The Church in the Darkness ™

Come brothers and come sisters
Come weary and come strong
Come meet the man who reaps the land on which we walk upon
The time has come for judgement, but we ain't done nothing wrong
Join us so, we all can sing along

Oh John (oh John)
Bold and brave
He's finding us a family
He's teaching us the faith
Oh John (oh John)
Keep us safe
He's gonna march us right through Eden's Gate
Oh Lord
He's gonna march us right through Eden's Gate

Come mothers and come fathers
Come caring and come fierce
You've gotta see this for yourself if you don't believe your ears
The blessing just takes minutes, but it lasts a thousand years
In holy water, there can be no tears

Oh John (oh John)
Bold and brave
He's finding us a family
He's teaching us the faith
Oh John (oh John)
Keep us safe
He's gonna march us right through Eden's Gate
Oh Lord
He's gonna march us right through Eden's Gate

Come elders and come children
Come wisdom and come fire
You've gotta see how strong you'll be when you're free of all desire
Our country made a promise, but you cannot trust a liar
So grab a book and step into the choir

Oh John (oh John)
Bold and brave (bold and brave)
He's finding us a family
He's teaching us the faith
Oh John (oh John)
Keep us safe
He's gonna march us right through Eden's Gate

Oh Lord
He's gonna march us right through Eden's Gate
Oh Lord
He's gonna march us right through Eden's Gate

They'll look high and they'll look low
They'll look everywhere we go
But when the sinners find us, we won't hide
They'll come loud and they'll come fast
We shoot first and we can last
Keep your rifle by your side

Singin', "Oh Lord, this earth was made for us"
Singin', "Oh Lord, this sinful life just ain't enough"
So we'll take a stand
'Cause we must protect our land
Keep your rifle by your side

They'll come day and they'll come night
They'll have our children in their sights
But if they don't have faith, their eyes are blind
They can scream and they can shout
But they can never smoke us out
Keep your rifle by your side

Singin', "Oh Lord, this earth was made for us"
Singin', "Oh Lord, this sinful life just ain't enough"
When we hear the voice
We know we have no other choice
Keep your rifle by your side

They'll have bombs and they'll have tanks
'Cause they've got money in their banks
But we won't fall as long as we can fight
They'll go on and preach their hate
But they won't get past the gate
Keep your rifle by your side

Singin', "Oh Lord, this earth was made for us"
Singin', "Oh Lord, this sinful life just ain't enough"
And when I see your face
I know I must protect my place
I'll keep my rifle by my side
I'll keep my rifle by my side

Keep your rifle by your side

He once was a peach picker and he toiled in the sun
He reaped the orchard on his own until the day was done
His hand were hard and callused 'cause he didn't have a choice
He served so many non-believers 'til he heard the voice

Now he's our shepherd and we're his flock
Now he's our captain and our ship's about to dock
Now he's our keeper, to keep us safe from wrath
Now he's our father, he's gonna lead us down that path

He once became a beggar when the wealthy had no work
He'd sit out in the snowfall 'til his toes and fingers hurt
Every flake that fell on him felt like a demon's kiss
He suffered countless hardships, until he found the Bliss

Now he's our shepherd and we're his flock
Now he's our captain and our ship's about to dock
Now he's our keeper, to keeps us safe from wrath
Now he's our father, he's gonna lead us down that path

They once locked him in prison, though his soul was free from sin
They fed him almost nothing 'til his face was cold and thin
They slandered him with every crime that was within their laws
He had to face a thousand liars, 'til he knew his cause

Now he's our shepherd and we're his flock
Now he's our captain and our ship's about to dock
Now he's our keeper, to keep us safe from wrath
Now he's our father, he's gonna lead us down that path
Now he's our father, he's gonna lead us down that path

I once was a child
With innocent eyes
And my family swore
They knew best for my life

I followed their rules
As I played with my friends
When it came to the world
I never thought it would end

Help me faith
Help me faith, shield me from sorrow
From fear of tomorrow
Help me faith
Help me faith, shield me from sadness
From worry and madness
Lead me to the bliss

And as I grew up
I could never be free
'Cause the shackles I wore
Can't be touched to be seen

