Recent reviews by The Horror Network

Hooooooooooo boy are the review bots out in full force on this one. I'll give you guys a little hint; when you see several positive reviews from accounts with 1 review on them, you're generally dealing with sketchy (paid, coerced, or botted) positive review spamming. Bonus points if there are several accounts not set up with Steam profiles, and if most of them have been gifted the game. There's a bunch of checkboxes ticked here. But I digress.

Squeaky Clean, what is it? It's a "horror" game set in the shower. You play as one of five victims who are destined to succumb to the woe that is known only as the Shower Killer. Catchy name, no? No. Anyway, there are four levels per victim, and within each one you have to wash your head, body, arms, and legs. The mechanics work in a manner where you have a percentage progress bar for each body part, which goes up in various increments, and goes down when you're not washing that body part. Every now and then a noise will sound and you'll have to look around for the killer. If you don't do this, he'll kill you. Luckily for you, the developer made it so that nothing at all happens for the first 2 minutes of each level, so you can get 3/4ths of your body washed each time without having to worry about a thing! Except for the rabid difficulty spike during the final victim segment, where something happens every few seconds; it's far more irritating than "challenging", and you get practically zero reward from bothering to overcome the hassle.

Squeaky Clean plays as absolutely excruciatingly boring as it sounds. At the beginning of each stage you sit and stare for 2 minutes until something decides to happen, you pay some vague attention to quickly looking around the room, and you go back to washing up. The final victim stage isn't even worth completing and the difficulty spike is a visit from the 'fik you' fairy. Oh, and what does the killer look like? A vaguely humanoid black blob that stretches out everywhere like when a texture in a game gets stuck on something, glitches, and expands. I can't believe I wasted almost two hours of my existence playing this trash so that you don't have to. Please don't pay $5.69 CAD for this.

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

Of the hundreds of games to have graced my Curator Connect inbox, Isolomus is unequivocally the most difficult to write about. That's in part due to the short nature of the game, which clocks in at about 8-10 minutes per playthrough, but primarily due to the fact that it's psychologically bizarre just for the sake of being such. With the type of strangeness that Isolomus presents there's usually an underlying idea, a moral, or a statement, but there's no real story or profound statement to tell or make here. You'll probably enjoy your time with this release more if you've got your mouse in one hand and a bong in the other.

Impressively, this is a title created entirely by hand, using stop-motion animation involving clay, or claymation to be more precise. It's an art form that's long lost, so it's always a pleasure to see it revived, and especially within the realm of video games. The sculptures are crude and their finish is raw, riddled with fingerprints with no attempt at smoothing the blobby edges and bulges. It's part of the charm. Isolomus, as a game, is okay, but its avant-garde weirdness feels a bit forced and underwhelming. There are only two and a half playthroughs of entertainment, clocking in at about half an hour tops, but at the price point of a buck you can't really complain too much about the shortness of the content. It is what it is, but what IT is certainly won't be for everyone.

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

Deceptive Games Ltd. is an indie gaming company that I've become familiar with over the years. Alone? (2016) and Silent Descent (2018), two of their previous releases, were given positive reviews in my curation, and while they passed me a code for another game called The Initiate, I just never got around to playing it. The company are known for their horror puzzle titles, and their most recent endeavour, Room 208, is no exception to this so-far-established rule.

In Room 208, you play as a psychic medium named Victor Rockford, who has been asked to come and investigate the mysterious room in a hotel in Fleetwood Vale. Poltergeist activity has been observed in the room by previous occupants, so it's up to Victor to figure out exactly who, or what, is causing the mysterious haunting. To do that, he'll have to solve an array of puzzles and visit different versions of the room by travelling interdimensionally via crystal balls. Each version of the room has unique enigmas to resolve, and upon resolution will give Victor pieces to the puzzles of other room versions.

