The TL;DR is that there is absolutely no reason to buy this game, but I like to do in-depth reviews, so feel free to continue reading for a whole breakdown.
To begin, I would like to say that before I wrote this review, I made a discussion post talking about my inability to play the game and some things that I would have liked to see changed, and I gave plenty of time for a response or a patch, but literally nothing has happened in months. No replies, no patches. I made the post because I hate writing scathing reviews; I would much prefer to be positive, but this is nothing short of a broken asset flip. Because of that, this game deserves a very negative review, which sucks because I was even given this game as a curator. Nonetheless, just because I was given something does not mean I will lie about how good it is; I have more integrity than that. So I would still like to thank the dev for the game and the opportunity to review it, but this is trash, and no one should buy it.
So, to begin with the gameplay, it is sad to say that there really isn’t much I can say that is good about this game. From the little bit of the main game I was able to play, I do think that the atmosphere was good and I got a scare or two, but beyond that I can’t say that the gameplay is good. First and foremost, for me at least, the game is just broken. I played the main game, and I was only able to explore a few rooms before I was locked in a space with nothing to do. Most of my playtime was trying to find anything to progress with a reasonable amount of time being spent on restarting, reinstalling, and checking the validity of the files trying to get to the rest of the game, but unless there is some insane hiding spot that I was unable to find in an hour in the first area, the game is broken and unplayable. Beyond this, the horde mode is just awful the gunplay feels very basic and is probably the least rough part of the gameplay, but the enemies feel like they either take too little damage or just take inconsistent damage, the zombies’ AI is absolutely garbage, there is no variety in enemies and they just spawn infinitely, their agro ranges are tiny, and it was all just slapped together assets with barely any functionality (which very clear when you pause the game and see the name of the asset pack in the top right). The testing area was neat; it is good to see what the game is supposed to have and how it works, but I would prefer an actual game. Everything is also very clunky feeling, especially the jumping. To get on top of things, you need to run and jump, not just jump, which would be fine if I wasn’t stacking things tightly together and using literal inches to try and make a running jump. It is awful. Moreover, the physics are pretty rough, grabbing and rotating items regularly gave me problems, and the crouching, crawling, and walking all feel slow and imprecise. To add insult to injury, the UI is not very intuitive, you would think the scroll wheel would change items but it just puts them away, some of the prompts are reversed which is a bit confusing, and changing key binds completely locked up the game. In short, this game is an asset flipping mess.
As for the story, I only saw 5 minutes of it, and from what I was getting from it, I felt that it was going to be very generic. So, there is no reason to play this game for the story.
The sound design is competent but basic. I wouldn’t say it is bad, but it is clearly generic, so I am going to guess the sounds are also from asset libraries. So, I don’t really have much more to add.
Graphically, once again, this is clearly an asset flip, so it looks fine, but it does feel like it is put together pieces rather than something made with more care. I will say though, that the choice to use what looks to be an IRL recording for the videotape was an interesting choice. I am not a fan of mixing the two, but the way that the video was shot looked pretty cool. But yeah, it is fine, but it seems to be only Unity assets.
Overall, this was a terrible experience. I hate giving negative reviews to games I have been given to curate, but this is barely a game, and I won’t sugarcoat that. What’s crazy though, is that this isn’t the dev’s first horror game; they have another one that uses the same assets, so maybe that one works, but this one does not, and so this one is a pass for sure.
