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This game has been around for over five years, and in fact just got remastered this past July, so if you've somehow overlooked it all this time it's still very much worth checking out. And it's just $2! SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe    One thing I love indie games for is building small games around single concepts. Bigger, more mainstream games tend to be chock full of ideas and content, but these little titles can be laser-focused experiences. That’s what makes They Breathe so effective, building a short experience around a concept that might not have the legs to carry a longer game. It’s certainly got some grim, twisted parts to explore, and some revelations that I doubt very much you’ll be expecting. It all fits together well enough to be well-worth your time, especially since it doesn’t ask for much of it. The forest has flooded, with the waters rising far above even the tallest trees. As an adorable little froggy that seems to be the least of your problems, though, because all manner of strange things are floating up from the water-logged depths. Some of them are your fellow froggies, gasping for air and desperate to escape something hunting them. Then there are the strange moose-looking creatures that seem intent on keeping you from descending further. All of you need air to continue your journeys, and there hardly seems enough to go around. It’s up to you to save who you can, survive the more hostile creatures, and uncover where all these terrible things have come from. There’s a really cool revelation waiting for you on this journey, and if it doesn’t strike you like a bolt out of the blue early on, it’ll make itself known by other means. It’s something that does a great job of playing up the sinister tone of the game, and that tone is paid off to great effect when you finally reach the end of your fateful dive. The backdrop of a flooded forest is unique even now, five years out from release, and only adds to the grim mystery. Really the atmosphere is the big selling point of They Breathe and it’s done extremely well, especially with the hand-drawn art and juxtaposition of your charming froggy against nightmares from the deep. The gameplay almost feels secondary to the mood here, and that’s partly because of its scope. Your journey into the depths of the forest is straight down, long enough to fill 30 minutes or so but without any exploration from the single descending screen. You’ll stop at several points to battle back the creatures that rise up to meet you, and your only defense is your nimble swimming. All you do is lead your froggy around with the mouse, but with just that you can push allies into oxygen bubbles and bait foes into traps. It all feels a bit loose, and some of the enemies have some rather troublesome patterns, but you should have little trouble reaching the terrible secret tucked away at the bottom of the place. They Breathe is a simple concept with a solid execution, and it ends up feeling exactly as long as it needs to. That’s not very long at all, but it’s a moody journey with at least one truly great ah-ha moment to satisfy your curiosity. You’ll even get a nice little selection of developer notes and commentary when you finish it, which helps flesh out the whole concept even further. But really, this one is all about the journey, and it’s one that will surely horrify in ways you haven’t seen before. The world can always use more clever indie shorts like this, so for goodness sake don’t miss out on the ones we have!
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Oct 7, 2019 16:38
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Just stopping quickly by to say that I may go long periods without posting here (schedules, etc) but I read all your reviews and you have always managed to convince me to buy at least 4 or 5 games of the games you bring here. I'm definitely going to try this They Breathe one.
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Oct 8, 2019 00:55
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Too Shy Guy posted:This game has been around for over five years, and in fact just got remastered this past July, so if you've somehow overlooked it all this time it's still very much worth checking out. And it's just $2! Fantastic review for a fantastic game. Makes me really sad that the needs of the marketplace are pushing so hard against games like this being viable anymore, but I hard-second checking out They Breathe, it's one of my all-time favorites. 