My heart never loved
And my soul couldn't laugh
So much hate in my life
Couldn't make out the path

Help me faith
Help me faith, shield me from sorrow
From fear of tomorrow
Help me faith
Help me faith, shield me from sadness
From worry and madness
Lead me to the place

And when I grew old
I was riddled with sin
Locked my soul in the dark
Never let the light in

I crawled towards the gate
With little time left
I cried, "what have I done?"
As I took my last breath

Help me faith
Help me faith, shield me from sorrow
From fear of tomorrow
Help me faith
Help me faith, shield me from sadness
From worry and madness
Lead me to the place
Lead me to the place

If your soul has grown weary
Your heart feels tired
Let the water wash away your sins
If the snow begins to fall
And you can't find a fire
Let the water wash away your sins
If the night time lasts forever
But the days are cruel and mean
Let the water wash away your sins
And you thought one day you'd be happy
If you held in all your screams
Let the water wash away your sins

Let the water wash away your sins
Let the water wash away your sins
Now that this old world is ending
A new one begins
Let the water wash away your sins

If you spent your whole life working
For a world that feeds on doubt
Let the water wash away your sins
And those banks keep getting bigger
While your pockets empty out
Let the water wash away your sins
And if all the thieves and liars
Have been knocking at your door
Let the water wash away your sins
And they said they'd feed your family
And you believed what they swore
Let the water wash away your sins

Let the water wash away your sins
Let the water wash away your sins
Now that this old world is ending
A new one begins
Let the water wash away your sins

If you thought that there was a heaven
But you can't find the proof
Let the water wash away your sins
And you can see your brothers marching
But you can't speak your truth
Let the water wash away your sins
If your mother was a screamer
And your father ruled with fists
Let the water wash away your sins
And if you're thinking 'bout the highway
And you're looking at your wrists
Let the water wash away your sins

Let the water wash away your sins
Let the water wash away your sins
Now that this old world is ending
A new one begins
Let the water wash away your sins

Let the water wash away your sins
Let the water wash away your sins
Now that this old world is ending
A new one begins
Let the water wash away your sins

When the world seems bleak and cold
When your bones feel tired and old
When wind is howling through the trees

There's a shelter from the storm
There's a fire burning warm
You'll find it if you follow me

Oh, the Bliss
Oh, the Bliss
Oh, the Bliss will set you free
Oh, the Bliss is gonna make you see

When the world seems grim and dark
When the sky won't show a star
When fog is thicker than the sea

Travel through the blackest night
In the forest hides the light
You'll find it if you follow me

Oh, the Bliss
Oh, the Bliss
Oh, the Bliss will set you free
Oh, the Bliss is gonna make you see

When the world is torn by war
When the rain of bullets pours
When bombs fall like autumn leaves

There's a garden through the gate
Where the father keeps us safe
You'll find it if you follow me

And oh, the Bliss
Oh, the Bliss
Oh, the Bliss will set you free
Oh, the Bliss is gonna make you see

Oh, the Bliss
Oh, the Bliss
Oh, the Bliss

Decent enough game if you have the patience. I mean, reeeeeeeally have the patience.

the church in the darkness is an action-adventure game that was released in 2019 for PC, PS4, & xbox one. published by fellow traveller, a smaller publisher. you play as someone attempting to infiltrate a religious cult that is very reminiscent of the whole 'jonestown' thing from the 1960s. it's very similar to the original metal gear solid in regards to gameplay style, focusing on stealth, albeit extremely basic in depth.

the game plays very unpolished, which is extremely disappointing given the scope of this game and how small it is. some tight and responsive gameplay would've made up for some of the other shortcomings the game had. this is not some terrible flop of a game, but it definitely is closer to a 4/10 then like a 7/10, but i wouldn't say it's so bad to warrant a negative rating (which i reserve for stuff that is like 1/10 territory).

for how cheap you can buy this, i just can't NOT recommend it.

