Uncanny Valley

Uncanny Valley convinced me from the first moment.
It somehow reminds me a lot of Silent Hill.

We play a man named Tom who is plagued by nightmares and is looking for a job as a night watchman in the middle of nowhere to pass the nights with work.

Every decision has a consequence, there is no possibility to save yourself, which creates a new feel and the game has a high replay value.

My EYES!

Nice atmosphere, music, art, and story but the gameplay is tedious and often cryptic. I would recommend watching it over playing it unfortunately.

The art style is great and the mechanics are interesting, but the game is just way too buggy and broken to give it a good review. You cant change the controls and the controls are awful. Especially for controller. I could not beat it, not because the game is hard, but because the game is so buggy and broken.

I reviewed the wonderfully f-ed up soundtrack to this game quite a ways back, and thought I should finally check out the game itself!

Like Lone Survivor and Home before it, this is a story-oriented horror game that is heavily influenced by the likes of Silent Hill, but chooses to present itself in a more "retro" 2D side-scrolling style with heavy pixelation. How effective is this decision?

Well, I have to say that while I felt this visual aesthetic somehow "worked" for those other games, it did seem a tad ineffectual here. Quite what it "added" I'm not sure...but it certainly wasn't overly off-putting, especially since I didn't grow up in an era of super-spiffy graphics like these young'uns nowadays ("back in myyyyyyy day")...

Then there's the odd control scheme. It's mostly fine, but for some reason it: a. uses "E" to interact with things like doors, but then you need to press Space to pick up items (that aren't even clearly highlighted in any useful fashion), and b. only uses the mouse upon rare occasion (making you wonder why it's ever used at all)! Your security guard character also gets puffed from running after mere seconds, suggesting he should probably look for a different line of work...

The story itself is kind of confusing, to say the least (perhaps that was the point; search me)! What starts as very linear quickly becomes anything but, and performing even a simple task such as following some seemingly straightforward directions on a note becomes a challenge. On "Day One" I was supposed to meet with someone, failed to follow her instructions, then quickly got the on-screen hint that my shift was over and I should probably get some sleep. I ignored this latter directive, figuring I should still finish my listed "objective" (i.e. find the girl)...then suddenly collapsed and fell asleep in the middle of whatever room I was exploring at the time! Uncanny indeed...

(EDIT: Checking a video walkthrough later revealed that she was in a completely different building to myself, something I didn't suss thanks to the inability to re-read notes after the fact. A map mightn't have hurt, either!)

You also pick up objects without having any idea why - okay, so maybe that's not so odd in a horror game! - but really: why did I steal the fire extinguisher from one of the rooms, when they might need it in case of a fire? Some nice security guard-ing there...

My flashlight also went off whenever I went through a door, or pressed the sprint button. I'm really not "getting" this game, I'm afraid...

On the second "Day" (night, really), I again failed to follow the simplest of instructions (literally "walk past the apartments to find a generator hut"). I gave up at this time, figuring I must've fallen into some alternate dimension full of game-breaking bugs; that, or I'm just too stoopid to get my head around the game's rather oddball approach to 2D design. (And the sheer, apparent aimlessness of the plot didn't exactly inspire me to continue, either.)

Now for some positives.

It's definitely eerie. The sound design - not just the aforementioned musical soundtrack, but pretty much everything else - is well-calculated to creep you out, no doubt about it. Some great spooky voice work included.

This game definitely doesn't "hold your hand". So I guess there's an audience for it somewhere out there, possibly among you open-world loving folk who, er...are looking for a relatively short, side-scrolling, pixelated game in which your choices do, allegedly, matter. (Sadly, I need my characters to have clear motivations to find a game compelling, and couldn't find any such things here.)

That's all I can say really, having played less than an hour in. As I say: I've beaten and enjoyed the likes of Lone Survivor and Home - and did I mention Claire? - and despite some certifiable challenges, found them all eminently completable. This game, I was simply floundering in frustration from almost the get-go. Give me a clear goal at all - or at least most - times, and I may very well enjoy your game. Leave me flailing without a clue, or give me instructions I can't readily follow (at least within the tight time limits given!), and I'll run out of tolerance fairly quickly.