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Oct 8, 2019 07:28
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I know what you mean, but with the sudden rise of subscription services like Apple Arcade I'm wondering if games like this can make a commercial resurgence instead of being restricted to hobbyist projects. I'm personally not a big fan of the subscription model but Apple's in particular has gotten me to try some very small, very good games I might have missed otherwise, and I'm out here looking for games like that! SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe 8. The Final Station    You ever play a game that just has the perfect look and feel for you? Sometimes it’s something you never even realized you liked, but it captures your imagination in ways bigger or grander games can’t quite manage. I’ll tell you up front, The Final Station has done that for me. The oddly placid apocalypse and your dutiful journey through it feels like such an imaginative setting for horror, and the copious hints at world-building only draw me in further. While the action and management elements might not be as fully-realized as the setting, they serve it well enough to place this one among my indie horror favorites. Years ago, a strange event called the Visitation inflicted a zombie-like plague on the world. Those who survived reformed society into a heavily-regulated network of cities and stations connected by armored locomotives. As a conductor of one of these trains, your job is normally to ferry passengers and goods around on schedule. However, on this particular day, your route is going to be a little different. With whispers of a Second Visitation and conflict along the norther borders, you have been tasked with transporting some very special cargo to some very special stations. Do this, and humanity might still stand a chance. But what will you have to sacrifice to accomplish this mission? Originally I had thought The Last Station to be a sort of FTL management thing where the emphasis was on maintaining your train and passengers, with action being a secondary concern. Turns out it’s not that at all, but a series of side-scrolling levels to explore and survive, broken up by short train trips during which you do some basic management of your train. Between stops you can supply your passengers with food or medicine to keep them alive, tinker with the machinery on your train to keep it running smoothly, and chat with survivors or other conductors if time allows. Most of the management is dependent on what resources and survivors you find at each station, though there is some limited crafting to fill in the gaps for medicine and ammo. You get some tantalizing looks at the world as your train speeds along, beautiful vistas of bright fields and impossible skyscrapers, or frozen wastes dotted with unknown husks. Your passengers will mention developments in the world as well, hinting at the spread of infections or the fall of cities, and you’ll get to see that firsthand at each stop. You need an access code to pass each station on the network, and for any station that’s been overrun that means disembarking and scrambling around in the ruins looking for those four precious digits. These levels are just as beautiful and evocative as the landscapes, with houses to rummage through, notes to read, and secret facilities squirreled away in the strangest places. Deeper into your journey you will reach some absolutely nightmarish locales, as well as bunkers and cities where some of your biggest questions will be answered. Stops are also where you’ll have to contend with the monsters that are consuming the world, and this is probably the weakest part of The Final Station. You’ll face a half-dozen or so creatures in your journey but they’re all pretty much permutations of humans covered in black ooze that shamble towards you. Some are quicker, some are armored, some explode, and while they’re placed in levels with great care, there’s only so much you can do with a selection like that. Your guns are the safest way to dispatch them but ammo is limited, relegating you to carefully punching your way past foes or avoiding big groups entirely. Objects in the environment like chairs and barrels can be chucked around to deal with some, but you’ll need to be diligent in your searching and crafting, as well as thrifty with your bullets, to reach all the secrets tucked away in the levels. There are no encounters you can’t escape without damage but your limited options mean you may have to puzzle out some awkward solutions if you’re low on ammo. Gameplay is a big part of any experience, and while it’s far from bad here the combat is liable to grate on some as you reach the end of this 3 to 4 hour journey. It’s my only hesitation in recommending this game, because for me personally, the setting and story are good enough to make it an instant classic in my book. The dialog has some rough translations at times but if anything it adds to the grim atmosphere and fever-dream moments that make The Final Station so engrossing. From the moment I started I wanted to know everything about where this adventure would lead, and at no point was I disappointed with what I found. For fans of deep mysteries and unique worlds, you owe it to yourself to give this one a try.
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Oct 8, 2019 16:42
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I played a little bit of final station when it was on xbox game pass. Yeah it's a neat experience but the combat quickly becomes frustrating especially with certain enemy types. I gave up halfway through and moved on to something else.
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Oct 8, 2019 19:01
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'Placid apocalypse' is a really good way to describe it. Behind the scenes, there's some crazy poo poo going on, and you even get to see some of it in a truly unsettling chapter of your trip. But for the most part, it's out of your sight; you're just delivery cargo and passengers. Which makes it even worse, in a way. You hear of all these things happening that are awful, but so many people taking it as matter-of-fact stuff that can't be helped in this terrifying world. The sort of implications of events, such as the failed counterattack that is implied to have happened before the final chapter, for example, makes things chilling as hell, as all you do is chug along a landscape that is always serene. Aside from the combat issues, i would've liked to see just a smidgen more of the world and the story behind it...though it's certainly possible that even a little more would ruin the allure.