In short : a great theme, completely wasted.
Maybe I bought it for the wrong reasons. I was attracted by the roleplayish theme and to see what rendition of a 70s cult, a video game could bring. Instead, I got an arcade game where you get shot for no reason by a guard in the 10 first minutes of play. What a waste of a good pitch.
Maybe there's some content further down the road, that would correspond to what I imagined this game could be. I just don't have time to bother the procedural generation and the boring arcade stuff. Sorry. I'm just happy I only wasted 2 euros on this.

I absolutely love this game. I bought it on the Nintendo Switch eShop for a couple bucks and loved it and then when it went on sale on Steam for $2 I picked it up again. It's so much fun sneaking around like Metal Gear Solid. If you know the story of Jim Jones and Jonestown this whole game is based on that. You can get different endings and stuff based on how you decide to go about the game. Support the devs and play this badass game. Easy to replay too. Definitely get your money's worth out of this one.

This is a surprisingly tricky one for me to review. I've followed its development from early on and only now remembered to give the game a shot. Having complete one run and played several more I find myself extremely conflicted. This is absolutely a competent game and I don't regret playing it, but the question is whether I recommend it and I don't know.

At it's core, Church in the Darkness is an barebones stealth game. You need to sneak in, search cabins to find information to fill in your map and identify your objectives, and complete before fleeing the scene. You can sneak, KO, stealth kill or shoot the guards and stash their bodies in random foot lockers.

I'd say this core, works fine and at least fulfills the store page marketing. But what about the procedural aspects and dynamic story.

The map is mixed around, the personalities of your rescue target and two preachers are randomized. You can find purely random items within the cabins, but there's only a handful in the game total. The cult itself is always the same socialist "utopia" with the same propaganda scattered around. I wasn't asking for a well-thought out cult generator... but this was disappointing and ultimately I stopped reading the documents.

It's also worth noting that the guards are the same regardless of the temperament of the preachers. Even with both peace and love preachers, they have orders to shoot on sight and not even a bit of hesitation. Bodies scattered around in the woods, people being stoned or trapped in cages, etc. It's lore-d by stating that they are afraid you're there to kill them, but the world just feels the same between playthrough's and that's disappointing.

The procedural aspects also lead to other problems with the experience. Good stealth requires interesting pathing that leaves openings or patrol patterns that are interesting to navigate. Church in the Darkness tends to just spam the map with armed guards and fill each chokepoint with 3-5 more. This lead to certain situations that just weren't enjoyable depending on the RNG. (One map spawned me in with one path, and a stationary guard standing on it)

In truth, I keep wishing that the game was less ambitious and created a short, but linear hand-designed game. It's absolutely not BAD as is... but it falls short of what feels like it could have been.

And then it brings me back to the question of whether I recommend it. If the concept interests you, its well worth the deep discount sale for a single play. But ultimately, I don't myself actively recommending it to anyone and this makes me so darn sad.

This game promised more than it delivers. It claims your choices make a significant difference between runs and how no 2 runs will be the same. My first run started great and ended quickly. You're asked to "rescue" your nephew and you sneak into the cult site as a one-man infiltration team. You hear heartfelt messages broadcast around the camp about how capitalism sucks, we need our guns, and how the American dream is a scam to make the rich richer (very topical nowadays, points awarded there) and how "we're all in this together" with messages about racism, economic suffering, cults as a whole, the us vs them mentality, and how people can get wrapped in and can't get out. And then it was all downhill from there.

I wanted a pacifist run on a harder difficulty as I enjoy a good stealth game. I learned the cultists wake up very quickly if you don't box them and without a disguise there was no real hiding. I learned that without getting lucky enough to find a map or a friendly npc early, you'd be flailing about painfully until you did. I learned that getting caught once can ruin your run even though the game lets you get caught a couple times based on how far you've progressed. And I learned that a higher difficulty was a waste of time as it only made getting anything done more annoying than difficult.

2 hours in and a handful of achievements later, the game wasn't fun. It feels like it designed to not be fun. The multiple personalities (which are randomized) make little difference and the endings are variations of a couple lines of texts stating the aftermath of what happened. That's it. Nothing actually changes the game itself. Nothing changes how you interact with npcs. Nothing you do means anything. It doesn't feel like a game and it hurts the messages the game tries to convey.