The nightmare sequences were pretty effective, though. I'll give it that.

I'm not gonna thumb this down; I'm merely going to chalk it up as a game that simply "wasn't for me". Which is a shame, given the atmosphere is something I could definitely have dug, given the motivation to continue. Perhaps I'll give it another go some day, and change my opinion entirely...but for now, my patience is sadly spent.

Verdict: 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!)

It was ok. A little slow and boring and the controls are pretty clunky. I got it for $1. I'd have been upset if I'd payed full price. Also very short even with replays

Although the graphics and atmosphere are great, the glitches and the general controles (on Controller) ruin the rest. Apart from that the game does telegraph weirdly. For example I am still not sure if my gun does any damage (even after reading walkthrough which say it does) so I get killed by androids and that results in me having to play the opening again, where almost no game play happens because I already read all the emails. Apart from that the screenshots are misleading I thought I would play a lot more in the style of the basement laboratory instead I get yes your grace for 4 ingame days.

I don't reccomend it for the price of 10 bucks. I have played better RPG makers games for less.

It’s a rough game, which is a shame because it had some good ideas. I feel like it came close, but the ruthless six minute timer to scramble around trying to find information was just too tight, despite the fact that there isn’t really much to do, and it just stops working on the fifth night, leaving you with an invisible exhaustion timer that causes you to just pass out from staying up too late, which has no consequence except that you have to physically walk all the way back to the facility from your apartment where you wake up mysteriously. There is a fairly decent little indie horror story in the background about why your character took the job and what happened at the facility, but the facility story is very obvious (hint: there was obviously an accident involving the androids they obviously make there), and the personal story was told during dreams, but because of the supernatural weirdness I just overlooked what it was trying to tell me because I’ve seen so many indie horror things where they just throw shadowy ghosts and ghouls at you, I didn’t think I needed to look any deeper. In retrospect I can see what they were trying to do, it just didn’t work for me when I was playing it. I feel these devs could produce something pretty good in the future, maybe check back?

I wanted to like this game. Despite the mixed ratings I thought it might be interesting, sadly I was proven wrong. The game has everything set up to be a fairly interesting story but the execution and mechanics debilitate it. The story is so jumpy and fast passed that I feel I can never finish the current plot point or information dump before it throws me out of the scene and forces me to leave behind everything I only just started doing. Worst part? You need this stuff to know the story and progress yet the game gives you no time to experience it. The mechanics make the entirety of it clusterf*ck that is hard to enjoy despite the amount of interest I had at the basis and plot of the game. I didn't even finish it. After getting this far I have no desire to continue as the unfairly fast pace of the game wants you to fail. I don't think even replaying would necessarily help my chances. Even worse? The game recommends you play it multiple times so you get the full experience. The game doesn’t really allow you to replay it easy as you have no multiple save files, just the one you're playing. It is also long enough that just replaying it enough times would take forever. All said, there wasn't enough to the game to keep me interested and having been unable to finish it I'm sadly disappointed.

This is a fairly interesting one, as a horror game I think it has some genuine chills. Good concept with a bit of a shaky execution, but still more than worth your time for the price.

The initial recommendation for multiple playthroughs has some merit, in some ways it's worth replaying to see how you can impact the story through your actions, which can sometimes be very silly, unprompted actions, like bashing your coworker's head in on the first day or stealing his car keys and skipping town ASAP. It reminds me of an old PS2 game called Raw Danger, where you had mostly normal decisions, but occasionally got a really out of nowhere prompt, like stomp on a fellow survivor's fingers to make him fall to his death for no good reason other than it's silly to see your character be cartoonishly evil.

