Разработчик: Candlelight Studios
Описание
The Empty Inn is a 2D, exploration game with 8-bit, NES-style, pixel art and puzzle gameplay. With only a small lamp in hand, the player is required to solve puzzles and explore the vacant inn, ensuring they keep their lamp lit along the way. If your light goes out then the monster will show its face… and I’m not just talking about the monster who’s watching you.
- A thrilling game which provides the player with nothing more than a lamp and darkness to explore. Relying less on jump scares, and more on atmospheric and environmental tension, The Empty Inn is an unnerving experience.
- Solve fiendish puzzles whilst ensuring you keep your lamp lit. You’ll be forced to scavenge the once populated inn to survive and to get to the bottom of its current existence.
- Experience a shocking story as you play under a watchful eye which constantly judges and belittles you as you uncover more of the mysteries which haunt The Empty Inn.
- Three difficulty modes, including an EXTREME mode which significantly alters gameplay, as well as a secret ending with additional gameplay and puzzles.
- Made by one developer, The Empty Inn is an untainted vision which experiments with the elements that define horror gaming by creating an experience which is attempts scare the player in a more meaningful way.
"Something about The Empty Inn's presentation makes it look very uncomfortable... The sound of the rain, the dim glow of your candle, and the quiet inn build a powerful dread, even just from the trailer." - Joel Couture, IndieGames
"The Empty Inn provides brief shelter from the high-res multiplayer madness that most of us subscribe to. It's an overnight stay in the haunted halls of your childhood nostalgia. It doesn't last long, so try to enjoy each spooky minute." - Chris Saltel, Eat-Pray-Game
"[The Empty Inn] feels very Lovecraftian in its nature and captures an uneasy setting perfectly." - Dan Hartnack, IndieJuice
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7 or up
- Processor: 1.8 GHz Processor
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GT/s 4xx or equivalent
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 80 MB available space
Отзывы пользователей
Nice NES-stylized graphics and 2.79$ price won my attention, but I was wrong. It would be better if this game was a freeware, like the other projects from Candlelight Studios' website - no matter how much money you'll spend on it, you will be frustrated.
Lack of content, poor gamedesign choices, primitive level-design, confusing plotline, imbalanced difficulty, repetitive gameplay - all you need to do in this game is to search the small rooms for keys and matches for your lamp (they makes the flying enemy disappear). Do this for 10 minutes and the "Easy Mode" ends - with a cliffhanger instead of ending, or, to be clear, with the beginning of the story at the very end of the mode. Spoiler: for some reason our hero wandered around the empty inn for 10 minutes, looking for a keys and avoiding an enigmatic flying thing, and then someone killed him! What a twist! Do the same thing on the "Extreme Mode" and don' t forget to find all the purple orbs to get the second part of the story!
The "Extreme Mode" unravels a new layer of repetitiveness - now you have only one life and the flying enemy kills you on the first touch. If there was no bug that erases enemy from the map after pressing "Escape" button (or was it a feature?; anyway, press "Escape" every time enemy appears on the screen) the whole mode could be simply unplayable. It's absurdly hard to beat the game on "Extreme" without it - maybe even impossible, because level design with claustrophobic rooms and corridors always helps the enemy to clamp you in a corner with lethal aftermath.
After 10 minutes of pressing the "Escape" button and clicking on every object of the every room to find the orbs (remember that some orbs are just lying on the floor, and they are invisible), when you will get to the same scene that ended the "Easy Mode" and enter the portal, you'll find out that there is another 10 minutes of gameplay on a different map - and for some reason it's easier then on the first one, because now when enemy touches you, you respawn not too far away from the place of the contact. You have to walk around the convoluted maze-like levels with the same textures and color patterns (that makes it pretty confusing to navigate) in the search of keys, switches and doors, also you have to dodge the randomly appearing ghosts.
And then the plot starts to move on. Spoiler:our hero was dead the whole time, he died in another place, and The Inn is just an artificial world for the tortured souls who seeks "more meaningful death". The entity who made it have its own plans for the protagonist, and now he must meet it in "After-death" world. When hero does so, it offers him a chance to hide from another entity who we never heard about before and who is, suddenly, eager to "collect" him. There is a hint in a dialogue that the entity he met is malicious, but actually we get another cliffhanger instead of an ending.