After playing a couple runs, I went looking online to see if I was missing something. One of the review I read (by Max Moeller on TechRaptor https://techraptor.net/gaming/reviews/church-in-darkness-review-darkness-is-no-fun) stated how they were ranting to girlfriend about how disappointing the game was compared to what it could have been. The girlfriend's response was "this sounds like something that would be better as a movie". Like Max, I wholeheartedly agree.

This was a poor excuse for a video game and the lack of material makes it seem like a messy patch job thrown together for a quick buck that used an important message as a sales point (which is rather hypocritical as the game itself shames the very concept in the cult broadcasts).

It should be a "maybe".

The game has a very interesting premise and gameplay in that one can unlock different endings and items each time you play but the character's movement, actions and camera are such a pain to control. It's actually an understatement.

You'd think the game had been created in the early 2000s for how clunky it is to move around (and to be honest some games from way back actually handle it better than this), but if you're a masochist like me, you'll put up with it and keep playing till completion – which undoubtedly I'm no where near as of yet.

This game could pass with flying colours, were it not for such poor controls. As it stands, only buy on sale.

It is not bad. It is just not very interesting to play. At its best, it is average.
There are multiple ways to end it so, a lot of replayability but in the same time, it becomes quickly repetitive.
It comes with a good idea in an interesting environment but it lacks of development.
On an extremely good sales you can give it a try and finish it once in a couple of hours. At full price, it is definitely a no go.

And I paid for this game? I thought this game will be an infiltration, light-rpg where you could be part of the sect, talk to people, convince them about the true nature of the cult and maybe even become cult leader at one point. And what we got instead?

A visual cone avoidance game with running from guards with a dash of awful controls. The map doesn't change only Alex's location does. Once you know where are all the secret passages between the zones you just rush the game. Replayability is done by throwing different side missions at you that will let you get different endings. It is boring af.

All in all, it can be finished in 20 minutes. You stick to the verges of towns, you run from guards, you find a NPC highlighted in green, you talk to it, you find a letter with the location of Alex, you capture alex, you go back to the starting position. Bravo, 20 minutes.

EDIT: Lol I even got the achievement to finish the game in less than 15 minutes... My first playthrough and I finish the game in less than 15 minutes.

The only thing I really appreciated is the style and the story. That's it.

I wish I could return this game

I played this game for about 30 minutes...couldn't get into it. The introduction to the story is compelling...but the core gameplay loop kind of sucks. Okay great I'm looking for evidence, I'm knocking people out or shooting them...but there's never this BIG aha moment where things get truly exciting or engaging. The game as a whole just sort of rides on this one-note premise, and the intermittent loudspeaker blurts start to become really annoying after a while. The lack of variety present in the game makes this a hard NO for me personally.

If this game worked the way it was supposed to it would be good, but it's glitchy and its control scheme doesn't work correctly.

I can't get past the second guard. Controls are clumsy, requiring exact positioning, and it would be so much easier if I could just click to move, click to interact. Seems like an interesting story but not worth the frustration.

I thought this game would be more focused on the story, and the interaction of personalities, but the "infiltration" is much more about watching vision cones than integrating yourself into a society.

Oh man I really tried to like this game. I've read up on Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple a lot and I find cults and their dynamics fascinating, if also quite terrifying. The premise, therefore, obviously appeals to me a lot. The gameplay is just absolutely appalling though, its beyond redeemable. It's simply not enjoyable in the slightest. The biggest issue is the developers decision to make this an entirely stealth based game and then employ the most basic and lazy stealth mechanics ever.

The decision to make you an covert infiltrator instead of a rogue member is the downfall of this game. If they had based the game around joining the cult as a member and having to follow a schedule while investigating the cult and its leaders while also trying to find your nephew it could've been a truly amazing and unique game. Even the lacklustre stealth mechanics wouldn't be so bad if they were only used sparingly and in specific off limits locations. This would also make getting caught, caged, and released make a lot more sense since the cult would have a reason to give you a second chance after punishing you. It would also make talking to people less illogical, I.E you won't be running away and hiding from LITERALLY everyone bar these few specific randomly talkative people. Why the hell would I walk over to a dude thats armed and firing at targets after being chased and attacked by every other armed person?