Uncanny Valley isn't quite on that scale of freedom, but allows itself to branch its story enough that I can appreciate they were trying to show a story while having the player's input matter to how much is unveiled or just let you roam free and do stupid things. If you want to bash every door of your apartment building open, you actually can. Is nigh every room identical and void of any purpose? Just about yeah, there's one specific room you're supposed to do it with but the indicator is pretty obvious. Still, you can bust open whatever door you want and commit unprompted coworker murder, and I can appreciate the ridiculousness of that as a gameplay feature. Oh, and there's multiple endings; a couple are minor variations of each other but the ways you come to each are kind of neat.

The 'failure is not the end' mechanic they mention on the game's description is a bit paltry, given the game's length, there aren't many opportunities to fail until endgame, and in the primary gameplay section it only applies to two story outcomes, the 'bad' endings. There's a couple of branches that reach those two conclusions but basically they mean the same thing. What's a bit more interesting are Tom's night terrors. Each time you finish a work day, you get a sort of nightmare/enhanced flashback of what led Tom to take this security guard job, and depending on the outcome of each nightmare you get better context into the full story that precedes your current predicament.

In addition to the endings, I consider the night terrors part of make it worth doing an extra playthrough or two. Some of the better story beats come from actually failing the chase sections of the dreams, so you have to experiment a bit. They also function as previews of mechanics that the endgame might expect of you.

Touching on the bad bits, the game does have its share of bugs, I got stuck on a computer screen for a full night once, and here and there I had minor graphical hiccups with dialogue boxes getting caught off-screen, overlapping each other, etc. A particular gameplay section kept flickering a split second of the area fully lit with the wrong player character before loading properly, which distracted from the spooky atmosphere that was supposed to be building. I also noticed some endings would warp a dead character around for no reason or had characters pop up dialogue but the character sprite itself was nowhere to be seen. Another instance saw Buck, the coworker, scolding you and promising to report you only to see him somehow outrun you to your work place office, then thank you for the good job you did the previous night

I had one issue where towards the end of a playthrough I exited, reloaded the save, and was on a completely different section which locked me into another end path. Given the small team and complexity of outcomes they did a fair job, but there are hitches in the experience for sure. In a general sense, the beginning of the game is quite tedious and so going back to see everything does lead to a lot of boring wind-up, it's easy to screw up some endings and reloading a save isn't always consistent, and certain solutions to make progress aren't immediately obvious, so a walkthrough might come in handy to get yourself through the late game without triggering a negative story event.

What ultimately tip the game positively for me are the story and art. A first, blind playthrough has your anticipation heightened, and the initial slow pacing builds suspense well. Collecting and listening to tapes were all nice touches, and the voice acting exclusive to those tapes, while a bit hit or miss, does foreshadow the late game well. My first go ended pretty poorly as I wasn't really prepared for the late game threats, and to say as little as possible, I think the horror of this game shines in very particular moments, and doesn't pull punches in that regard. The quality of the pixel art is fairly nice, especially during the first dusk which is one of the few times you can see the exterior not occluded by darkness, walking through the forest to your apartment building. Moments of horror or violence during your night terrors and in the late game are pretty gruesome. Overall, the game does a lot of good stuff even if it's a little rough around the edges.

As a short, interesting horror story, I can recommend it. The darker bits should leave you at least a bit unsettled.

This game looked so good from the videos. It still seems like a great idea. But it is just buggy as hell. Little annoyance bugs, and big game-breaking bugs.

So each day you wake up, dress, and then go on a security shift. There's a big "day 4" message when you dress, and you can click a button to see time left on your shift. Except my first time through, I got into a weird state where I could sleep, but the days wouldn't advance. Wake up, no "day x" message... time says "shift complete" as soon as I wake. I could stumble around a bit, but soon either had to return to bed or fall asleep where I stood. Wake up and repeat. No events, no plot items, just repeat repeat repeat. Quitting and reloading didn't fix it. Had to restart the game.

There's other things too. Doors that don't lead to where they ought to. You find a door in room A, and it takes you to room B. Trying to go back through the same door in room B, takes you to room C. Now there are surreal elements to this game, so at first I thought it might be intentional (there was something like that in the original silent hill), but having to repeat the same escape puzzle multiple times made me think it was just a bug.