While "The Inn" world is colorful and at least intriguing, the "After-death" world is bleak and low-detailed - there is literally nothing in it but floor, walls, doors and switches (and some ghosts that appears randomly); it's funny that this fact is not represented in a screenshots.
This game is neither "awful" nor "so bad that it's good". It looks like the result of an author's first try on gamedesign that ended predictably, despite the fact that Candlelight Studios already made some short free games.
If "Empty Inn" was freeware, I would say "It's OK"; as a game that wants your money - it seems to me that you will want your money back.
P.S.: I replayed "The Empty Inn" for a number of times hoping to find some secrets or easter eggs, but found nothing except a bug with the opening of The Inn's front door - if you will try to get the hero away from there, he will simply go off the screen.
Ok the first thing red flag was right after I'm launch this game. I even thought that this game is broken because no key on keyboard choose options in menu. Than I've relized that's left mouse button! Strange decition, I didn't recall it from any other game. You can't rebind keys and game has no support controller so it's just add to the problem... Oh btw if you click right mouse button you've just see your cursor he he "nice" coding. Main character has no diagonal animations, so it's look very ankward then you're going this direction. You're just collect stuff and there is no indication which key or item you had.
First off to note, this is not a very long game. It also has a couple of bugs here and there. However, if you understand that, then I'd definitely say it's worth a play if you can maybe pick it up on sale, because it's quite innovative for what it is, and the retro vibe is very well done. It's a puzzle-focussed exploration game, with a little bit of a story. I have yet to reach the secret ending, and extreme mode has posed a challenge for me - so if you want to replay it with a bit more challenge, there's a bit more meat to this little gem.
What??
2/10 - The Empty Inn wasn't so Empty. She should just take the frickin matches and burn the place down.
This is a rather short 4 dollar game. Besides trying to unlock the hidden secret story or to get all achievements it doesn't have much replay. The limited lighting is a nice idea maybe if there were different arrangment of the levels for the difficulties it would have had longer entertaining value for some users. There are some random gliches ( I had a few gamethru with no monster ghost chasing me fixed by shutting down and opening up the game). The controls are simple (I kind of wish I could use a controller on it) The sound effects are decent, story short, graphics for 8 bit not bad just a lot of Yellow (which you can see in the screen shots).
So that being said if you know your getting a short dectective, run-from-the-scary-thing (actully just don't let it see you your not going to outrun it in the harder difficulties) game then its not bad. If you want to work on getting the secret ending then this game can keep you playing for a while. Pretty much what you see in the description and the screen shots is what you get. For that reason I give this game a thumbs up becuase it does deliver what it says it does. Its really a 3 out of 5 for short 8 bit style games.
Not worth $4.
The controls are really, really bad: Move with WASD, mouse button for actions... No, you don't move the mouse. Just the button. There's a remap in the options screen, but it doesn't work. You can't remap it to a keyboard key.
The gameplay itself is also vacuous. A small area surrounding you is lit up and you navigate through small, not very complex rooms to find the next key, to open the next door, repeat, etc.
Not worth money.
So I bought this game on a whim, being that it is only a couple of dollars and I like supporting indie developers. I can't say that I recommend buying it, but I haven't fully completed it yet. I played it on normal mode, and beat it within 20 minutes. It seems that based on the game description & achievements that the hardest difficulty has a longer story, and that there is probably a secret ending as well.
Pros:
I actually like the core gameplay mechanic, which revolves around finding matches to keep your lamp lit, and finding keys to progress through locked doors. Since there are not too many matches, you have to keep moving at all times and search everything you can. It ends up giving you a nice mild anxiety as you try to find the next match.
Cons:
The game length is pretty short, although again I only played it on the mid tier difficulty level, not the high level. Another thing that was mildly annoying throughout the gameplay was collision. The doors you must go through are basically just big enough for you to get through, so I bumped into the walls a lot.
Interesting Puzzle Game. That being said, this is more something I would expect to find on Kongregate than Steam. 10-15 minutes of playtime, tops. I hope the developer takes the profits from this game and attempts to develop something with a bit more meat to it.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Candlelight Studios |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 22.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 25% положительных (8) |