Photomaly

There are plenty of things to like about this game, and I enjoyed my roughly two hours of playtime, the jumpscares were actually fine the first time through. There's not much depth to the story and what little writing you get is very disjointed, but indie horror games aren't known for their stupendous writing. It's fine. I also encountered a bug with the placement mode in the frames that meant I had to replay night 2 over again. Not a huge deal, but apparently this game is kind of buggy. And then you get sent to the backrooms. The sequence isn't hard at all, just tedious enough to make me not care about the outcome. It's mildly annoying the first time, but if you're able to manage the mannequin enough to get it on the second or third attempt it should be fine. But to me, this was the death knell of the game. I quit the game entirely after a couple of attempts because I just couldn't be bothered to care. Personally, I cannot stand immersion-shattering moments in horror games. The number one way to make me quit your game is to annoy me sufficiently with things that don't enhance the narrative or add anything of substance, but detract from the experience. The backrooms section is that. It's just something the developer put in to make gamers Soy Pog and that's all. The sad part is that you don't even have to remove the backrooms part to fix this issue. Just patch in a branching outcome and make it a one-time thing. If the player completes it, give them an achievement and some in-game money, if they don't hit them with a jumpscare or other "bad" solution to the "quest". Just don't make finishing it's tedious gameplay loop mandatory. Is it a fine horror experience? Sure, if you don't mind a very tedious speed bump.