Text is constantly offscreen, you can interact with E or Enter, and most of the stuff responds to both but some things only respond to one (bed only responds to E. Tapedeck responds to both, but when you select the tapes you can only use Enter. Or maybe I have those reversed, I was playing on a steam controller). Items appear and disappear from your inventory (again, surreal game, not sure if ti was intentional?) Text and stuff is sized relative to your character, meaning that when the camera is zoomed out to show a whole room, text is really tiny. I think the inventory screen and pause menu was too.


So then with all these bugs, I was constantly worried that things were breaking. I found the body of a friend, and the character didn't react at all. No text, no interaction, no "omg, he's dead!" Then I started worrying "Was the character supposed to freak out, then search his body and find a key? Did the game just break?" No way of knowing.

There's controls for shooting too, but I never found the gun. Not sure if I missed it, if I didn't get far enough, or if I was supposed to have it but just didn't.

I eventually got through a playthrough by quitting out of the game and reloading after each day (every 6-7 miuntes), and saw some of the complaints other reviews discussed. The first part of the game is slow. And if you get caught by enemies in the second part, you get a bad ending. But then it auto-saves, so you have to replay through the long boring first part again. Maybe it would've been less painful if I wasn't constantly quitting and reloading to keep it running.

When this game broke the first time, I was 80 minutes in, and I had a choice to make. I was still within the steam refund period, but a second attempt would push me over the two hour mark where I could no longer get a refund. I've only requested one other refund for bad games on steam, but seriously considered doing it for this one. Instead I chose to try a second playthrough. Part of me wishes I had requested the refund.

The story seems interesting enough that i'd probably give it another try if it wasn't so buggy, although I could see why people would dislike the game purely for the 'autosave after you lose, requiring you to go through an hour of boring stuff if you ever make a mistake in the 2nd half' part. As is, I might request a refund anyway, even though I'm outside the 2-hour window.

A neat little adventure with stealth action elements late in the game. I really liked the atmosphere and, unlike many players, enjoyed the slow paced prologue with growing suspense that takes most of the playthrough time.

I would not call the plot truly unlinear as it comes to some key points anyway but branching possibilities are impressive.

The game is somewhat buggy. It speeds up and slows down, in-game objects may reset their state for no reason, etc. It is rarely serious enough to ruin your walkthrough though, and the game was too short for these issues to freak me out. Overall I think it deserves a positive feedback.

From the outset, it's clear that this is a very deep and interesting game. But 30 minutes in and I'm just sick of the awkwardness of the controls & dialog system. I've missed too much dialog due to either pressing the wrong key (there's 2 different keys for different types of basic interaction), pressing the Advance Dialog key hoping that it would show the text faster (it's really slow, and only shows you like 5 words at a time), or walking off screen just as dialog starts, causing the whole conversation to be skipped. Also, your flashlight turns off at every scene transition (this happens a lot - the game is mostly set in the dark), your character can't sprint for very long, you have very little time for exploration each night. Lots of annoyances add up quickly.

I wouldn't recommend this game because of the controls, dialog issues and other annoyances, but I'd recommend watching this developer because it's clear they can make great things.

Wack: that is my single-word description of the game. It purports to feature replayability, multiple endings, and player influence, but accomodates none of those in its design. It makes you go thru the same stupid ten-minute intro EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU PLAY IT, with only minor variations possible. I chose two completely different paths for my playthrus, and wound up with EXACTLY the same ending. The whole game is based on time, but it has an invisible stamina meter to make moving around as cumbersome as possible, AND THE STUPID CLOCK IN THE STUPID BUILDING DOESN'T EVEN CHANGE. It's at 12PM forever. Lazinesss. Sloth. Bad game design.

I love the idea of what this could have been--the graphics and atmosphere are charming, and the writing is above cringe-worthy; tho, here, it's worth noting that 75% of the exposition I encountered was thru reading emails on computer terminals. NO. This was bad, lazy design ten years ago, and it is bad, lazy design now. Oh, and there are audio tapes, because Bioshock proved those are necessary, right? Never mind perhaps having the characters themselves voice-acted...

