The Ghosts of Hackney Mills

6/10

This game does not work for Mac or PC. I've tried installing it on multiple machines and it always crashes. Absolute garbage. Save your money.

This is a game that sounded like it was going to be fun and interesting. It ended up being rather tedious and dull. The gameplay basically amounts to walking around, checking crystals to listen to fully voiced (with no subtitles or text) plot or character interactions and checking for spooky notes. The voice acting ranges from "acceptable" to "I can't stop laughing at how bad this is". The plot is overwhelmed by personal drama. There are no real spooks. There is basically only 1 real puzzle to figure out. The central mystery of the game is not answered and the game *ends* with more questions than it starts with.

I appreciate that everybody involved in this game worked hard and didn't deliberately set out to make a game that was laughable when it wasn't being dull, but unfortunately that's what they ended up with here.

another incredible game from sapphire dragon studios

It's basically a walking simulator in RPG Maker where you toch crystals you find and the audio it triggers tells the story. The story is pretty bad actually but I found the voice acting hilarious. The Dutch, Indian & French accents of researchers from those countries really sound funny and cool. So still gets a 4 from me for the voice acting. But there's little game here.

4/10

What should I start with? I am still grieving as the ending credits are rolling. The music accompanying it makes my grief even more punctuated. I've learned that the choices we don't pay much attention to affect the lives of other people.

The game tells you that you will need pen, paper and a calculator in order to progress, because many hints are hidden inside audios that you need to listen to very carefully in order to understand the story.

Sincerely, when I got to the climax scene, I have learned something terrible. The car crash was no accident...

PROS:
- Great RPG;
- Atmospheric music;
- Saving is my life!!
- Character sprite cute and well-executed;
- Story built up nicely;
- Easy to obtain achievements;
- No monster! Thank Heaven!

CONS:
- I had to turn the volume up to hear the spirit crystals audio;
- Even if it has Steam Overlay, I couldn't take any screenshot.

To conclude, I recommend it to anyone who would like a scary story. It might disappoint some children of today because it lacks corpses, monsters and the like, but in my humble opinion this is what makes a good game: the story, the atmosphere, the macabre hints, the music, the player's epiphany after the climax.

The Ghosts of Hackney Mills is an okay horror game. Let’s get into the story.

It’s a late night in Southern Ohio as Todd Collins a worker for the White Cross Electric Company has crashed his car, luckily he's okay and even better he's not far from the old abandoned University he was sent out to investigate due to the power being on, but what is going on at the that is a truth abandoned University? Todd will unfortunately discover.

Now the likes. The story is pretty good if you choose to listen to the story crystals in the game. The voice acting in the game was nice, some of it was good but others you could probably tell we're putting on fake accents but it was still good.

The music was good, the puzzles were okay and the RPG Maker graphics were nice. Price for the game was good. it was very fair for such a short game.

Now the dislikes. The game is not really all that scary despite being a horror game, I mean it was kind of scary if you listened to the story crystals but other than that again the game really wasn't all that scary. Game’s a bit short, also the ending for the game was kind of bad.

After escaping the facility and finding your boss's car the game just abruptly ends. I mean it should have ended with the monster showing up or Todd finding his boss’s cell phone and calling the police and the game slowly transitions to the credit.

Now that I have got that done The Ghosts of Hackney Mills is an okay horror game. With a pretty good story, good music and nice voice acting. So if you're looking for a short RPG Maker horror game this could be for you.

I really liked the atmosphere of this game. It's engaging and the story is interesting. It was a bit hard at times, but nothing that cannot be beaten. It doesn't hold your hand (read as no notes in the inventory or anything similar). I enjoyed it and look forward to playing more from the creators of this game.

I have a couple other Sapphire Dragon Productions games, but this is the first one I have played.

I have to say, I'm not impressed.

But there's more than I can simply say than "It's bad."

I will never be one to rag on voice acting too much if not done professionally, but everything felt very, very forced. At one point I took a Snapchat and sent it to my French friend to see how fake the accent was and she burst out laughing. Not a good sign. I don't quite understand why we needed a mishmash of people; it actually made the characters harder to keep track of instead of easier. Their "accents" were their characters, and in a story-heavy game, they need far more than that.

This had a very Soprano's-esque ending; very sudden, very jarring, no closure on anything, since I didn't particularly care for any of the characters. So an abrupt ending like this is also a smack in the face to anyone who actually sat through everything, listened, and put the story together.


For that matter, I didn't really care about anyone, or the plot. The story is told as you have to sit there and listen and try to decipher these very stereotypical accents to figure out what the characters are saying. Something such as flashbacks enacting the scene may have helped. Sprites to the characters, if nothing else. I didn't remember the charaters' names, I didn't particularly care why they were there. I was thinking more of how unrealisitically this "campus" was laid out -- mazes through forests to get to another part of campus? I can assure you, that doesn't happen.

