The Long Reach

SPOILER WARNING

I'll try to keep most of the story out but I do mention it in some instances.

Art

The art is great. Some of the characters look samey, though, because of the thought-out character designs, you don't really mix them up. I could see this being an issue if the game had a much bigger cast, but as it is now, it works. The art style also looks simplistic but really fits the vibe - gives "The Thing" vibes.

Music

Loved most of the music (that demented jingle bells song is stuck in my head), but there's an odd issue where the music loops incorrectly. I'm gonna assume it's because they made it as a full finished song rather than a loopable version for the game.

Story

The story is good, my main gripes with it being:
Occasionally you'll get to choose between "Fuck you", "Fuck you really hard" and "Hmm, I see what you're saying but, fuck you" as dialogue options - not a lot of variety. The dialogue also seems to not really effect the story that much, at some points the game actually just flat-out ignores what you chose and uses it's own secret third option. At one point they use it the dialogue in a puzzle, but it still has one preset outcome. Outside of this one puzzle, I genuinely see no point of having dialogue options.

The story also felt a bit rushed. At one point your character seems to just do a complete 180 from his previous life, but it turns out it's only been two or three days. It gave the impression of being months, minimum weeks.
Not a lot of worldbuilding nor explanation was done behind the events that happen ingame. Though, to be fair, it would've been unnecessary and it's just me wanting more content.

On the upside though, they do what I've never seen before in media - let go of the whole "hurr durr good guys don't lie" shtick and actually lie to the bad guys to get their way. It was genuinely refreshing and lead to a really interesting interaction.

Gameplay

The puzzles are the most McGyver bullshit I have ever seen. At one point you use the corpse of a guy who hung himself and christmas lights to distract a crazy guy and trap him in a room. At this point in the game, I had found a needle, a full pharmacy and an alarm that stunned the guy for a second - I really thought I could just use sedatives on him or OD him on something, but nope, abstract puzzle instead.

Following up on the previous issue - at one point we do end up sedating the crazy guy (who at this point we 100% know killed two other people), but instead of finishing him off or anything, we just beg him not to wake up. I get that most people would rather go their lives without killing another person, but this is an active danger who just killed two of your co-workers.

There's also a dialogue puzzle in the game, which was really neatly done. Essentially you interrogate someone, but each time you reach a dead end, you reset the interrogation, but keep everything you know. This was genuinely interesting to play through and a really great idea.

Lastly, more of a nitpick than an actual issue - WE SHOULD'VE BEEN ABLE TO USE THE GUN. You finally get a gun in the game and you think "Fuck yeah, time for some revenge", but literally moments after it's just joinked away from you. What's even the point in picking it up then?

[h2]Overall[h2]
It's a good game. It didn't do anything particularly memorable, but also didn't fuck up in any major way. As an indie game, I'd rate it a solid 7/10. As an indie game that I got for around 1 euro on sale, 9/10.

This game is very clever with its plot, but it is undermined somewhat by the english characters speak. Everyone, mostly scientists, talk like teen boys. Although that sounds pretty annoying, it mostly didn't bother me because the game is really good.

The only other complaint was forcing inventory to the "I" key which just seems like a really weird decision. Yeah, the word "inventory" starts with i, but it would have been much less of a pain to play if I could just press space bar, tab, X or any other convienent key that wasn't already in use.

I would love to give this game thumbs up but unfortunately I will not give because thanks to not implementing steam cloud.

I lost my progress on old pc and i refuse to start over.

A great little atmospheric horror adventure game that doesn't outstay its welcome.