This game sucks. Sorry. I don't recommend anyone buy it.

Just died for the first time in this game...

holy

fuck.

Now THIS is good 2D horror.

Just to clarify that ending (one of several) A cyborg woman captured me and said she'd take care of me, I accidentaly slit my wrist (meaning I was just clicking around with "broken glass" item to find an answer for a puzzle and I clicked on myself, and BAM.... she dragged me to a room with meds and said "hold still I'll fix you, silly Tom"... she searches through the closest and after 3 seconds of quiet search she screams and runs at me with intense music in the background, I run for it, she throws me on the ground, I wake up tied up, she says I'm too clumsy to be left free, I might end up getting killed... she cuts off all my limbs and burns them to stop the bleeding, then she just hugs the poor dude who passed out and keeps stroking his back while the screen fades to black and she just says "I love you"... and that's basically 10% of the horror I've seen in the underground of that creepy ass facility.)

This game has so much potential. The story line is given in pieces that keep you wanting more. But sadly, Uncanny Valley is one of those games where the programmers had great ideas and just really fucked up the execution.

Basically, you get 7 min a night to explore the facility you're in. Except it takes one minute or so to run to it, so really it's six. But then you have to run back to your apt the second you shift ends otherwise you run the risk of falling asleep where you stand.

You have to hit the "I" button to pull up inventory, thus making playing this survival horror game in the dark somewhere between frustrating and impossible. Using items is a bitch because you have to open your inventory, select the item, then click on what you want to use it on. Forgive me for being nit-picky, but this is really obnoxious. I don't want to have to take the time to find the "I" key in a dark room, click on my item, and then fail to click on the right thing only to have to do it all over again.

I went to the train-station at one point in the game and when down the steps toward the train. It's kinda where the game begins. I didn't want to board the train so I tried to go back. Couldn't. Love it when a game LOCKS me into a decision like that for no damn reason. Boarded the train. That was one of the endings. Ok. Fine. Game suggested multiple play throughs. Clicked continue. "Error: No save data." Ok, so now I have to play through the opening 15 - 20 minutes of game play again? Awesome.

I WANT to like this game, but it makes it difficult. If you could get it on sale, snag it. Otherwise, don't bother.

Uncanny Valley, the debut title from Cowardly Creations is a mix of horror, adventure, and consequence-based gameplay. Drawing inspiration from Human's old Clock Tower games, Silent Hill, Twin Peaks, and perhaps the game mechanic from CoC: Dark Corners of The Earth as well, it's an interesting if flawed experience.

In Uncanny Valley, You're playing as Tom who accepts a job as night watchman at the abandoned facility way out in the middle of nowhere. Besides that building and the apartment complex that used to house its staff, there's nothing else for miles. The only people you can talk to is either Buck, the day guard or Eve, the maid at your apartment building. Neither of them has a whole lot to say, so you're left to your own devices, patrolling the corridors of the main building overnight, with the working shifts lasting around seven minutes, to make sure nobody is messing with it and then going home to go to sleep after your shift. Day in, day out. Except there's all these computers lying around. And tapes. And videos. I mean, it's not like you have much else to do during your shift, so you may as well play around with them, right?

Well as much as I like to explore the facility and try to solve the mystery behind it, the selling point for this game is undoubtedly its branching story, which ultimately leads to one of several possible endings, like a Choose Your Own Adventure tale, and this is where the problem lies.

