the wrong game. The Crooked Man is what is known around the PC gaming hobby as an "RPG Maker" game, and these games tend to have a type of look about them. This is no exception.
You will see the game almost completely from a birds-eye-view with old-school sprite work that is likely to remind you of Role Playing games from when console games came on cartridges. Classically low resolution, sprite-work looks the part it needs to signifying well what you are interacting with, but nothing really stands out as particularly good (or bad for that matter) in the world. Everything is blocky as the tile-based system demands it to be, leaving sinks, shelves, computers, an other every-day items that populate it looking good enough, but never being anything outstanding. This also goes for the sprite-work, as most of it looks a bit chunky, pixelated, and just blending in with the world. The only thing that really stands out here is the titular "crooked man" who just looks strange, standing out as the one major enemy of the game. But the resolution of the game takes a bit away from him, making it take a bit to understand why he stands out: his head is literally on sideways. And while this is supposed to make him more gruesome and scary, it comes off as just plain strange.
Fortunately the game does have a neat trick up it's sleeve which it uses often to make things more intense: full screen artwork. When it doesn't feature a character, it's a little bit blurry, but that just gives it a vague enough feel to actually seem wrong and a little more jarring, especially when dropped on you unexpectedly. When characters are in the scene though, it plays out more like a better detailed cut-scene to morve the story along, and I hope you like pseudo-anime style art, cause that's the style this artist uses whenever dealing with characters like this. It doesn't look too bad, but it does show just how off the sprites themselves are from the image the author wanted for his characters.
6/10
Sound: Sound is also something pretty limited in this game, but the moment the title screen comes up it suggest this is going to be different, as there is nothing at all but the clicking sound when you select to load a game, start a new one or quit.
And this remains true for most of the game. There is almost no background music, leaving you to sound effects like the wind or whatever detail the game chooses to focus you in on at the moment to be the only sound you get and leaving a lot of the game in complete silence outside of your own footsteps, especially at the beginning.
Now that is not to say there is no music at all, but it is used very sparsely. In fact you will basically get a tune when it's time to get into one of the few boss fights in the game and nothing else... and it's nothing to write home about.
5/10
Gameplay: And this is where the game really comes apart, I'm afraid. It tries to use a game-engine built for RPGs to make a tense horror game, but it's clear the engine was not made for this. In essence, you will follow a fairly linear path telling the story of David as he is haunted by some otherworldly being known as the cooked man, and he in turn tries to understand what is going on with an instinctive understanding that it has to do with him and some kind of connection he has to the man who rented his new apartment just before him. During this, you will explore three major locations with each containing puzzles that must be completed before you can proceed.
Most of these puzzles are environmental and work just fine, such as finding keys or picking up clues to the combination to door locks and the like. Occasionally you have others where even the moon-logic writers of old point and click games would be proud of how obscurely a solution is hidden and these work well enough too, even if they get annoying for how truly out of the way they can be. There are even timed puzzles which require you to figure out a room your in before the timer runs out and you die for one reason or another. These are rare and run the gambit of really quick but makes sense for a split second decision to you need all the time it gives you because you will literally have to happen on what random wall you need to click before you can proceed... and you know the developer knows when they messed up here because the game forces you into the save menu just before every single one of them.
But the most common save forcing moment is also the one that absolutely breaks this game: the boss battles. You see, the Crooked Man is not a game with a lot of combat, and in fact there is only one enemy in the entire game with scripted encounters whenever you run into him. Most of those take the form of a short puzzle to figure out how to escape the room he cornered you in without him barging out right behind you and making a quick game-over out of you. These can be annoying but are pretty fair and can even give you a moment to look over the room and see what might be useful to you. The end of almost every scene, however, plays up to the game's weaknesses with a battle.
Two of these battles work "okay" enough, as they involve you and the crooked man running around a piece of furniture. You have a health meter and a melee weapon of some sort and your goal is to hit him and keep out of range so that he doesn't kill you before you do so enough times to beat him into submission and win. I put okay in quotes because it becomes quite obvious even in the first one that the controls are really not up to snuff for combat very quickly.
David moves fast, but the controls for him are clunky, leading you to run past points you want to stop or turn at often enough, making these fights both harder and more infuriating then they really need to be. But at least when it's melee, you can make it work after a try or two and move on. Scene 3 changes this as you now have a gun, but are trying to get him before he kills someone else which you yourself can easily shoot and kill if David decides to stop one block too late to keep firing on the monster (which he will often). And then we can get to the last fight which throws all hope out the window... not only does your stopping power lack the precision really needed for this kind of fight, but now the crooked man will hold onto you (or does David stick to him? I'm not sure) allowing him to get multiple hits in with a single attack and turning it into a fight with the controls rather then the monster. They are just not good enough to begin with, turning it into a hear-ripping-out infuriating mess.
For moments that are supposed to be the highlights of the game, they come off as the disastrous points that ruin what is otherwise a very bland gaming experience to begin with.
3/10
Bugs: For everything I found wrong with this game, I do have to give it credit: it ran flawlessly
Overall: The Crooked Man is a tragic tail in many ways. The story is actually intriguing, engaging, and, at least until the last real info-dump, keeps you interested in the macabre events going on. But the game encasing it is just sub-par on so many levels: from obscurity to controls, to even an over-reliance on a very limited ambiance for sound, the game itself just fails. Perhaps the author would have been better off to tell this tale as a short story rather then a short horror game.
Score:
System Requirements:
- Intel Core 2 ruuning at 1.06 Ghz
- 1 GB RAM
- Windows 7
- 100 MB hard drive space
- Ryzen 3 2200G running at 3.5 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 10
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
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