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Oct 9, 2019 05:18
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There's DLC for The Final Station that supposedly fills in some of the gaps about the world that I'll probably pick up sometime because yeah, I'd love to see more of this horrible place. I know folks here in the thread have discussed today's game, which is heartening because it feels criminally overlooked. And it's just $3 normally! SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe 8. The Final Station 9. Love, Sam    I can’t tell you how many indie horror games there are that lock you in a room or house to be tormented by something. It’s like this weird psychological horror gestalt where developers think they can tell Silent Hill 2’s story in Silent Hill 4’s apartment, without any of the mastery that made those games such touchstones. But Love, Sam is the one that gets it right. The folks who produced this dark little gem understood the needs of framing, pacing, and uncertainty to make the prison of your mind the horrific, oppressive place it can be. Not only that, they wove their horror into a fascinating mystery that will keep you guessing, right up until it’s too late. Holed up in your tiny studio apartment, you find yourself faced with the weight of your past. On your desk is a diary, detailing the lives of four high school classmates. Flipping through the pages, you are returned to a time of uncertainty, passion, and tragedy that haunts you to this day. Have you relived this story before? Why can’t you seem to escape its clutches? As you delve deeper into the events of that fateful year, your surroundings will change to reflect your fears and emotions. There’s something that you need to face, something that will not stop tugging at the edges of your mind. And it’s up to you to put an end to it. That might sound a bit grandiose, but Love, Sam has the pacing and the escalation to back it up. The story starts as a very simple recollection of events, working through the diary and making notes of particular events. Conveyed through some very solid writing and believable characters, this is the part that so many indie horror games fail at: forming a connection between the player and the story. By the time things start to go bad, you’ll be invested in the tale and working to sort out the secrets and connections. That attachment turns the scares into an adversary to overcome in your quest, and makes the revelations all the more impactful when you expectations are confirmed, or completely up-ended. And oh Lord, do things go bad. There are some painful moments in this tale of love and loss, and there is a presence in your apartment that wants you to feel them. Things will start to happen the further you get into the diary, forcing you to search around your room or deal with things that should not be there. The interplay between the diary text and your surroundings is expertly done, with tons of those terrible moments where you know something is about to happen, but not what. Few opportunities to terrify are missed here, and there was only one sequence that I didn’t particularly care for because of how video-gamey it was compared to the rest of the experience. That’s an excellent track record for an indie horror game, and well-worth powering through to get to the game’s multiple endings. In terms of looks, Love, Sam is exactly what it needs to be and no more, perfectly functional in its simple depictions of your room and its features. The sound design is exemplary though, with perfectly-timed cues, ominous ambiance, and oppressive noises right where they need to be. It’s surprisingly long for its scope, too, clocking in at just under three hours without any real padding or weak segments. Really, Love, Sam is what other indie horror games aspire to, a testament to the power of writing and pacing that it can make a single studio apartment so terrifying. If you’ve ever picked up a cheap first-person horror game hoping for a quality experience, this is the one you wanted. Too Shy Guy fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Oct 9, 2019 |
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Oct 9, 2019 16:31
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Question, it looks like there's some audio verbal components for Love, Sam (as suggested by the screenshot with a phone)? If so, are there subtitles? The store page suggests no, and as a hard of hearing gamer that would be a dealbreaker for me if there's voice without subtitles.
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Oct 9, 2019 21:56
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Morpheus posted:'Placid apocalypse' is a really good way to describe it.