There is a sanity meter in effect, which depletes the more that you witness paranormal events and stay in the dark. You can replenish your sanity by standing in the light. You also have a small lighter to illuminate the area and keep the poltergeist at bay. The ghost only really starts appearing more towards the middle and the end of the game, and it's worth saying that his character model is... hilarious at best. There's nothing spooky about this entity, and you'll probably catch yourself laughing at any of your encounters with him. In fact, there's not really anything scary at all about Room 208; sure, there's the odd glass shattering, vase dropping off a shelf, or book that goes flying across the room, but ultimately there's just somewhat tense background music that attempts to rile up the scary-factor. And as many of my followers always urge me to point out: yes, the enemy is a one-hit kill type.

The unfortunate aspect here is that you're always working on an unseen time limit. There's not a true timer, per se, but rather you have a limited amount of pills to restore your sanity and fluid to refill your lighter. These items are scattered around the environments, so while exploration is key, you shouldn't spend too much time exploring, lest you go insane or run out of light, or both. These mechanics put a bit of a damper on the experience that the game tries to offer, as it rushes you through its campaign. Of course, if you're pretty good at puzzles or you already know what you're doing, there will appear to be an abundance of these items scattered around, and you may even finish with some spare pills and fluid at the end, but just barely. In addition, there is no true pause button to this game either, as the game is still fully active when you are in the menu screen.

When it comes down to it, Room 208 isn't Deceptive Games's best work. Even though their first title, Alone?, had a plethora of problems, it still had a charming scariness to it that finds itself lost and unrepresented in this release. There's a much higher focus on puzzles this time around, with everything else coming secondary, and that makes it feel a lot more like a more in-depth The Room release, or any other 'escape the room' game. There's about an hour-and-a-half to two hours of content here, three tops if you find yourself having a difficult time finding some solutions, and the majority of it is simply spent combing over minutely different variations of the same location. It's worth stating that the puzzles are pretty good, and it's nice to play a puzzle-centric horror title that doesn't think finding keys constitutes as "puzzle solving"; there's a great range of unique mechanics here that'll tickle your brain, but be ever mindful of how long you're spending on each one due to the lack of pills and lighter fluid. In the end, you should only pick this one up on sale, and only if you're into escape the room style puzzle games with a horror undertone. Better luck next time, Deceptive Games.

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

From the Darkness is the second offering from indie developer/publisher N4bA, their first being Trapped, another horror title of similar ilk which was generally well received by a small audience of fanatics. In this second release, players find themselves in an abandoned apartment complex, with the goal of retrieving a family photo album from their grandmother's apartment. However, like always in horror, such a simple errand turns out to be entangled in a complex series of puzzles and events.

What you're going to get with this release is about 45-60 minutes of Silent Hill inspired gameplay that involves some very minor puzzles, and an environment that changes while you wander around. Some of the gameplay even takes place outside of the main apartment, and delves into a hellish nightmarescape reminiscent of the otherworld, complete with pulsating flesh, rusted metal, and gnashing mechanical gears. The developer really nailed the tense atmosphere in this release, thanks to a superb soundtrack selection that will really keep you on the edge of your seat. With that said, there is one obnoxious track that could've been left out; it's one of those that attempts to completely deafen the listener with blown-out static noise, and it's far more irritating than immersive.

There's one major, glaring flaw with From the Darkness, and that's the fact that the developer neglected to include any setting options whatsoever. This can create various problems and result in a negative user experience for some people, like myself. I cannot really tell whether or not this title has optimization issues, or if it's just the lack of graphical options, and here's why; I have a GTX 1080, a rather dated-yet-viable card at this point, and I run my base desktop at 3840x2160. Most games will default to this resolution, but it's not ideal as a 1080 doesn't handle 4k gaming very well, so I always dial down the resolution of my games to 1080p. With no graphic options available, I was unable to do this, and thus my game was constantly rendering at 25-45 FPS, with some very select few areas stabilizing at 60 FPS. If you're in the same boat as me, you'll probably end up with the same stuttering, FPS-dropping experience, which is a shame.

