Recent reviews by The Horror Network

Anyone familiar with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the unequivocal grandfather of cosmic horror, will know the story of Dagon. Less avid readers will even surely recognize the tale by name and synopsis of the plot. The work was one of Lovecraft's earliest, written in 1917 and published in 1919, and is the true beginning of what would later become known as the Cthulhu Mythos.

I would normally throw a story summary into my review at about this point, but doing so for this release would obliterate any need for you to experience it yourself; Dagon: by H.P. Lovecraft is itself a well encapsulated narrative summary of the original short story, which focuses on the fish-god of the same name. It's a visual novel in every sense of the term, although there are no story decisions to be made. The tale is told to you in bite-sized sentences that are easily digestible, while you have the ability to gaze at your surroundings and proceed at your own pace. The voice acting is audio book quality and has a soothing, yet ensnaring, charm that easily retains attention.

The entire game takes about half an hour to complete, and perhaps a bit longer if you take the time to scan the environments for the extra "trivia" collectibles that give you additional insight into the life of H.P Lovecraft and contextual information from the time period that the work was written. It's absolutely wonderful to see this kind of effort put into a retelling of such an old story, as with the unstoppable march of time also comes the loss of time period context; an element that is circumstantially important to understanding how society and life was at any given era. Dagon: by H.P. Lovecraft is a wonderful love letter to a classic, timeless story, and it serves well both pre-existing fans of Lovecraft's work and those who wish to enter in to the Mythos, but aren't quite sure where or how to begin.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

In Coffin Mall, you are a new female security guard stationed at the Square Galleria mall. Your goal starts out with you simply walking around the mall and turning on some security alarms, but the night quickly devolves into unadulterated mayhem when the on-display hearse comes to life. You have to sprint, dodge, and maneuver your way around the small shopping space to avoid getting run over, while attempting to figure out how to escape the death trap.

It can definitely take some trial-and-error to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do when the car comes alive, as the in-game text misleads you into believing you have to save the mall security cat, Floppa. You will eventually stumble into the solution, and at that point you'll figure out that this overpriced $5 CAD game can be beaten in about ten minutes. There's no replay value, and quite frankly the gameplay itself is boring, tedious, and uninspired.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

The developer provided a free copy of this game for review, through The Horror Network's Curation page.

Don't bother buying this game unless you're at least moderately fluent in French. Despite this title being marked as full English for the interface and subtitles, most of the interface options remain in French, there are several interactions that are not translated, and none of the notes (which are the key to making any sort of sense out of the story at all) are translated. I understand that English isn't the only language on Earth, but don't mark your title as having full support unless it actually has full support.

For what it's worth, Project BLARI seems to be a basic and boring simulated PS1 horror game with areas that are far too large and empty, no manual save system, no atmosphere, and bland gameplay. You'll be simply wandering around big environments while attempting to find the items that the game wants you to get to progress; you'll eventually stumble into these areas after aimlessly searching empty room after empty room. There are some NPCs that will talk to you, but you really can't make sense of what's going on with these conversations alone.

I'm not going to officially rate this game since I didn't finish it, nor did I play much of it. But from what I did experience, and the footage I sped through on YouTube, I'd go as far to say that there are many other reviews here generously inflating this game's positive rating. Especially considering there are two reviews that simply say "yes", from suspicious-looking accounts. The enemies are one-hit killers and the game is riddled with bugs and glitches galore, which will only add annoyance to the already infuriatingly vague campaign. Proceed with caution.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

Ah, Bloober Team... it's a developer we've been hearing about a lot recently, and for good reason. They're the masterminds behind instant horror classics such as the two Layers of Fear titles and Observer; they also created the Blair Witch game, but we won't talk about that mishap right now. In more recent news, they've teamed up with Konami; an event that has only further fuelled the fires of the rumour mill about the Silent Hill franchise getting a much needed revival. Released in January of 2021, The Medium is Bloober Team's fourth horror creation, their largest project to date, and the first to be truly considered an AAA release. The question that beckons to be answered here is, is The Medium able to live up to being touted as a spiritual successor to magnificent Silent Hill franchise?

Set in Poland, 1999, you play as a psychic medium named Marianne. After a tragic accident took her step-father's life, she sets off to her childhood home to say her final goodbye to him and prepare him for his last journey. However, before the funeral can begin she receives a mysterious phone call from a man simply known as Thomas, who urges her to meet him at the nearby Niwa Resort. He claims that she is the only one who can help him, but little does Marianne know that the events that are about to unfold not only tell the tale of a major tragedy, but they will also help her uncover the long-lost secrets of her past.