The guards have a very basic cone of vision (viewable ingame from a button press depending on difficulty) and anything outside of that is just invisible. You can just murder a dude right next to his friend and provided you run away with the body before he turns around he wont notice a damn thing. Even if you walk right up to the person carrying their lifeless buddy like a sack of trash. The game is just so fucking easy because of this that the developers had to implement one of the most cheap and sadistic save systems in gaming history. There is also very rudimentary outfit system but all that does is reduce the vision cone size. Lazy.

That is the majority of the gameplay, the rest of the game is just running around dodging aforementioned vision cones, finding notes and exploring. I have honestly played flash games with better stealth gameplay.

Now all this is pretty bad right? A stealth game with terrible stealth, what's to like? Well it does have some redeeming aspects. The writing is excellent and anyone familiar with the events of jonestown will see many stark similarities that are (IMO) recreated respectfully and mostly accurately to the real life tragedy. Some of the notes and postcards are almost carbon copies of things found amongst the dead in jonestown. The voice acting is phenomenal and the system of having changing leader personalities is really unique and interesting.

I couldn't enjoy any of that though! I tried, oh how I fucking tried. It's just so boring and somehow manages to be both far too easy and excessively frustrating at the same time. I'm really quite disappointed and I really hate to give this a negative. I know its a small team and they most likely didn't have a huge budget. Still, I've seen cheaper games with more effort put into mechanics.

I think there's some really creative and talented people on this team, I hope I see more from them in the future but I cannot recommend this game. Not without a complete overhaul of the gameplay mechanics. I don't see them putting much more money into this though.

Intriguing premise. Okay writing. Dull design.

I have a fascination with contemporary "cults": Jim Jones, David Koresh, et al. It started with documentaries like "The Killing of America" when I was a teenager, and is something I like to watch or read about to this very day (just bought a non-fiction book titled "Zealot" that looks pretty tasty). Imagine my delight, then, when I heard about the premise to Far Cry 5...a series I'd previously had minimal interest in!

Alas...that game only held my attention for the first few hours, before it quickly devolved into an endless stream of super-repetitive shootouts with "cultists" who may as well have been zombies with guns. But wait, just a year-and-a-bit later...what's this? Surely this is too good to be true: another game based around militaristic, paranoia-fuelled cults! And it's a stealth game, so it shouldn't just be mindless swarms of cultists running towards you shooting like...like zombies...like zombies with guns...

Oh crap.

The problem with this game is that beyond the premise, some nice (if largely repetitive) scenery, and the odd enigmatic bit of dialogue or found note, it's really just a mediocre stealth game with almost no atmosphere. It isn't spooky like Outlast 2; heck, it's barely even "sinister". And nor is it particularly satisfying as an action game, which it frequently morphs into; the stealth being so difficult and unengaging that I soon found myself trying to simply run past the hordes of cultists. Who, I might add, are visibly armed and hostile from the word "go", despite the game's questionable attempts to create an introductory air of "are they or aren't they the dangerous cult they're perceived to be?" No suspense here: the second one spots you, they start shooting, no questions asked.

As mindless as it comes: I've honestly met Doom demons with more personality. Think Commando with better graphics and less entertaining gameplay and you're pretty close.

It wasn't long before my first playthrough got a Game Over after not one but two incidents in which I was shot down and put in a cage, lectured to by one of the two cult leaders, then allowed to easily bust my way out of said prison to run straight past the inattentive armed cultist whose job it (presumably) was to watch me. Quality stealth this ain't. A short way into a second playthrough, I realised I didn't have the patience to even humour taking the game as slowly as it clearly expected me to. It just wasn't immersive enough, I'm afraid.

I so badly want to give this a pass due to the killer premise if nothing else, but I just can't. Not in its present state. The devs still seem to be updating the game upon occasion, so who knows? Perhaps I'll revisit this in a year or so, and find a more playable game than what I've just experienced. For now, I can only label this an interesting failure. Worse: a really boring interesting failure. But not "interesting" enough, sad to say, to make its flaws forgivable.

Verdict: 4.5/10.