While it has its flaws, at the end of the day From the Darkness stands out miles above the majority of indie horror releases that are so commonplace on Steam these days. Although it takes most of its inspiration from Silent Hill, the game still feels uniquely itself, with enough blood and mild scares to appease even the most seasoned of horror veterans. More projects from this developer would be well worth checking out in the future, but let's just hope that they'll consider adding even a basic range of settings in their next release. It would also be nice to be able to turn off the somewhat nauseating headbob effect. The pricetag of $7.99 CAD is a bit steep for just under an hour of play time, so it's best to catch this one on sale.

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

Simulation games haven't been a new concept for some time, and most of them take themselves extremely serious. They're one genre that gamers go to for solid immersion; Farming Simulator, Flight Simulator, Firefighter Simulator, the list carries on and on, especially when you get into the realm of VR. However, back in 2014 there was one game that wasn't having any of that immersion crap, and it proved to be one of the first comedy simulators to come about. By this point, some seven years later, Goat Simulator is pretty infamous, and rightfully so; it's full of bugs, glitches, and problems, but that's the very thing that makes it fun and entertaining. That's just the way it's supposed to be.

To clear up any possible confusion let's start by stating that Goat Simulator is a simulation game where you play as, well, a goat. There's no story or plot. There's no princess or maniacal villain. You can't even die, no matter how much you explode yourself, or how far you fall down, or even if your tongue gets stuck to a roller coaster that's going 100mph and it whips you around and flings you out into the abyss of the ocean. It's just you wreaking havoc in a small town as the world's most annoying goat. The base game comes with two maps, Goatville and Goat City Bay, the former of which is the small rural town with a construction site, gas station, car derby, and various houses to ransack, while the latter is a pier-area with a small funfair, some shops for the ramming, a sewer, and plenty of other areas to explore.

There's some inspiration taken from older Tony Hawk games, in that there are loads of special "challenges" to find and trigger. Everything from jumping over a soda can to finding a way to propel your goat-self so high up into the stratosphere that you reach actual space. There's also a certain Grand Theft Auto charm to it as well, probably due to the sheer absurdity of what can happen to your goat-self. There's a ton of stuff to do, and a lot of exploration to be had, though overall doing everything will only net you about 3-5 hours of playtime. The sandbox itself is small, but if you're the type who really enjoys seeing how much fun you can get out of ridiculous simulators, you can probably find a solid 8 hours of enjoyment out of Goat Simulator's base offering.

If you're looking for a way to kill a boring afternoon, or you need to add some humour to your day, Goat Simulator might just be the answer you're looking for. It's a fun little gem to come back to time and time again throughout the years, and it's regularly on sale for just a couple of bucks. The developers also expanded the base game with a few DLC packs, all of which are equally as fun and put your goat-self in other fun scenarios. Normally, a game of this calibre wouldn't make it as such a successful title, but Goat Simulator manages to be perfectly imperfect in all of the right ways.

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Unless you're a fan of The Secret World, an occult-themed MMORPG from 2012, you probably aren't aware that Moons of Madness is a direct spin-off from that universe; it's not like Funcom or Rock Pocket Games made this information widely known with marketing, or on their store pages. With that said, thankfully you don't have to know anything about The Secret World to get the gist of what's happening within this release. You play as Shane Newehart, a rather new space engineer stationed on Mars, where he and his crew have been having recurring nightmares about an entity they can only describe as 'The Witch'. Nevertheless, the crew forge onward, and Shane sets about his daily duties to repair the small base they reside on; including the creepy greenhouse that has suddenly found itself overgrown with noxious plants.