Before you consider buying this game, you should be going into it knowing that you'll be in for a purely cinematic experience. There's no true combat, only a handful of stealth sections, and the gameplay is comprised mostly of easy puzzles that require you to find certain items to progress. This is entirely forgivable due to just how amazing the story here actually is, and how uniquely the gameplay is presented. Marianne's special psychic ability constantly tears her between the world of the living and the world of the dead, which will have you straddling the line of the two worlds at many moments of the campaign; you'll actually be controlling her real-world form and spirit form simultaneously in split-screen, exploring both planes at the same time. Oppositely, there are plenty of junctions where you only control one or the other as well. The split-play is executed in an absolutely phenomenal manner, and lends to the immersive quality of the story.

The art and sound direction are equally as stunning as the cinematic quality of the story and gameplay as well. The soundtrack... mmm MMMM oh the soundtrack... it was in-part created by Akira Yamaoka. Need I say more? If you answered yes, then that's on you. As far as the visuals go, on the one hand you have the world of the living; a rather blue, rainy, drab Polish cityscape that takes place mostly in the Niwa Resort, which is a large building, and later in a forest. On the other hand you have the spirit world; a rusty brown world filled with bones, fleshy barriers, and a feeling of ancient decay. Obviously the spirit world was highly inspired by Silent Hill, but what shines through even brighter than that is the inspiration from the work of painter Zdzisław Beksiński. The colour contrast between the two realms, especially when laid out side-by-side in split-screen, is wonderfully executed and, quite frankly, jaw-dropping; it looks even better with HDR turned on, and in 4K resolution played in DirectX 12 it is one of the best looking games on the market right now.

And that brings us to The Medium's biggest problem... its abysmal performance. Now, I know my build is pretty outdated at this time (i7-6700k/GTX 1080), but one glance over the forums and you'll see people with RTX 3080s and more modern builds having issues as well. I ran this game on full graphic settings, no raytracing, at 1080p, and I was getting as low as 20 FPS in some areas and saw most areas stabilize at 40 FPS. Some sections managed to pull 60 FPS, but relatively few. This game also made my watercooled CPU heat up to 90C+ while my GPU barely grazed 70C. This title also abhors alt + tabbing out of it, and it'll do a number of tricks on your desktop if you attempt to get to your taskbar while playing it. There are just some really, really strange performance anomalies across the board here, some that I've never even experienced before, and I've played over a thousand games on Steam alone. Sadly, it doesn't seem as though fixing any of these problems is high on Bloober Team's to-do list.

Looking past such attrocious optimization is something that I rarely do, I will damn a game to hell for subpar performance. However, in the case of The Medium, the FPS drops didn't seem to affect the gameplay much and it wasn't that noticeable; it's the rest of the problems that are a higher concern. Looking past all that, though, lies one hell of a stunning game. The story is a bit complex, as any Silent Hill inspired game should be, but that's because it requires you to use your mind to tie together the strings that you're given throughout its 8 hour experience. On top of a great story, stunning visuals, beautiful soundtrack is one of the most unique gameplay concepts you'll find on the market right now. The split-screen really works better than you'd think it would, and it's fun to have to use both worlds to solve progression puzzles. If you can cope with the technical issues The Medium has, it might just be the best game you play all year.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

The Shore is a somewhat short, 2-3 hour, Lovecraftian horror title that straddles a line between being a walking simulator and casual survival game. You play as a fisherman named Andrew, who finds himself washed ashore on a strange island filled with cosmic horrors and eldritch relics after his boat capsizes. You start out exploring this shore, and learning about the island's prior inhabitants, before falling down the void of the Elder Gods.

First and foremost, this game has some amazing visual aesthetics. The graphics are absolutely cream of the crop, although the first half of the campaign is filled with stuttering issues even after turning on an option to increase texture cache size. These stuttering issues seem to be due to texture loading and not actual FPS optimization, as the FPS stays at a solid 60 the entire time. The sound design also beautifully captures and instills emotions such as a foreboding sense of dread, omnipresent feelings of insanity, and a sense that everything around you is much bigger and greater than your inconsequential existence. The further you continue into the story, the smaller and more insignificant you feel, as the Elder Gods make themselves and their powers known. If there's one thing this game does well, is that it brings to life H.P. Lovecraft's visions of massive cosmic entities that control not only our very existence, but the universe itself.

While The Shore has phenomenal visual and audio design, it's the gameplay that will make-or-break this experience for all players; you'll either love it, or hate it. At around the halfway point of the playthrough, the entire game shifts its focus from walking simulator to somewhat survival horror, wherein you'll be fending off eldritch monsters with an artifact that sends out a lazer-beam stream. These abominations are invincible and the beam merely stuns them and slows them down, which grants you a very minimal amount of time to run ahead and find an exit before having to turn around and stun them again. Sandwiched between these encounters you'll be solving some novel, but objectively mundane, puzzles that require little to no thought to complete.