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Oct 9, 2019 22:40
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Pyrolocutus posted:Question, it looks like there's some audio verbal components for Love, Sam (as suggested by the screenshot with a phone)? If so, are there subtitles? The store page suggests no, and as a hard of hearing gamer that would be a dealbreaker for me if there's voice without subtitles. Yeah, unfortunately I don't recall there being any subtitles in the game. You wouldn't be missing too much for most of the game, but the end has a fair bit of voiceover that's pretty important.  SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe 8. The Final Station 9. Love, Sam 10. Pacify    At this point I’m convinced that most people judge horror games on an entirely unique metric. There’s a shocking number of indie horror games out there that demonstrate no mastery of tension or atmosphere, yet are embraced by the community. I don’t know if it’s just a matter of having a plausible scare or two or just booting and playing without too many glitches, but the standards seem incredibly low. That’s the only way I can explain Pacify, a game about hunting keys and junk in a bog-standard spooky house while a girl that sounds like a combustion engine sometimes follows you around. I wouldn’t spend my time on that, much less drag my friends into it. An evil presence haunts the old funeral parlor on the edge of town. Locked within these dismal halls is a young girl with a terrible secret. Her soul is bound to this place, and only you can set her free. Alone or with a team of investigators, you must enter the house, search for clues to what happened there, and complete the ritual that will end this nightmare forever. But the dark forces at work will not sit idly by while you undo their machinations. The very tools you need for the ritual will resist your efforts, and the girl’s terrible secret will prove to be one that threatens your very life. That’s the setup, anyway. What actually happens is that you bust up into a generic old mansion that I guess could have been a funeral parlor with some heavy redecorating and hunt for the doo-dads that will let you break the curse and win the game. There’s a whole mess of them scattered all over the house though, and you’re going to need around a half-dozen keys to get into all the different rooms of the place. That means the first half of your adventure here is a straight key hunt, unlocking areas in sequence so you can get everything ready. I wouldn’t even call it a very good key hunt, since you’re looking for small, nondescript props in a pretty generic house setting. Once that’s done you can start collecting the things you need to win. Each one you find will have to be taken to a specific spot for the ritual, but as the game progresses these things will actually start running around the house. Whatever atmosphere you get from the spooky, stormy night and murderchild wandering around is pretty quickly killed by these giggling little streakers. As for the girl, it’s important to note that she has two modes. When she’s calm, she just roams the house silently, bumping into you if she happens to be around. Periodically she’ll become possessed, floating around the house humming like a riding lawnmower and bee-lining towards you if your paths cross. She’s easy to juke around tables or beds, though, and she’s wreathed with some kind of ghost lightning you can see through walls that makes her easy to spot. It’s possible this game will scare you exactly one time, when you first meet the girl, assuming you run around a corner and she’s right there in your face. After that the threat and mystery is gone, killed twice as hard by the other giggling inhabitants of the house. What you’re left with is a boring key hunt and a tedious scavenger hunt, interrupted by confusing a stiff, unconvincing banshee around a table. Single-player is hardly worth it, especially given there’s one map, one enemy, and one constant objective. You can try multiplayer but I suggest you get some friends because after several attempts I only got into one game, and my team just ran around willy-nilly until the ghost caught up to them all. Multiplayer can make bad games fun, but that doesn’t make the game any less bad. For a one-dev project it’s certainly a fine feat, but one that should be more proof-of-concept than anything. I can’t see myself ever recommending this for any reason, especially with the growing numbers of decent horror multiplayer games out there. The graphics are fine if generic, and the sound design is functional, though I have no idea why you would pick a low, endless growl for your ghost instead of something actually spooky. Even if the action wasn’t boring and repetitive, there’s none of the variety here that you find in similar games. Leave this girl alone in her big old house and move on to greater scares, because this one ain’t gonna do much for you on any level.
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Oct 10, 2019 16:29
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Cardiovorax posted:I read that as 'plaid apocalypse' and I'm kind of disappointed I was wrong, because that sounds like it would be an experience. I feel like there's a Garth Marenghi's Darkplace episode that depicts the plaid apocalypse
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Oct 10, 2019 16:35
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I know horror is subjective and all that but I'll never understand how people can hear "Child singing nursery rhyme in sinister voice" and not find it the corniest, silliest thing. But it's so common! Am I dead on the inside for not finding it scary? That sort of thing is an immediate immersion breaker for me but even Dead Space was guilty of it.