It seems to me that the developers were far more interested in making consequences to your failures rather than add in deaths that would require multiple playthroughs of the same area. For example, when enemies show up, this just means that you get beaten down and the available suite of endings changes. Enemies will also just give you game-changing injuries, such as chest wounds which cut down run time, a broken arm that makes weapon use impossible, or a broken leg that removes your ability to run.All of these things might make the game needlessly confusing and unfair, except that the game is very short. An hour or two is often all you need to play through it. So when you know what you're doing, the first half of the game where you work your night watch job becomes really redundant, but you still have to play through it each time to get to the game's more challenging second half. This can waste up to a half hour of your time on stuff you've already done, and it gets old real quick. This might not be a big issue on its own, but when enemies show up in the second half, things get worse. A simple screw-up can put you on the road to the exact same ending you got last time, and now you'll have to replay the whole game again for another attempt. You can try reloading an old save to make another attempt, but the autosave system often makes that impossible, and even goes so far as to delete your save when you get an ending. So, something that was meant to remove the annoying repetition of death in games actually has consequences that make you repeat the ENTIRE GAME instead, which is a whole lot worse than just repeating a small section. With the large consequences for failure and the lack of manual saves for me to make another attempt when I wanted to, it just wastes too much of my time on needless multiple playthroughs at the moment.

Overall, I love this game and would really like to explore it more, but I can't justify playing through another hour of it only to get the same ending again, even when following a guide. There’s a chance you will play the game a second, third, or maybe fourth time in order to experience the different endings, but if you, like me, felt satisfied after the first playthrough, the desire to replay it just plummets. Uncanny Valley is an interesting game with many great ideas, but without some saves to pull from, I just can't bring myself to keep trying for the other endings and recommend the game to other people, even for ten bucks.

First i want to say that I was really looking forward to this game and that I really want to recommend it, however it has so much flaws and so less content even for the low price that I can't say it is a great game.
It is also important to indicate that the devs didn't reach their kickstarter goal, so it's not really a surprise that the game seems unfinished.

At first it seemed like a really interesting take on the survival-horror as you are a security guard patroling an open facility, you can go wherever you want whenever you want and try to uncover what's going on.

You will realize soon that the "Immense" facility (that's what they say on the store page) is not immense at all, and there really is nothing to do in your shifts except finding the e-mails and cassettes in the upper levels.

The graphic style is awesome
The ambiance is really immersive
The story is intricating
The musics are great

but then

The puzzles are too easy
The choices are few and doesn't really changes much about the story
There is not much to see
There are really few interactions
There are a lot of bugs


There's not much to say, just that i am really disappointed as I expected a longer game with a lot to explore and story-changing choices, instead i got a game that has a lot of potential but seems empty and boring and ends so abruptly that it feels like the devs rushed it instead of taking some more time to release a unique survival-horror that could have been more noticed by the steam community.

This is a game of choices you don't realize you're making. Where you walk, what you do, and who you interact with all help decide where you'll end up by the game's conclusion, dictating which one of several endings you'll receive. That ending may or may not make sense to you when it arrives, either, as this is also a game of acquiring information.
Confusion and misdirection abound in Uncanny Valley, and the only way you'll clear the muddied waters is through multiple playthroughs and careful maneuvering against the unseen, unknown forces that want to bring an end to your life.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=435726535 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=439166680
Unlocked all achievements!

Pros:

* Some clever puzzles
* Creepy atmosphere
* Androids draped in human flesh & blood
* Getting chased by a flaming Flesh-Droid

Cons:

* Controls a tad bit clunky
* Not enough sprint (Christ, is this guy a smoker in his past life or something?)
* Guns won't save you here
* Buck

All in all, this is a real solid side scoll horror game that's got a good amount of replability going and if you're a fan of pixelated horror, give this a go.

************************POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD YE BE WARNED************************

before i start. i want to put in a disclaimer: in the 3.5 hours i've played this game, i've unlocked 3 of the endings that are avalible. this game is SHORT. i think i will likely put the game down at around 7-10 hours of gameplay, depending on how long you like to read emails.

Now that i got that out of the way, this game is frugdumping genious. It's short, but the replay value keeps you coming back, wondering what you could have done, or maybe what you couldn't have done. The game is an absolute macabre masterpiece and i think the developers should take some HUGE pride in their work. It has this marvelous simplicity about it and for 10 bucks i honestly couldn't have asked for more.