A forest maze I can understand, but the library maze was completely unnecessary. It wasn't hard in the slightest, just padded the game out further. Our main character even lampshades this when he asks why there is a maze and switches in the back of a library -- if you can't tell me why it's there, then don't put it in.

All in all, this felt very slapdash. It feels like there was a story wanting to be told here, but there was too much left untold (and not inferred or "oh figure it out" written cleverly; I know stories don't need handholding. A pet peeve of mine actually) and too many holes. On top of that, the main character's running speed should have been the walking speed. Holding down Shift to go everywhere was also tedious and a bit asinine. The cherry on it were the unchanged sound effects from RPGMaker defaults.

This isn't worth two bucks, guys, and it makes me leery of the other projects by this studio.

And hey, when people report and achievement is bugged? Please fix it. I'm missing the most complained-about bugged achievement, which was supposedly fixed and reported again with no updates since.

I found the story intriguing and the implementation pretty cool for this type of game. Hard to get back into if you take a break though... It could use more quality of life features that avoid relying on players memory as much - but you get a fair heads up at least.

O my gosh, first of all, the sound, the background music and the voice in this game was super. It was clear and I played it with my headphone, it was like heaven to my ears. 2nd of all.. I hope this is the first game of this series, because I really wanna know what happened, it wasn't scary but it has that eerie atmosphere. I love it man.

I came in ready to like this game, following the creators and character from the Silver Creek Falls chapters. Those games were average at best, but kept my interest and I saw some potential in having mystery in realism and stepping a toe in supernatural questions as well.

The Ghost of Hackney Mills, on the other hand, wasn't that big of a story. In fact, though the story is told through audio clips (with not very impressive voice acting), I couldn't find myself paying much attention at all to what I was actually being told about the world around me, much more grounded in realistic conspiracy.

The maze puzzles were fun, but the other puzzles mostly consisted of taking numbers and moving them around, doing an equation, and then you enter your answer as a passcode. Which is honestly not the best puzzle to base your gameplay on, because a solid, simple answer is very easy to... just look up. Adds some difficulty if you choose not to, but it would involve some backtracking if you didn't take some notes like the game warns you.

Like I often say, every game is for someone and if anything I said appeals to you to try at the cheap price it is, then I say try it, by all means. But I have to say this will likely be one of the most forgettable entries in my library.

A sophomoric effort. Uninspired writing, atrocious voice acting, and a medium (RPG Maker) that can't be taken seriously.

The Ghosts of Hackney Mills is a fun, clever, mystery game with adorable pixel art!

Pro
- No "hand holding" I really do hate how people phrase this now but I do enjoy when you are left to your own devices to take notes, remember clues etc. I will say I would like an ingame notepad in most games as I find typing easier than physically writing due to finger loss. However it was exciting to take notes on paper for this game again.
- Art is cute, I love it, pixel art will always be a favorite of mine.
- The story points/crystals are great, I love picking up clues from hearing bits of old conversations!


Con-
- Controls are a bit wonky/would be nice to see a quick visual of the keyboard layout at the start.
- No controller support kills my hands but understandable with this game
- Some of the voice acting is... pretty bad I loved it but the russian was badddd, some of the... flow was very forced/off but still good, clear, easy to understand audio!


Over all I am really loving this game and will be back at it to finish it, I'll update the review once I finish the game.

The game doesn't work

I tentatively recommend it, but only because Steam does not have a neutral. Only get if you are really die hard mystery fans and like everything read to you.

It's an atmospheric game that consists largely of walking around and listening to recordings; there is no combat, no interaction with NPCs, and only one (significant) puzzle. That puzzle, unfortunately, appears to be broken: the instructions you receive don't match the calculation that needs to be performed to proceed. There is also a recording missing from the game directory; attempting to trigger it locks the game up solid. I like the mysterious atmosphere of the game, but it does require some fixing before it can be recommended.

First 20+ minutes of gameplay, nothing much happens. I'm having a hard time listening to the audio clips played by crystals scattered around the campus. It's as if the microphone used to record the audio clips was unidirectional, so when the dialogue clips are played, you can clearly hear one person talking, while the one he/she is talking with is somewhat barely audible or of lower volume. .

I had no problems running the game. It starts running in windowed mode. If you try to play it on full screen, there are black borders on the sides of the game. I can't give a definite score just yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4ISWwLBK5w

UPDATE: I was able to finish the game in less than 3 hours. There were a few bugs in the game, particularly near the end, where you can pass through walls, step on holes in the ground, or even have a desktop computer as a head. That ending was lacking. Something happened to our co-worker Ronnie since her car smashed into a tree, and that's it, game ends abruptly. Maybe I'm missing something. I will replay the entire game since I already know the passcodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWB_tjylnCc

UPDATE: I did a 2nd playthrough. Same end results, but at least we got to see the END CREDITS this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXG1ODa6384