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Oct 10, 2019 17:04
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It works for scares under very specific circumstances you need to build up to. So no 999 times out of a thousand, it’s stupid as hell and annihilates tension and dread
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Oct 10, 2019 17:08
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Songbearer posted:I know horror is subjective and all that but I'll never understand how people can hear "Child singing nursery rhyme in sinister voice" and not find it the corniest, silliest thing. But it's so common! Am I dead on the inside for not finding it scary? That sort of thing is an immediate immersion breaker for me but even Dead Space was guilty of it. I’m with you. It’s the same class of hokey as having children sing part of a song for effect. For some people it’s deeply impactful, but to me it’s doodoo garbage. It’s cultural cilantro.
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Oct 10, 2019 19:16
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ashes / ashes / we all fall down
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Oct 10, 2019 19:50
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n7ydFQIskg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZWxuHv3mSc
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Oct 10, 2019 21:11
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mysterious frankie posted:I’m with you. It’s the same class of hokey as having children sing part of a song for effect. For some people it’s deeply impactful, but to me it’s doodoo garbage. It’s cultural cilantro. Cilantro is delicious so it’s just your mutant genes. The creepy singing child is trite and was parodied hilariously with Freddy’s Coming for You, but I love love love when it’s an actual composed song or used as a backing track. Some of my favorite examples Coraline theme song Anthem theme song from Us The Birds Risselty Rosselty Nausicaa theme Carol Anne’s theme Poltergeist Pet Sematary theme Amityville Horror theme Nursery Rhymes are boring because we all know theme but if a child choir sings to slow music you immediately have my attention.
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Oct 10, 2019 22:03
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Children just reminds us that we're all old and that is horrifying
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Oct 10, 2019 22:07
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are we counting the goddamn loving awful creepy doll recording of the Lord's prayer that I hate so goddamn much that shows up in Anatomy gently caress that thing
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Oct 10, 2019 22:09
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It’s more daring now to go in the opposite direction where Resident Evil 7 turns a nursery rhyme into a horror rock song.
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Oct 10, 2019 22:11
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One of the things that makes kids singing/scary clowns for that matter so hokey is they all feel outdated because the source material "innocence" of those things aren't really around anymore. Kids don't sing nursery rhymes anymore, they be out here singing "baby shark" - a proper modern horror piece should make use of THAT poo poo. Give me some creepy kids doing some Yo Gabba Gabba. EDIT: Similarly, instead of clowns as the defacto "children entertainers gone awry" someone should really make a film/game where a slime reaction youtuber is the monster instead. Bert of the Forest fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 10, 2019 22:23
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Not that the original version is all that much less morbid.quote:Go tell Aunt Rhody
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Oct 10, 2019 22:30
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Even modern kids’ entertainment being creepy is plaid out. Wonder Showzen did that years ago and Aqua Teen has a great little video called “this is your left” which is worth a watch if you haven’t seen it.
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Oct 10, 2019 23:08
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al-azad posted:Cilantro is delicious so it’s just your mutant genes. That was the point of the comparison, my posting buddy.
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Oct 10, 2019 23:37
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Where does Drunken Whaler from Dishonored fall on this scale
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Oct 10, 2019 23:43
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al-azad posted:Even modern kids’ entertainment being creepy is plaid out. Wonder Showzen did that years ago and Aqua Teen has a great little video called “this is your left” which is worth a watch if you haven’t seen it. That episode of ATHF legit creeped me out during the segment where the cloned TV started doing weird and creepy poo poo. It was pretty funny too. I feel like it hit a note that could be spun into its own horror idea.