And that's that. If I say anymore, I'll completely give away the rest of the sheer-thin plot that takes some ridiculously unfounded twists and turns that never quite fit together. Anyway, somehow these plants lead into the events that bring about 'The Dreaming Ones', aka a mishmash of The Great Old Ones such as Cthulhu and Outer Gods like Azathoth; though some of the horrors look more along the lines of Nyarlathotep. Along the way, somehow evil ninja robot android things fit into the mix as well, and there are hallucinations of zombie-like astronauts. Truly, Moons of Madness has no real direction when it comes to its so called 'cosmic horror', and instead it feels as though the developers just took your typical Lovecraft themes, mainly tentacles and 'madness', and threw them into space along with a dash of The Secret World, hoping that the rest would work itself out. When it comes down to characters going 'insane' either in text logs or via intercom, it's like the writers grabbed a Thesaurus and looked up synonyms for as many 'weird' and 'occult' words that they could, found the ones that sounded slightly more obscure, occult, and intellectual, and smashed them all together to make the dialogue sound over-the-top 'crazy'. It comes off entirely too try-hardy, and it's downright cringe-worthy in a multitude of areas. What's worse is that the writing that doesn't deal with someone going insane is just flat out dry and boring, filled with technical jargon that absolutely no one is going to care about, and there's a lot of it.

So the plot totally sucks, but what is the gameplay like? It's a walking simulator, but not even a particularly engaging one. There are some light puzzles thrown in, but they've all been done thousands of times before, such as the omnipresent electrical current puzzle. It breaks down into you start here, you go there, you touch the thing, and you continue onward. Now, walking simulators are great and all when they're done right. Really outstanding walking simulators don't even need puzzles, or too many elements of interactivity; generally, these titles have outstanding visual and narrative aspects. We've already established that Moons of Madness lacks a coherent, or even interesting, narrative... so what about the visuals? They're awful. They were heavily dated in 2019 when the game came out, and they're even worse now, two years later. There's nothing interesting to look at, there's nothing interesting to hear, and there's nothing interesting to do. There aren't even any interesting jumpscares, or scares, horror, or creepy atmosphere in general.

Let's just get it out of the way. If you've been following my work, you probably will know what's coming up next. Moons of Madness runs like sewer sludge through a drip system. I'll go ahead and take accountability for having fairly old hardware at this point (GTX 1080 and an i7-6700k), but my system is still more than capable of running games of this calibre at full settings on a 1080p resolution. In my experience, after about the first hour of playtime, this title takes a swan dive into unstable FPS territory, with constant fluctuation from 24-60 FPS, with an average median of about 45. This lack of optimization causes the game to appear stuttery, and it takes away any and all fluidity. Users with RTX 3080 cards have experienced similar issues, as well as those with set ups similar to mine and with 2000 series GPUs. Rock Pocket Games have done nothing since the launch of this title to bring it up to snuff on PC, which forced me to buy it on PS4 just to have it run at a stable 30 FPS. For the severely underwhelming graphics of this release, which were already dated by at least 2-3 years at launch, these issues are unacceptable.

There have been a plethora of Lovecraft inspired horror titles released in recent years: Call of Cthulhu, The Sinking City, Conarium, Darkest Dungeon, Sunless Sea. The list goes on and on, if you just look at the Lovecraftian tag on Steam you'll see that there's something to suit just about any gamer's taste. If one thing is for certain however, the games in this genre are either done really well, or they're middling pieces of inferiority. Regrettably, Moons of Madness falls into the harsh, latter category. Thinking about how to write a review for this title is in and of itself a total chore, much as how it felt to actually complete the game. There are no real redeeming qualities here, and generally I can find a way to fall back to at least the atmosphere and soundtrack, but even that's lacking in this release, and let's not even get started on how Shane has to huff and puff to the point of sounding as though he's in an adult film the entire time he's running.

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In Pumpkin Jack, it is your sole purpose to take control of the Pumpkin King and obliterate the disgusting forces of good. More specifically, your ultimate goal is to take out the awful do-gooding wizard who has promised to protect the Boredom Kingdom from the devil himself. Completely bored and tired of the hum-drum life of peace, prosperity, and safety that the Boredom Kingdom have built for themselves, the devil summons an entity known as Stingy Jack to unleash havoc on the unsuspecting citizens. Though he cannot fight without a proper body, the devil stuffs Jack into the skin of a pumpkin and sends him off to do his bidding.