The Premise:
You are tom, a guy with a shrouded backstory, night terrors, and a new job as a security guard. The building is abandoned due to "finnancial crisis" and you are sent as relief for your (ass hat of a partner) compadre Buck. I won't spoil it, but buck has a pretty big part in the story. You are taken on a short tour, then shown to the appartment complex where you meet Eve, a rather pretty maid that works at the complex. After going up to your room and suiting up, the game officially starts. (most of) your choices up until this point aren't really that important, but after you don your security guard uniform, the game takes shape.

The Gameplay:
You are given seven minutes (real life minutes) to pretty much do whatever you want. You could just be lazy, and sit in your security office, or you could go on rounds. Alternatively, you can also be a snoop and read people's emails, personal files, love stories, etc. The game is basically at YOUR disposal. The story revolves entirely around you and your choices that you deem the "best". The game controls are basic, but at times they can be the slightest bit funky. Pressing E and D to move a crate across the room for example, felt awkward on my hands, and the combat mechanics are rather lacking. there are also some choices that i would have appreciated a little more. like using a fire axe as a weapon against an enemy instead of hiding behind a desk. But i digress, this is less of a game and more of a "pick your own adventure" novel with a side dish of game. There aren't any dialogue options or anything like that, but it DOES give you a vast amount of freedom. The biggest drawback, is that some of the puzzles aren't exactly explained from a technical standpoint, and some logical solutions are thrown out of the window, which really hurts the experience in my opinion.

The Cast & Story:
Although it would seem that for such a short cast, the story couldn't possibly be that interesting. However; the game suprisingly delivers a facinating tale of morality, obsession, and asks the question of "what makes us exactly human?". Additionally, there are actually several MORE characters that you get to know via emails, video tapes, cassette recordings, and other media. There is one downfall to the game's story though, it takes up until roughly day 2 for the game to change pace. When this change happens, it is dramatic, and satisfying, but LONG overdue. Furthermore, on multiple playthroughs there is no way to skip to this day using certain choices, or a chapter select option in the menu. This addition to the game would make it far more enjoyable and less tedious to replay and get all seven of the different endings, but i still plan on going back for more, and taking different routes to see where they lead. Another "drawback" of the game is that, though it features itself as a horror game, it doesn't really feel that scary until day two. This is a design choice i understand, as it creates build up and generates curiousity, but again, when it does start getting scary it is long overdue, and doesn't deliver that well with an exemption for a few scenes.

The Scare Factor:
I know i said that the game isn't very scary. It isn't. it's no amnesia or penumbra, and you cannot go into the game expecting this. Instead, it offers more of a sense of dread. You feel almost watched as you're going through emails and looking for keycards. You can never shake the feeling that there is something sinister going on and you are simply a pawn in a much bigger plan. Tom's night terrors add to this, as they depict gruesome, strange, and lovecraftian scenes. The scare factor doesn't lie in what you can see. it's in what you can't see, and what you aren't able to understand. The art style and design are like HR Giger, HP lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury all decided to make a graphic novel in a pixelated 2D world. The game isn't a spookfest, but after a play session you still have the eerie feeling of being watched.

The A/V Aspects:
The game is done really well in the sense that they took the non-realistic characters look realistic approach. What i mean by this, is most characters lack basic facial features, have a generic shape, and look rather lacking. However, if you have that wonderful thing called imagination, then you have nothing to fear! This isn't to say that the character designs are bad. They're actually really well done, but they ARE 2D pixelated sprites, and should be taken as such. That being said, the color palette is very dreary and metallic, using many soft and low key hues, instead of big popping colours. This adds to the atmosphere and macabre situation you're in. Additionally, the game is DARK. and i don't mean you can kind of see silhouettes if you look closely, i mean you cannot see a damn thing without your flashlight through 60% of the areas, and 87% of them are dark enough to have your light on anyways. Even then, your flashlight only illuminates a small cone in front of you, and does a poor job of illuminating that cone. Graphics wise, it's basic. Which for this game, and the price thy're asking for, is reasonable. The sound quality however.. well it's not the greatest. On the plus side, the interaction sounds and interface are decent, but can be slightly buggy and repeat / remain constant through a playthrough etc. Most of the audio event ques and characters speaking aren't as pleasing. (outside of the tapes and recordings which i'll get to in a bit) They mostly just sound like gurgling 16 bit noises that sort of sound like words. Again, i get why they did it this way, to add to the atmosphere, but i find it to be rather painful to hear and lacking. It's a personal thing i will admit, but this entire review is an opinion. ANYWAYS there are also recordings and tapes you can find throughout the game, and for the most part, they sound pretty good. The doctor is well played and so is the AI he is speaking to. They are obviously not AAA but definately not awkward or forced.