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Oct 11, 2019 00:30
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Black August posted:That episode of ATHF legit creeped me out during the segment where the cloned TV started doing weird and creepy poo poo. It was pretty funny too. I feel like it hit a note that could be spun into its own horror idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKKJK1Uh81Q
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Oct 11, 2019 01:48
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If copyright law wasn't an issue I'm fairly sure there will be horror renditions of baby shark in games and movies everywhere
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Oct 11, 2019 02:08
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I'd just like to take a moment to recommend Zelle. It's a new horror game made in RPG Maker MV and it's been a while since I've played a game with such a strange feeling to it. It's a game that's sort of hard to describe because it's a mixture of multiple genres but the overall vibe is very unsettling.
FZeroRacer fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Oct 11, 2019 |
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Oct 11, 2019 05:13
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FirstAidKite posted:Where does Drunken Whaler from Dishonored fall on this scale I personally really liked that, though it wasn't so much scary as effective as a marketing campaign. I remember taking note of that as being a really good trailer at the time.
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Oct 11, 2019 06:53
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al-azad posted:Aqua Teen has a great little video called “this is your left” which is worth a watch if you haven’t seen it. As someone who spent much of their 20s watching ATHF at 3am this is one of the only bits I remember from the show. That said it’s more to do with I consistently have trouble with left/right and sympathize with Meatwad squinting at the screen, attempting to learn what “left” is.
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Oct 11, 2019 14:52
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imo there's nothing worse than the ~dark retelling of a childrens story/fairy tale~. just grow the gently caress up you unoriginal nerds *steps away from the mirror*
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Oct 11, 2019 15:14
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I think there's room for a co-op retelling of Hansel and Gretel, possibly three players for the full asymmetrical multiplayer experience.
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Oct 11, 2019 15:33
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:As someone who spent much of their 20s watching ATHF at 3am this is one of the only bits I remember from the show. That said it’s more to do with I consistently have trouble with left/right and sympathize with Meatwad squinting at the screen, attempting to learn what “left” is. “FORGED IN DARKNESS WITH WHEAT HARVESTED IN HELL’S HALF-ACRE” is the one thing that sticks with me because my roommate at the time really liked weed and that line spontaneously emitted from his face whenever he smoked, which was a process that paused only when the lighter went missing.
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Oct 11, 2019 17:13
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I don't normally see this one discussed in horror contexts, even though it definitely intends to horrify you at several points. In any event, it's just too good for me to put off talking about any longer. SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe 8. The Final Station 9. Love, Sam 10. Pacify 11. Return of the Obra Dinn    A rather underrated challenge in designing puzzle games is finding ways to make the puzzles appear natural. Obviously this isn’t a consideration for something like sudoku, but for games where you move around within a world and experience more than just brain-teasers, the presence of puzzles can stick out like a sore thumb. Return of the Obra Dinn tackles this by making the entire game one giant puzzle, an interlocking set of deductions and suppositions that build upon each other until you’ve revealed the entire design. And the fact that it does so with an incredible story and pervasive sense of dread leaves it very much at the pinnacle of several genres. In 1803, the merchant ship Obra Dinn was lost at sea, with all 60 crew and passengers assumed lost with it. Four years later, the Obra Dinn was discovered drifting in the North Atlantic, its sails damaged and its crew missing. You are cast as an insurance investigator for the East India Company, who have a very obvious interest in the fate of the ship and its cargo. Dispatched to examine the vessel and determine the damages, you are also sent with a special package from an interested third party. The contents of this package will provide you the means to uncover the true fates of every