The humour and writing in this release is spot-on. It's not so silly that it comes off cringey or weird, and it's not so dry that it falls flat; there's a great balance here, a feat that's not so easily achieved. Jack is a crabby semi-intellectual pumpkin man who 'befriends' an unwilling crow to aid him on his evildoing journey. He's led along by an owl, who narrates the story from time-to-time, provides tutorials, and sits at cauldron checkpoints. There are five weapons that are gained over the campaign, from a simple shovel to a deadly scythe, and a gun and a magical orb. New enemies become introduced during almost every level as well, ranging from ghoulish floating spectres to vomiting bats, undead snipers, and more. Each of the levels has an end boss, and each one has their own mechanics and unique, interesting character models.

Another amazing feat that the sole developer, Nicolas Meyssonnier, manages to accomplish in his landmark release is that you'll never be able to guess what's around the next bend. Whether that be more platforming, fighting some enemies, or suddenly getting swept up by a gargoyle and controlling the height at which it flies so you don't get slammed into obstacles. Or maybe it'll be a ride through the night sky on a ghostly horse, where you have to dodge projectiles and jump over fences. Perhaps you'll have to throw your pumpkin head into a tube and have it play whack-a-mole or Simon says. These are just a few of the mechanics that are continually introduced from the start of the campaign, until the very end.

Pumpkin Jack is a title that is very much in the same vein as other vividly colourful, 'spooky but lighthearted' releases such as MediEvil and Costume Quest. The use of colour here is phenomenal, and the bright blues, ghastly purples, chaotic reds, and eerie greens make the game jump to life, while the volumetric fog serves to paint everything in a ghostly light. The aesthetic it houses is inherently cartoony, but it's also flavoured with splashes of crooked-and-bent stylings that are deeply reminiscent of something that Tim Burton would cook up. There are six levels in total, and each one of them has its own atmosphere and vibe; from a creepy cemetery to a bubbling swamp, and further beyond to a twisted winter wonderland. Even if you've played thousands of games, it's guaranteed that you haven't ever seen anything quite as visually captivating as this release. Although the developer took inspiration from other artists, they managed to create a style that's uniquely their own. Aiding the visuals is the incantation-esque OST, which is hypnotic in its bewitching composure. It has been expertly crafted, and rivals any and all AAA soundtracks (aside from DOOM and Silent Hill, of course).

When there's nothing bad that can be said about a game, nitpicking starts to occur. While there really isn't anything bad about this title, there are some things that could stand to be improved in the future. For one, none of the weapons feel like upgrades, but they feel like reskins instead; the scythe, for example, does not feel more powerful than the shovel. Some additional moves or maybe one or two more special powers would've been nice as well. Additionally, VSync doesn't stay enabled when exiting and reloading the game, you have to turn it off and back on again. Again, these are extremely minor things that aren't even significant, but I am providing some improvement feedback here as I want to see this game thrive with additional content, or sequels.

The entire encompassing experience that Pumpkin Jack provides feels wonderfully charismatic and magical. There is a cinematic quality to the game, much like what is found in the darker-but-still-kid-friendly movies like Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline, and Frankenweenie. There is an allurement here that has not been present in video games for a while, and it's no wonder that Pumpkin Jack is already capturing the hearts and souls of gamers. The only downside at all is that the campaign only lasts about five hours, making it feel almost like a tech demo for some bigger project. The good news to that is, the developer did leave an open shot for a direct sequel. Let's hope that he takes that plunge, because this is a game worthy of turning into a series. The fact that this game was developed by one person, with the help of a very small handful of others, is astonishing. A deep, full-bodied congratulations to Nicolas Meyssonnier; you should be incredibly proud of what you've created and achieved.

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What would you do if you woke up one day and suddenly there were giant UFOs outside of your apartment building, firing lazer beams through the windows, and causing innocent everyday household objects like tea kettles and hairdryers to become murdering menaces? Well... you'd probably try to escape, and that's exactly what Last Floor is about; escaping from your apartment, to the bottom level of your apartment complex. Though it's not that simple since the elevator isn't working, and the aliens have barricaded many of the stairwell exits!