The verdict?
I personally LOVE THIS GAME. honestly, it's mone of the better indie games / 2D horror titles i've played in a while. It rivals Lone Survivor in that aspect and clearly had thought and care throughout development. It has it's faults, and the story can be a little slow to start, but those are only slight drawbacks to an overall good experience. However; I have to be entirely honest and say that this is less of a game, and more of an interactive version of one of RL Stine's "Give Yourself Goosebumps" books. This isn't a bad thing, but it definately can draw away from the experience for people looking for a video game. It has puzzles, it has "combat" and it has some elements that make it a game, but overall they aren't fashioned in a way, for me at least, to call it a video game. That still shouldn't deter you. If you have ten bucks just lying around, then give it a shot.

TLDR version:
Story: 9/10
Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 4/10
Sound: 7/10
Replayability: 9/10
length vs price: 6/10

As a Game:
Overall: 7.8/10
"go for it if you got the spare money."

When viewing it as a Interactive CYOA:
Overall: 9.4/10
"definately worth it"

This game has neat graphics and an interesting story, but it is fatally flawed in many ways. Spoilers may follow.

Mechanics
The dialogue is slow and halting due to the way the text boxes work, and the boxes can go off of the screen where you can't read them.

The inventory and item system is clunky and hard to use, and there are no tooltips to explain what the items are without clicking on them, which forces you to exit the inventory.

When you move furniture it snaps around all crazy, and can be moved through walls.

The flashlight turns off whenever you move between screens, which is absolutely pointless and annoying. It also turns off when you run, but this is forgiveable despite the fact that it often means you are staring at a black screen when moving between areas.

Gameplay
You go in and out of dreams/hallucinations, and wake up suddenly somewhere else. It is sudden and just does not work well as it feels contrived as a wayto make the gameplay move between set pieces. It is not exciting or mysterious, it is just kind of pointless and annoying.

You are supposed to be doing shifts at work, except it is just always night time and the clocks never change, and there are no real mechanics related to working... you just wander around exploring until you fall asleep and are forced into a sudden set piece change.

It is not clear what you are supposed to be doing, ever... and then some people will run towards you if you are in a hallucination and then it is time to move to the next set piece. The scripting is just awful and totally ruins the experience. I smashed a mirror with a blue box, or something, and then put a shard in a hole in the wall. When I did that I suddenly teleported back to aprevious room being dragged into a medical area, then the person says something threatening to me and I watch her go stand by a cabinet... after a couple minutes of her standing next to the cabinet doing nothing and me being unable to interact with her I decided to walk to the left. Apparently this triggered what I imagine is supposed to be a chase scene, because she suddenly bolted towards me and did a wierd hip bump that apparently knocked me out. Then suddenly I am tied to the wall of that same room and she is all ripped up for no reason and cuts my arms and legs off and I beat the game.

I feel like this could be a very creepy and interesting game, it was fun to explore the world and read people's emails, and the inclusion of voice tapes was neat except that they are very hard to listen to due to the clunky inventory system. It almost felt creepy, but the ambience was ruined by the bad mechanics and pointless sudden set changes.

All in all I am disappointed by this game as it seems like the developers had a good idea and came close to pulling it off but just couldn't quite do it.

Try Lone Survivor for a well done version of what I think this game was trying to be.