soul aboard the ship, and reveal the shape of the dark events that gripped its journey. Your journal provides a comprehensive overview of the ship’s route, maps of the decks, a complete crew manifest, and sketches of the crew across several scenes. The rest of the tome is divided into chapters that cover the events of the Obra Dinn‘s fateful voyage. When you find the remains of someone on the ship, their entry is added to the chapter where they met their ultimate fate. Your job is to determine who they are, what happened to them, and if someone or something had a hand in events, who they were as well. Every time you complete three entries, the game confirms them and locks them in. It’s a clever way to allow for educated guessing without allowing players to brute-force every fate in the book. But how do you determine these fates? Well, if you don’t mind a small spoiler for a game mechanic you discover five minutes in, you have a tool that allows you to witness the moment of death of any corpse or remains you find. You’ll hear the last few seconds of events leading up to the deed, and then you are given free reign to wander around the macabre scene, frozen in time. From here the cause of death is usually (but not always) obvious, and you can begin to make deductions on identities based on circumstances, positions, gestures, even objects around the person. It’s not only the victim, either, because you get an expansive scene of what was happening around them, often enough to make conclusions about complete bystanders. And every detail is going to count when working out the identities of an entire ship of people. This is what I really want to stress, how incredibly clever and natural puzzling out the mysteries is. The first few entries are bound to be simple enough, figuring out who the captain is or marking off crew who actually get called by name. But then you get to scenes where someone is calling a name into a crowd. Or scenes with all the topmen up in the rigging, performing their duties. Or scenes with a body wrapped tight, with others discussing them in vague terms. Never will a character say someone’s name or label something just to give it away, these are natural conversations and natural interactions that you have to read into as hard as possible to solve the puzzle. Everything matters in these scenes, from a strange accent to a hand resting on a doorknob to a scrap of paper in an odd place. After I completed every fate, I went back to look at guides to help me sort out the story and discovered I had missed fully half the clues in the game with my educated guessing. And then there’s the story. Believe me, it would be more than enough if Return of the Obra Dinn was just a perfectly-constructed puzzle box of random scenes. But these scenes give you tantalizing glimpses into one of the most tragically cursed voyages imaginable. The despair and desperation in some of these scenes is palpable, even frozen as they are, and the plot is a twisting, sordid affair that’s just as tricky to puzzle out as your task. It’s a shockingly intense game at times, and I guarantee there will be a moment early on that blows your expectations wide open. When that happens the game’s tone turns to 11 and only builds from there as you pile more and more horrific events up. The story is also told out of order in a very compelling way, and even keeps one middle chapter off-limits until you complete the rest of the game, providing a fine coda to wrap up your final suspicions once your task is done. For anyone intimidated by the scope of the mystery, Return of the Obra Dinn also features a ton of considerations for helping you organize and focus on your work. For the first half-hour or so of the game, it will give you direct instructions on how your tools work, explain the mechanics of determining fates and making connections, and so on. The journal has all sorts of handy linking and bookmarking features, as well as some helpful indicators on how difficult uncovering an identity will be at different points. There’s also a few points where the game will helpfully tell you that you’re done with something, which went a long way to keeping my uncertainties focused on the job instead of the game mechanics. All this is presented in an incredibly stylish low-res 3D motif that mimics the feel of an old Amiga or Apple IIe. Seriously, there are even options to change the color scheme to copy those, the Commodore, and more. The chunky style can make some details a bit hard to make out, but there was clear effort to minimize these troubles as much as possible and it’s entirely worth it for how breathtaking some of the scenes end up being. The sound design is just as good, with perfectly evocative effects, a moody soundtrack, and some surprisingly good voice acting. Any one of these features, from the presentation to the game design to the writing, would be enough to make this a classic. But somehow Return of the Obra Dinn has it all, making it a puzzling adventure that everyone needs to experience.