By the end of The Shore you'll feel as though you started and finished two entirely different games. It's as though the developer changed his mind on exactly what type of game he wanted to create, and did a complete 180 around the halfway point. This isn't always a bad thing to do, and in most cases it prevents a game from becoming repetitive and stale, but unfortunately in doing this the developer actually introduced repetition and predictability. Taking out the frustrating fighting mechanics and instead keeping this title a simple walking simulator would've fared better by having players focusing more on the story and visuals, rather than an annoying gameplay mechanic that was implemented poorly. It's really a shame, as Ares Dragonis really captured the pure essence of H.P. Lovecraft's brilliant tales of cosmic horror. This one isn't going to be for everyone, and while it didn't quite hit the spot for me, if you can see through the poorly crafted combat and drab puzzles, you may enjoy it more.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

Aegon Games Ltd is a two-man development team, and they're the duo responsible for previous titles such as Astray and Infectis. Although their previous efforts weren't very well received, The Door in the Basement is a promising turning point for the indie developer. You play as a young man who has been noticing a mysterious door appear in his basement, one that no one else but him can see. One day as you're packing up boxes and taking them upstairs, the door appears again; it beckons to you, and you finally enter. The tale and journey that unfolds is a unique one that will take you through caverns, bramble pits, and eventually into the bowels of an unholy and bloody machine.

This title is more-or-less a walking simulator, with some simple puzzles and chase sequences thrown in. The puzzles are your standard run-of-the-mill enigmas that you'll find in pretty well any other horror game, but don't let that deter you from experiencing what this hidden gem has to offer. Additionally, the chase sequences are easily done and the AI is swiftly out-maneuvered, but these sections do lend to the tension and jumpscares of the campaign. Where The Door in the Basement really stands out is with its superbly crafted atmosphere, filled with fog, dust, rattling chains, scraping metal, and other unexpected sound effects that will keep you looking over your shoulder.

Normally a faux-retro pixel filter is a major turnoff as a lot of developers tend to use it to mask bad textures and assets. With that said, this title wouldn't be nearly as charismatic without the pixelization; it manages to add an entire layer of ambiance and immersion that would otherwise be missing. It also helps that the textures and assets used actually look generously detailed, despite them being dialled down to a PS1-era visual level. These graphics, combined with the sound design, as well as the haunting story, make for an incredibly immersive and horrific journey from start to finish.

The Door in the Basement is an absolute hidden gem of an indie horror game. Although it may be light on its puzzles and gameplay elements, it's heavy on atmosphere and immersion. There's a definite Silent Hill inspiration that lingers throughout its 2-3 hour runtime, though the game has enough of its own uniqueness to stand out amongst the plethora of Silent Hill inspired games that have released over the years. It's well worth the full price, but if you get it on sale consider it a steal. Don't let this one pass you by.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

Presence is a short, half-hour horror game created by a solo developer. Within it, you come to learn of a horrific mass murder at a (presumably kindergarten) school, where the occupants were locked inside with no means of escape. You'll simply be exploring one small floor of this location, finding keys and notes while experiencing some mildly disturbing phenomena.

For a first release from a solo developer, Presence isn't necessarily bad; it just doesn't offer much that's worth playing or paying for. I've personally played free games of similar ilk that had more substance than what is presented here. Vladimir Gussakov managed to pull off some alright tension, and the story is actually pretty good, but what he neglected to add was any sort of soundtrack or audio design. Even one good horror-themed track could've gone a long way to heighten the atmosphere and sense of dread in this release. Additionally, the character movement is janky when moving from side-to-side, and that would need to be addressed in future titles.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

Right out of the gate, Under: Depths of Fear is a stand-out anomaly in the published library of Globiss Interactive, a developer whose other work consists of more casual games featuring anthropomorphic animals and cats. This first-person horror game has you playing as a World War I veteran named Alexander Dockter who is aboard a ship that inexplicably begins to sink. As it does, and as you fight your way through the hallways and inner workings of the vessel, you encounter zombie-like soldiers who are hellbent on getting their revenge on you. Turns out, they're your former platoon, and you're responsible for all of their deaths.

If there's one thing that this title does well, and to be honest there is really only one thing that it does well, is that it easily elicits as panic response from the player. Throughout the 1-2 hour campaign, the game design incessantly rushes you; whether it's quickly finding your way through flooding waters, escaping from an enemy, or trying to get through rich darkness with your last on-hand match. Rarely do you get a break to enjoy looking around the environments, and when you do find yourself with a moment to catch your breath you still feel pressured to move quickly. This leaves very little time to absorb the information and plot given in notes, which is essential in understanding and enjoying the overall story that is attempting to be presented.