(PS If you enjoyed this review, feel free to check out my two Curator pages: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9284586-ReviewsJustfortheHELLofit/
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/10868048-Truly-Horrible-Horror-Games/?appid=398210
Cheers!)

Very repetitive gameplay. Once you've played through it once you've seen what there is to see. Playing it again is not different, it's the same identical boring gameplay, and because of that this game isn't worth its price tag at all, not even close to it.

It doesn't live up to any of the expectations.
You're not sneaky, you can run through the entire game if you want. Guards and any other NPC only detect you if you step inside a very small visible circle around them, there's no sneaking or stealth gameplay, and it is definitely not 'roguelite'.

Also the game doesn't make any sense. Why do you find bullets, med-packs, and other vital items in random locations all over the place? This is presented as a story-driven stealth game, so it makes no sense to find this stuff everywhere. It would make sense if it was a dungeon crawler, but it's not.
It doesn't make any sense from the very start, the fact that you're 'sneaking' around this giant cult place, instead you should enter the game as a new, rogue member.

Controls on the keyboard and mouse are clunky, and with a controller they're less clunky and more just outright broken. Some things in the options menu can't be changed with a controller, and random bugs like not being able to shoot happens with the controller.

The world design/world building is incredibly repetitive. It's the same few objects that have been copy/pasted all over the place, barely any uniqueness to anything.

At the end of the day it plays like a very unfinished Early Access game, if you remove all the text, voice acting, etc. it plays like a game that is extremely early in development. A basic idea has been set, and now it's time to build a proper world beyond the copy/pasted assets presented for the product concept, refine the controls and start creating the actual mechanics that are supposed to make the game 'roguelite' and stealthy, not just being able to hide and run through the game which was just there for the product concept while the presenter explained what it would eventually be.
But no, that never happened. This is what the game is like now in its finished, released state with the text+voice acting put on top of it.

It doesn't hold up as a story game, nor does it hold up as anything else.

Curator page

Summary: A fun game with places to go.

Pros:
-Engaging story with 19 different endings, so there's a lot of room to experiment.
-Beautiful artwork throughout the game
-Nice voice over
-Lots of fun easter eggs and details to discover as you explore

Cons:
-The game is still fairly new, and there are some kinks to work out. For example, you can't fire a gun using a Steam controller, though you can aim and then use the keyboard or mouse to fire. However, the creators were very understanding and helpful when I brought this up, and I believe they are dedicated to the game.
-NPCs will sometimes get "caught" on each other by running into each other while walking in different directions, which can cause their sight lines to jerk suddenly and spot you.
-Not exactly a con, but there are some documents you can discover that I wish there was more to do with. For example, you can find defaced devotional cards of the preachers, and a message from one civilian to another planning an escape. I think these could be fun bonus missions/side quests to consider adding in the future.

Gameplay is not very good. You can also beat the game within 1.5 hours. And this 1.5 hours includes learning the mechanics of the game, dying 3-4 times and starting over from the beginning.

There are some randomization within the game, so everytime you start over, objectives and locations of them slightly changes. If you like randomized objective locations, and randomized objectives, you might extend the gameplay time more by replaying the game. By random objectives I mean, in one of them you have to talk with person A while in the other it's person B, and their location on the map changes. You can also find person C while walking around and they might give the information you need to get from your objective.

Also as far as I can see, base of the map does not changed, but locations of the paths within the forest slighlty changed, I might be wrong on this though.

There are different endings but I've played through the game once, because I did not like the gameplay. So I don't know how much different the endings are.

Also AI of the enemies was not very good. I've only played on normal difficulty though, I don't know how it is on the harder difficulties.

Wait until some updates, gameplay and AI improvements. If you want to support the game, buy it now but wait until some updates to play it in my opinion.

Saw this game at a couple of cons and really liked the setting and concept. Found it strange that the developers were avoiding discussing the obvious inspiration of Jonestown, but whatever. Unfortunately I can't identify any big difference from those early builds in the finished product. It's not nearly as polished as I expected. The modest art style doesn't bother me, as the game was made by a small team on a tight budget. However, the game play really lets down what should be a much more interesting and immersive game.

The cultists have very limited AI - if they touch you with their "cone of sight" they automatically follow and attack you. As far as I've seen that's all there is to them; no subtlety or personality.

