There is something to be said for bad games. Occasionally playing one will make you appreciate the good ones even more. I can agree with that and from time to time, can look at something I played and while it isn't good it reminds me just how good other games were. I could point to several games I reviewed on this site that apply here, thinking fondly of games that just did what they tried better. This... this was a bridge too far and is arguably one of the worst games I have ever played this side of it not being straight up broken. Avoid this game at all costs.
Story: You just bought a home and are going to check the place out. It is not a new home, so much as an old one with a past... and you are about to see that past first-hand. You will get these details via notes and pictures you will pick up and read as you explore your new place, checking out what needs to be renovated. However, do not expect a lot to be shown. There is a story about the family who was here before and a fairly violent past which will start to reach through the years but it won't take center stage for a good length of the admittedly short game and is really pretty bare bones.
Sorry but there is just not much here, much less front and center.
4/10
Graphics: Honestly the world itself and the objects within it do not look half bad, although the developers do not claim credit for that work. This is a game that was developed by two people within a single month, so they took a few shortcuts with pre-made assets an I have to salute them for being up front with their customers about that on the Steam Page. I have to also give them respect for their taste in chosen assets to use as the furniture fits that "old large house" feel well and specific details like the broken down beds and dusty suits of armor add to the empty and creepy feel of the house.
However, the work around these assets rushed, especially around the lighting system. To put it bluntly this game is very extreme when it comes to light. Many areas are damn near pitch black, and flipping the lights only provide so much assistance. And when lights flicker, it is rapid enough to suggest your graphic card is glitching out. Seriously I had to use a walkthrough to confirm my card was ok and the light in some rooms were just "like that."
But the absolute worst offender for ruining the look of this game is perhaps the most important tool you will get while playing... your flashlight. There are places you just can not rely on lights to help out with at all, making this absolutely essential and it would make Energizer proud to sponsor the game. This thing when used lights the world so blindingly brightly that it actually washes out the world in white at the center of your screen, rendering any details unviewable. It is absolutely horrific in the wrong ways.
Nor does the game give you these visuals cleanly. If you look to the bottom of this review you will see this game should NOT require much hardware to run, but be ready to chug. Having well above the listed requirements to play I still found myself with screen tearing and even catching frame rate drops that you could not help but notice... and my monitor tops out a 60 FPS. Nor are there any settings to fine-tune the game and correct for this... at all. What you see is what you are stuck with with no good way to do what should be a standard thing for PC games in general: set the game graphics to choose between performance and detail.
3/10
Sound: Do not expect much for sound. You have some wind, and even some lightning to make up the background ambiance, but there is little else here. You will wander the house in just about complete silence. Yes, the game says it features music and voice acting, and this is in the game, but its for a few scripted moments. This is just not a game that gives you much to listen to.
3/10
Gameplay: And this is where the already badly creaking axel breaks on this game. You will basically wander the house looking for keys to unlock doors and further see what is in the house. There is really very little here, but damning it far more then the game being a "walking simulator" is how it is executed. The game does absolutely NOTHING to explain the controls to you. You will never see a button layout or option to see what does what, requiring you to "just be familiar" with standard keyboard WASD controls. At first this doesn't seem so bad since you don't need to run and clicking will open (or attempt to open) them or interact with the game. In fact, the controls feel natural to anyone familiar with PC FPS-style gaming... but that is a false sense of security.
I originally quit the game at this point because I thought the game was broken... I had found the first key but couldn't use it. With no clue given to me that either it was the incorrect key or some signal in the standard inventory commands that I was just looking at and not trying to use the key, I had no way of knowing of an additional button I should be hitting to use the key on the door. Literally I went to look for help in the steam forums and even they didn't have an answer. Rather, game reviews mentioned you have to right click on doors to use keys on them. The users had to step up where the devs failed and could have fixed their issue with just a splash screen of the controls. It's even more confusing as they DO show controls in the corner of the screen from time to time, suggesting you already knew all the controls while playing, and clearly did not.
Not that this helped a lot as the game is overall pretty boring to begin with, but you could at least focus and not sit there wondering what else the devs chose not to tell you about the basic ways to interact with their game, ruining any remaining will to play.
2/10
Bugs: For all the problems this game has bugs were not one of them. I will not say this game ran flawless, but it did run "bug-less" at least.
Score: This is simply put a bad game. I can't remember the last time actively playing a game managed to put me to sleep while trying to understand what I was doing wrong. I can not remember the last time I had to rely on user reviews to tell me something about the controls themselves the games do not. I can not remember the last time I went from "can't see shit it's too dark" to a flashlight brighter then the sun and literally whiting out the screen. I can not remember the last time I played a PC game with absolutely NO settings, be it to remap controls or lower graphical settings for better performance. I can not remember the last time I played a game on anything without any instructions available, even just a screen showing the buttons you will use to play. I can not remember the last time I played a game where a flickering light felt like the game was breaking under my PC. And I absolutely can not remember the last time a game this bad had an asking price. Avoid this game.
2/10
System Requirements:
- Intel Corei5-3470 (3.2 Ghz)
- 4 GB RAM
- NVidia Gforce 750 ti
- 3 GB hard drive space
- Windows 10
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
Source: Steam
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