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Oct 11, 2019 17:23
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Loved Obra Dinn. Going in blind, I expected some sort of mutiny mystery, men killing each other left and right. So I was surprised as poo poo when the one flashback started and suddenly there's a massive kraken attacking the ship, tearing people apart and destroying everything
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Oct 11, 2019 18:07
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Loved Obra Dinn. Going in blind, I expected some sort of mutiny mystery, men killing each other left and right. So I was surprised as poo poo when the one flashback started and suddenly there's a massive kraken attacking the ship, tearing people apart and destroying everything
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Oct 11, 2019 18:09
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I had hopes that this one would transcend its indie horror trappings as Love, Sam did. It didn't. SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe 8. The Final Station 9. Love, Sam 10. Pacify 11. Return of the Obra Dinn 12. Silver Chains    Guy crashes his car, ends up in a spooky mansion. Which horror game am I talking about? In the world of modern indie horror, that’s about half the field right there. There’s an extremely popular (among developers) approach to horror games where you stick the player in a house with things to collect and a monster to avoid, and maybe the protagonist has some dark secret. That describes Silver Chains to a T, with the only notable aspect of the game being the unusual level of polish for an entirely usual horror game. And in case you can’t tell by my tone, that’s hardly enough to impress. You are Peter, and yep, you crashed your car like fifty feet away from the most haunted house in the county on a dark and spooky night. Stumbling inside you find the place decrepit and deserted, save for a horrifying presence that is none too pleased to find you trespassing. But it turns out this is no random haunting, because you have a connection to this place that makes you the only hope for the forlorn souls trapped within. You’ll need to comb the entire mansion for keys and clues that will lead you to the secrets of this dark place, and the means to put an end to them. Silver Chains is essentially a play in three acts. For the first act, you follow the trail of open doors and spooky sounds around the house, catching little glimpses of the overall plot. The second act starts with you being filled in on the details of the haunting, and performing specific hunts in different parts of the place before opening everything up in the third act for a big scavenger hunt. Each of those acts will take you about an hour, and all except the third are heavily scripted to show you things and threaten you at specific points. There are some little twists and turns to the story, but once you figure out who the ghost is and your connection to them, you’re pretty well locked in on the plot. Does this sound overly dismissive? It might be because Silver Chains is really a story of missed opportunities. From the moment you find yourself in the house, the game fails to capitalize on the atmosphere afforded by its detailed graphics. There were so many scenes where I’d have to peer through a crack in the wall or walk past a window where something really should have happened, but didn’t. The other side of this disappointing coin is how many cliche jumpscares and indie horror tropes ended up here instead, like hiding in closets from scripted monsters and watching a child’s ball roll across the floor. Even the ghost herself fails to impress because you’re going to figure out something about how she works very early on, and it’s going to absolutely suck all the tension out of the game once you realize it. There were probably two moments that scared me in the game, and both were cheap jumpscares that managed to be timed just right. Everything else in the game is wasted on tricks you’ve seen in a hundred other indie horror games. It’s the same story with the game mechanics too, combing rooms for photograph fragments or collecting doll parts because you’ve been ordered to. Here again, there’s one cool mechanic in the game that helps shake up the middle third of the game, but even that’s nothing unique and only serves to get you to the parts of the house you need to be in for the next setpiece. The graphics are what do the heavy lifting here, with a level of detail and polish not often seen in games of this low caliber, and even the sound design and voice work has their high points. It’s just that nothing that happens manages to live up to the expectations set by the presentation. The nicest thing I can say about Silver Chains is that it’s probably one of the best cliche indie horror games around. That’s not a compliment, that’s acknowledging that a lot of effort went into making something that’s little more than a copy of a copy of a copy of a horror game. Everything here, from the story to the scares to the gameplay itself, is all lifted from other games. It looks and sounds better than it did in those games, but the experience of playing the thing is certainly no better. With dozens of innovative horror games out already and more always on the way, there’s no reason to settle for the best of a particularly poor pile.
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Oct 12, 2019 18:28
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Too Shy Guy posted:I had hopes that this one would transcend its indie horror trappings as Love, Sam did. It didn't. What's the gimmick with how she works that you'll "figure out early on"? Since I have 0 intent of ever playing that, I'm curious.
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Oct 12, 2019 23:15
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Tolth posted:What's the gimmick with how she works that you'll "figure out early on"? Since I have 0 intent of ever playing that, I'm curious. She never patrols or appears randomly, only in scripted sequences. You're completely safe wandering the entire house until you do something plot-related.
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Oct 13, 2019 00:24
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