Very limited save games - you can only restart them ONCE! Since the game is difficult right off the bat (no matter what difficulty you set it at), the save system is unacceptable.

Shoddy as a stealth game and unresponsive as a shooter. Equipping a gun is nearly impossible between the time hostiles start attacking and the time they kill you. Aiming feels weird and difficult. Rocks thrown as distractions fall between yourself and hostiles, causing them to walk closer to you.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Hopefully the developers take criticism to heart and work to fix these and other flaws. For the time being I can't recommend this game. SUPER disappointed, as I really wanted to like it! Got a refund after only a couple hours, but would be open to checking it out again later if they improve it.

The narrative elements seem interesting, but this game is mechanically very weak. I would be curious to know more about the characters, underlying plot, different endings/stories, but the foundation for delivering any of the potentially high quality narrative content is just not here at all for me. Very bare-bones world building, poor UI, not immersive at all. The 'background chatter' sound effects are completely immersion breaking for me. Quality narrative in games really requires a believable, immersive world IMO. This game doesn't have that, and it certainly isn't mechanically fun or interesting.

TLDR - I was really excited about this game, purchased day 1, but very disappointed after playing.

I had the highest hopes for this game; but now I see it is just an unpolished stealth game. Unpolished because the pc is very hard to control, walks out of rooms, although you didn't intend to do anything, takes forever to enter a building, often he falls down at the side of the stairs - yes, really awful controls! - etc. and the gameplay is about searching clues and hiding, if you want to bring it to the point. Not very interesting at all.

What annoys me very much: there is no deeper logic in why you find the objects where you find them. This game is a story game, not a dungeon crawler. For example: Why the hell do you find important bullets, medpacks etc. even in buildings before the camp? Why would the cult leave something like that there? in the few minutes I played I found so many incoherent elements, it killed my fun immediately. You enter a very secluded community, but most of the time you just can run around enemies, when they notice you, they follow you a few seconds and that's pretty much it. Then: How could a line of trees be a border, you can't go through? Yes they could have slowed you down and you would perhaps made suspicious sounds etc. Why can't you climb over wood with the height of approximately half an meter?

(So, what would I have expected? For example: Clear interactions between the npcs, as they spot you; after all, if you think about it for a little while, it doesn't make sense in any way, that you as an outsider could be able to run and crawl around the heart of a dangerous sect. What would have made sense is that you were accepted as a newbie and the stealth actions circle around the buildiings and locations that aren't open to newbies. There you could have sneaked in, risiking to be punished, or earn their trust through actions.)

The clips I saw some time ago pictured a whole different experience: It looked as there would be an innovative kind of gameplay, more adventure elements, where you could choose between many, many different solutions. But here you run around in pretty similiar looking environments, you can take out enemies or not (it doesn't seem to matter that you killed 5 or more people, not hiding the corpses: no matter what. you are put in a cage, you can break open, with only one guard and this outside the village?); you find something that helps you a little bit, but on the way I already lost interest in why I was there at all and so I request a refund.

What a wasted potencial! So much could have been - and so little was done.

I'm really digging this game so far. I'm loving the little things that you can do to sow chaos, take a guard out here, disrupt a meeting and freak everyone out. I've never been much of a stealth person, so I'm playing more of a brutish way, and it's hard!

The graphics I feel are pleasing to look at, the top down view is a favorite of mine. The artwork is nice, the atmosphere of different playthroughs are subtle, yet you do get a sense of dread for some starts.

The audio is kinda wonky at some points though. I do not like the spike in volume at some of the speeches, and how Isaac and Rebecca interrupt each other if you walk a few feet away from that speeches "trigger".

The UI is simple, I like it well enough, except for the subtitles and mission overlay. It shows you your objective in this very large gaudy red box that masks a good portion of the screen, kinda makes it feel like a browser game. The subtitles are very accurate, but I don't like that its background is a not very transparent black box, makes things below you hard to see.

All in all, I absolutely 100% think the game is worth $20 dollars, ESPECIALLY since it's on sale now. This is one of those games you can experiment on for a good while, and I really appreciate that.