That's pretty much it. You've probably heard the term B-grade when people refer to campy horror flicks like Mars Attacks, but think even cheesier than that; this title is more along the lines of C-grade. It's definitely not bad, but using the term "good" is a bit of a stretch; it's an hour's worth of corny amusement wherein teakettles, hairdryers, and industrial vacuum cleaners come hurtling at you at light speed. You can take them out with a couple of different weapons, and there are even some floors dedicated to having you dodge traps. There was clear thought and effort put into the game design; though the same cannot be said for the soundtrack, which seems to be one long continuous loop of a copyright free sci-fi song. Overall, for a game made by one person, it's pretty well done and a huge step up from AK Studios's previous effort, Ghost Stories.

If you're looking for a cheap horror game to pass the time with, that will take an hour or less to complete, then Last Floor might just be the time-filler for you. There is another odd thing to note, that there are two items you come across to collect on each floor; a med-kit and batteries. Now, the med-kit is self-explanatory, and you might think that the batteries are too, but there is no flashlight in this game and there are no weapons that use them. I was thoroughly confused as to what the batteries were used for until I went to the forums and found out that there are actually two endings for Last Floor, and one involves collecting a certain amount of batteries. Perhaps in the future, the developer can use something like tokens/coins or something more conspicuous instead of an item that typically serves a functional purpose (as opposed to a collectible purpose).

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If you're a fan of the Friday the 13th movie franchise, like me, then you're probably looking at Emerald Lake and thinking about how similar it appears to be. The game is about an abandoned children's camp that's close to a lake, and it closed for mysterious, undisclosed reasons. You can see a guy wielding a machete in the screenshots, and the 'big bad' is a buff dude that wears a white mask. While it's true that the similarities are there, Emerald Lake is a far less enjoyable experience than what even the worst Friday the 13th movie ever had to offer. In fact, the game is a completely broken mess. You'd have more fun watching Jason Goes To Hell, you know, the WORST movie in the series (change my mind), than playing this disaster.

When checking out YouTube videos of the gameplay from July 2020, Emerald Lake appeared to be in a semi-playable state. Not the best, mind you, but progression was at least attainable. The player was able to pick up notes, keys, and go through the campaign until the constant crashing made them so mad they gave up. It seems as though the August 2020 update broke the game entirely, because none of that is possible now. It's impossible to get past the second level, as no matter what you do you cannot pick up a key to progress. Notes cannot be picked up, they just flap around and then fall back to where they were laying; so they're unreadable. Despite two attempts at "fixing" getting stuck on tables, in the five minutes I played I got stuck on a table twice; I did manage to wriggle free, though, so "fixed" it is I guess. The game also crashes when it tries to load the next level, but that's to be expected for an FPS Creator title.

Even if Emerald Lake does get lifted from its unplayable state, it's not a title worth wasting your time on. It's an excruciatingly typical no-budget Russian horror "game" that resorts to key-finding, puzzles that are solely door codes, and stealth sections with deaf and blind AI. It's truly disgusting that Valve keep allowing this kind of filth not only on to Steam, but let it stay despite reports and flags. Just another piece of kindle for the dumpster fire.

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Amnesia: The Dark Descent undeniably changed the horror genre forever. From the way that players interacted with doors, to the presentation of its insanity mechanic, every element within the title was fresh. It all lent to the high dosage of fear that the game provided at its launch; struggling to swing open a heavy door while being chased only to barely graze it and close it once more right in your own face, cowering in a corner and being afraid to peak at what monstrous enemy is breathing their wet breath in the next hallway, and uncertainty of where the plot would even land you in the end. In the years since its release, the Amnesia series has spawned countless knockoffs, none of which have truly captured the sheer terror that the original was able to traumatize players with. The franchise eventually lost its way with A Machine for Pigs, which was a simple walking simulator that had almost an on-rails, carnival of frights demeanor to its gameplay. Now, with the aptly titled Amnesia: Rebirth, one question begs to be answered: is this the true return to form for Frictional Games' horror monolith?

