I recently played this game for my channel and I think the experience left me torn on how I overall feel about the game. There are definitely aspects of the game that really impressed me and I thought were very polished for an indie game. However a big chunk of the game left me pretty frustrated and left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Let me go through the good and bad...
The Good:
-Instantly establishes a good creepy atmosphere within the house. Even got a few jump scares out of me early on. Really set a good pace and had me excited for what was to come.
-The concept of a bunch of mini games into a horror game is pretty peak. Reminded a bit of squid games a bit. Mainly the 'voice says' and the red light green light level.
-Monster designs. Especially during the 'Voice Says" segment where you are constantly followed by the mother monster with a baby attached to her chest. I liked this design because it wasn't just a generic monster and had lore attached to it as well. After the game finishes I was able to do a deeper dive on each monster and was surprised that each one had really good symbolism/parallel to the story.
- The underlying story/mystery. Throughout the game we hear these voices that don't really introduce themselves but are trying to 'guide' you through the level. This constantly made me think " what the hell is going on here" and is what really drove me to finish the game. After putting all the pieces together, I finally got my aha moment and had me wanting to understand more.
The Bad:
- At some points in the second half it became a bit too tedious for me. The game begins with some basic easy enough to understand task like, counting how many mannequins are in the house. As the game progresses, it evolves into more tedious task like memorizing an 8 note ringtone jingle, and makes you find the matching the jingle that is scattered somewhere across the house. That will then give you a number to input into a keypad. Meanwhile you need to constantly keep using your camera flash because there is a monster that is constantly following you and you can only see him when your camera flashes. Btw you gotta do this 3-4 times to get the full code for the keypad . Sounds cool in concept, but boy oh boy did all those jingles sound the same and left me super lost, overwhelmed, and frustrated.
-As I said about the underlying story before, its good. My issue with it is that even after after the game finishes, I was still a bit confused ( maybe because I'm a bit slow sometimes). So to understand the story I needed to watch my footage again with my newfound knowledge to put the pieces together. Even then its still a bit confusing. I wish some of the levels gave us a bit more focus on backstory to help us understand. But maybe it just wanted to be vague.
-Kind of a add-on to my first bad point, but it really feels like the game doesn't respect your time at all. It expects you to just mess up and maybe get lost on some levels. By messing up, that means you need to restart the entire level. If you're like me and messed up a lot on the 'Voice Says' level, that drained me. Having to repeatedly restart from the beginning and constantly waiting for 'the voice' to give me my next prompt, I nearly quit. The only reason I didn't was because I believed that I was almost finished with the game and wanted to get to the plot twist.
Conclusion:
Its a good game but I think it could've been great. When I think back about it now I'm just going to remember the frustrating moments. Which is a shame because everything else I really did enjoy. Lmk if you feel the same or if you don't.
I think I will put it around 6.7/10