It's difficult to pinpoint what exactly makes Under: Depths of Fear so unenjoyable, perhaps it's the conglomeration of frustrating elements and mechanics that it features. It's almost as if the developer rounded up all of the most hated horror game mechanics and decided to shoehorn them in to one title; invulnerable one-hit kill enemies, stealth that doesn't quite work as intended, too few matchboxes that are never placed where you need them the most, a weapon that serves no purpose, notes that you don't fully get to absorb because the game doesn't pause as you're trying to read them, unforgiving checkpoints. Alternatively, maybe it's the fact that the majority of the gameplay consists of shoulder-checking dozens of doors to see if they'll open, and when they do you know that you'll either find a key or a note inside.

While Under: Depths of Fear isn't necessarily a bad game, all the factors that work against it to make it a frustrating experience become severely off-putting by its halfway point. If you do manage to speed read the notes and absorb the majority of the plotline then the ending is well worth working towards if you can stomach the overwhelming pressure to constantly move quickly, as well as the trial and error that it takes to get there, while having the patience to restart from far away checkpoints. If that doesn't sound appealing to you then, well, you're not going to have a good time here. To end on a positive note, the sound design in this release is spot-on and it creates a very immersive experience; the buzzing from the lights, in particular, is an outstanding touch.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

SCAM ALERT. SCAM ALERT. SCAM ALERT. SCAM ALERT. SCAM ALERT. SCAM ALERT.

As the store page states, NOREN is supposedly a 'simple' keyfinding game. That would be true if there were any keys actually in the game, but as it stands it seems that NOREN is a simple abandoned shovelware game that's impossible to progress in, let alone beat. You play as some soldier in a massive, dark castle, equipped only with a dying lantern. The light fades quickly, and you can regain light slowly by... standing by a light source. That'd be simple enough if you weren't endlessly pursued by dinosaurs that are programmed with AI which knows your exact location at all times; three chomps and you're 'aparted' from the world, where you respawn with whatever amount of light and sanity you have left. Additionally, the translation attempt is abysmal at best.

Both NOREN and its developer, ThroneLab, should be banned from Steam. I do not blow the 'scam' whistle lightly, and I only do such when I am 100% certain of something actually being a scam. There are a handful of videos of this title on YouTube as well, with only one being over 5 minutes long. No one found a key. If evidence can be presented to me that there is in fact a way to progress in this game, I will rewrite this review. Until then, beware and stay vigilant.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

Inside Depth 6 (formerly known as Depth 6) is the fifth release from indie solo developer Stanislaw Truchowski, who is known for other horror titles such as Suite 776 and Minds Eyes. If you've been following his work over the past few years, you'll already know that each new game has surpassed the last in quality and storytelling, and the developer himself states that this game is his largest and most complex creation to date.

Inside Depth 6 takes place in the mysterious abandoned Purple Lavender Mine, which is set to be permanently closed with cement. You have decided that before that happens, you need to venture down and uncover all of its hidden secrets; secrets that no print or media has ever unearthed or talked about. Thankfully this is not your typical 'Russian failed experiment' plot, or some other equally generic story that has been done to death, and reading all of the notes that date back as far as the early 1930's and listening to the more modern cassette tapes keep your interest in uncovering what exactly happened in this dark recess of the earth.

The downside here is that there is little gameplay to speak of as this release is primarily a walking simulator with some very, very simple puzzles to solve. The game also features a camera that you can use to capture paranormal events, no doubt lightly inspired by Fatal Frame. Its primary appeal is its story, and the considerable amount of work that was put in to greatly increase its replay factor; not only are there three endings that you can get, but there are also two secret endings that require you to know the game inside and out to achieve. Those that enjoy replaying a game time and time again to uncover all of its secrets will find themselves having a good amount of fun figuring out exactly how to escape the mine, enter a secret room, and what prerequisites are needed for several of these endings.

Overall, Inside Depth 6 is a giant leap outside of Stanislaw's comfort zone; venturing far beyond the confines of smaller apartment settings and into the larger setting of a mine with several levels, each with a maze of alcoves and hidden items and notes to find. There's a great amount of anxiety-provoking tension as well, and there are some minor-yet-effective jumpscares sparsely scattered throughout. The inclusion of a camera mechanic to keep players hunting for paranormal events adds another level of immersion, with over 20 to be encountered in this short hour-long game. If you have a few bucks to spare, an hour to kill, and all of this sounds appealing to you, consider supporting a worthwhile solo developer.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore