My Dad introduced me to computers at a very young age. I was four when he sat me in front of his Texas Instruments computer (a TI/4A-99 if you want specific) and set me on the path of technology. Computers called me and I fell in love with it. But I would find gaming as well as general use when my brother and I got our first console (a NES) a few years later. And I would get into Shadowgate on there... the first game to creep me out. But in the same spirit it was also one of the first two games I ever put in the resolve to finish.
Apparently I was not the only one effected by the game, however, as while following a raid on twitch, I found someone playing this game. Unfortunately I have had to walk away from the channel (one of the very few times I have ever felt like would ban me if I said what I legitimately wanted to say), but with a game name, I went hunting and found out the game was not only was the game readily available, it was also free. I downloaded it on the spot. Now we finally got to play... and I'm so glad I did.
Story: You just woke up from a stasis chamber and something is VERY very wrong. The outside lights of the ship are off, the place is too quiet, and you are feeling sick yourself beyond the feeling of impending doom. As you succeed in leaving the room you woke up in, you will begin to remember what lead to this point and the source of the dread. Specifically you were part of an investigation team who went down to the planet below and came back sick. The stasis pod was to freeze you while the medic work on a cure... but it seems you either weren't the only one or they didn't get you isolated soon enough...
The plot of this game will ask you to explore and discover what you forgot, what happened while you were out, and ultimately to survive a nightmare of alien infestation aboard the ship. It is a fairly simple story, but it is solid and flows perfectly. I kinda wish there was an extra touch at the end, but it felt like it chose not to push that rather darker idea. It is an incredibly minor issue, but when you play, I think you will see just how that could have pushed the story that much more.
7/10
Graphics: Welcome back to 8-bit gaming. While made for much more modern hardware, this game was made in tribute of an NES series of titles and the look reflects this brilliantly. Like these games of old, you will have a screen divided into three major sections, each taking up a calculated part of the limited "DOS-type" low-resolution space available. In the upper left, you will get a window into the world you are playing in. This can often look fairly simple, depicting the rooms of the space station in pixel-art with all the limitations of the era it is imitating (color palette included). Unfortunately the need to mimic the old games does come at a few small costs. For one the transition screens, while perfect imitations of what they were in the other games, seem slow somehow, and while you will get used to it, it is jarring against what you might remember (or what you might expect to be a reasonable pace to move between screens). And while the style is damn near perfect, some of the art itself is not... specifically around creatures. There are not a lot of individual ones, and they can appear goofy much more then menacing at times. But at least the death scene (as the series of games being celebrated always had) is appropriately shocking in all of this. Next to this is a list of items either in your inventory or in whatever object you have opened up. It works fairly well. But like the transitions between locations in the room display, opening and shutting objects seems unnecessarily slow.
The lower portion of the screen is where all the buttons for your commands as well as a "radar" for the room you are in live. It is a relatively simple piece of artwork, but essential to the gameplay and fits the theme of the game brilliantly.
As a whole, the nostalgia trip is complete in all the right ways and I could not be happier with what was on my screen while I played it.
8/10
Sound: Much like the visuals, the sound in this game is an absolute ohmage to the games of old. Right from the title screen, you are deluged in 8-bit chiptune glory. Do not get me wrong, this is a short game and as such the soundtrack is fairly limited, but what is here is absolutely masterful. Energetic, moody, and just a great example of what chip-tunes can be.
Sound effects, on the other hand, are a lot less impressive. You will basically hear the sound of screen transition for the most part as you move between screens with occasional sound effects for some of your actions, but these are not all that often or varied up in any significant way.
7/10
Gameplay: In essence, Infested is a point and click game where you will use the buttons on the bottom of the screen to declare the kind of action you wish to do and click on what you wish to do it to, be it on the room display or in the inventory list. It is also not in real-time, but rather any time you act, you basically use a "turn" giving you plenty of time to stop and think if you are stuck. This fairly intuitive system will allow you to navigate the game's world and figure out it's puzzles. But I would not say it's quite as good as the old games here as it seems to be a little more simplistic. For example, there is no "close" option so you learn early on there is no way to open up anything you are not supposed to.
And this is perhaps part of the biggest departure from the old games here: it is a lot more merciful and won't let you make yourself a dead-man-walking in any way I could imagine. If you can use an item in a specific way, you are either meant to, or the game is designed so that you just found an untimely demise (and those can be fun to find, too). In addition the game also doesn't require you to worry about saving nearly as much as the old titles. Rather if you die, you are given a continue option which will leave you with all the progress you had made, but in the room you were in before. As such, you can throw caution to the wind if you so desire since you simply can not waste anything vital. (Although I wish I had known that for one specific puzzle... would have felt a lot better about my more intuitive answer).
But with that mercy comes some limitations. The game wants you to solve it's puzzles exactly one way, so you may find yourself stuck until you stumble on some detail you just didn't notice or think to apply to the situation. It will make you stop to figure details out, but once you get rolling you will probably be good to go. Enjoy this small blast from the past.
8/10
Bugs: There were no bugs when I played this game. It ran absolutely perfectly.
Score: Simply put, I loved this game and beat it in two sittings. (I had to stop for lunch and to start the slow cooker for dinner.) It is short, but sweet and a great tribute to an older set of games that those of us who got to play them will never forget. (And I have every intention of playing again, but we will get to that later.) If you have fond memories of sitting in front of your TV with the NES plugged in and spooky games dancing before you, you may just like this. If you remember Shadowgate in particular like this, you will LOVE this game. And if you have any taste for nostalgia gaming, this is offering you a healthy helping of it without even asking for a dime. Come play.
8/10
System Requirements:
- If your system is running comfortably under your version of Windows, you can run this game.
- Windows XP
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
Source: Itch.io
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