The year is 1937, your name is Tasi, and you're on a plane destined for Algeria. Accompanied by many other expeditioners and your husband, Salim, you're setting off to uncover ancient ruins that lay in caves beneath the sands. The plane ends up abruptly crashing, and the amount of time that you've been knocked out is unknown. Your expedition crew is gone, and you're left to pick up their trail to find them and figure out what's going on and how much time has passed. Along the way to the first cave, you soon stumble across a compass, a Traveler's Amulet; an alien device that can let you see portals between Earth and dead alien civilizations. It doesn't take long for things to start getting weird, especially when you feel a kick in your belly... and a heartbeat... of all the things that you've forgotten, how could you forget that you were pregnant?

First and foremost, we need to stop right here and give some love to the fact that this is a high-profile horror game that isn't set in a creepy mansion, spooky asylum, or whatever other cliche and nauseatingly overdone setting you want to throw in here. Wandering the vast and endless desert, sticking to the shade so you don't get broiled alive under the unrepressed sun, and feeling hopelessly lost and alone is a very unique concept for this genre. As is crawling through crumbling ruins that seem to house timeworn artefacts from both the Egyptian and Mayan cultures. The setting shifts between the desert and an ancient, sinister alien civilization, whose evil has been disturbed by the expeditioners. Tasi is able to see portals into the advanced city with a compass she found near the plane's crash site, and with it she finds herself hopping through the fabric of space and time itself.

All of the usual Amnesia mechanics are back this time, but time manipulation is new territory for Frictional Games and it's not exactly an unwelcomed incorporation. It's a little out of place at first, until the story starts to unfold. The new mechanics lend to fairly complex puzzles as well, given that the extraterrestrial city is full of unfamiliar symbols, strange objects that open doors in different ways, and portals that can be created. Once you get used to the almost H.R. Giger design of this alien world, you'll find yourself back in the barren desert. There are an abundance of puzzles to solve in Amnesia: Rebirth, and many of them do require complex problem solving skills in order to overcome. None of these enigmas feel out of place, and they all tie in one way or another to appropriate story-driven progression. In other words they all have a purpose, they do not exist just because they can, unlike in a lot of other horror games that've come about in the last few years.

Both the alien world and desert with its ruins look good, but the Amnesia engine (HPL) is showing its age; as are the developer's assets. The textures are... old. Visually, this title looks like it could've been released at any point in the last four years. There's also a distinct lack of atmospheric details as well. There's no dust, no fog, no particles in the alien world. The lighting is also quite bland in comparison to most modern releases. If you play games for their visual prowess, this is not going to be one that your eyeballs will thank you for. Though what is forgotten visually is somewhat made up for audibly, as there is an amazing musical score that encompasses the entire 9-12 hours of playtime that you'll get out of the campaign.

There is one huge problem with Amnesia: Rebirth, however, and that's the fact that enemies despawn. You could, and should, play the game normally; cowering in corners to avoid terrifying deformed humanoid creatures bent on your destruction. But you could also just run straight into them and die, and respawn. If you do, they're almost always nowhere to be found, and if they are around they're placed very, very far away. If this was intentional on the part of Frictional Games, perhaps it would be best to make it an option or to have more than one difficulty. If you decide to cheese it through, you're removing a lot of the scare factors and simply cheating your own self out of a good time.

It's unfortunate that so many fans and reviewers alike are holding Amnesia: Rebirth to the bar that its grandfather set ten years ago, instead of regarding it as its own entity. Too often do we look back at games through nostalgic lenses, only to revisit them and be disappointed. That's not to say that The Dark Descent cannot still hold its own today, but it's certainly not as frightening upon a revisit. Humbly, I do declare that Amnesia: Rebirth is a true return to form for the franchise as a whole, after Frictional Games lost their way with the walking simulator nature, boring puzzles, and cliche story of A Machine for Pigs. Many frights await in this release, with most of them being spontaneous and unforeseeable.

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