freechaosgames

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Pacing in horror games

All genres are subjective and perhaps none are more subjective than horror. Games that shock and terrify one player will be slow and boring to another. Some people respond to jump scares while others respond better to suspense, but what do the most successful horror games have in common? 

Pacing is a term that refers to the tempo of the game or how quickly things are happening. Typically, pacing in a story follows a specific patter. The pacing steadily increases until it reaches its climax at which point it drops quickly. Pacing is especially important in horror as the build up before a scare is just as, if not more, important than the payoff. 

If you’ve ever played well-paced games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Long stretches of time go by without ever seeing an enemy, but that’s the point. These periods of time are deliberately slow to not only build up suspense, but to lower the player’s guard. Running from some deformed monster is intense, but wandering aimlessly through a dark castle, only ever hearing or seeing hints of the enemy but knowing you might have to run at any moment, is scary.

Some games, like The Sinking City and Vampyr, sacrifice horror by giving up control over pacing in favor of an open world where the player has freedom to explore and do side quests. While both of those games cultivate a great, dark atmosphere and tell a gruesome story, they are not scary. By choosing to have NPCs around the map give quests, GTA style, these games give the player total control over pacing and, in turn, eliminate any kind of suspense that could have been had.

One example of an open world horror game I really loved is The Forest. The Forest is an open world survival game with crafting elements. It follows the survivor of a plane crash as he must survive in a cannibal infested forest while searching for his lost son. 

The Forest gives the player freedom over how they spend their time. You must hunt, forage, craft, and explore the island to acquire new gear and survive and the game lets you, the player, choose when and how to accomplish these goals. Still, The Forest keeps tight control over pacing through a variety of methods.

 Firstly, difficulty is relative to the player’s progression. Larger and more dangerous enemies will only show up once you have built a large enough base. This gives the developers control over when the player meets with certain challenges and ensures a personally crafted experience even in such an open ended game.

Secondly, the game’s day/night cycle intermixes slow periods of relative safety with fast paced and dangerous periods. While enemies can, and do, spawn during the day, they are more common and much more dangerous at night as the forest turns to pitch blackness. Again, the developers decided to control the pacing in this way instead of giving the player more freedom and it definitely paid off. The general safety of the daytime gives players a much needed chance to catch their breath while also lowering their guard. 

Finally, the enemy AI itself is designed to create suspense. You are very likely to see or hear an enemy in the distance before they actually attack, but when you see one you can be sure there are more watching from the shadows. The cannibals shriek while running through the shadowy woods and you’ll likely only catch glimpses of them as they dart past the moon through the trees. When they do get close enough, the behave erratically, surrounding the player or rushing them before stopping just short of attack range. They often spend quite a bit of time toying with the player before actually engaging. This means that, for a long time before you actually swing on one of the bastards, you are anticipating the fight. This short term suspense is maintains its effectiveness throughout the game by only being used in small bursts.

Overall, I believe the best horror games are tightly controlled by the developers. The player has very little control over pacing in games like Silent Hill, Amnesia, and Alien isolation, to name a few of my faves. Even The Forest, an open world survival game, is effectively frightening because it never gives up control over pacing.

#video games #the forest #silent hill #amnesia #alien isolation #horror #horror games #game design

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My Favorite Genre: The Walking Simulator

Walking Simulators are truly one of the most detested genres of games out there and, in the interest of transparency, I’ll admit that I love them. Even the name was created as a derogatory term for a boring or easy title, but games like The Stanley Parable, Firewatch, and Gone Home are instant classics in my book. But I’m not here to tell you why you’re wrong for hating walking sims. Everyone has their own preferences and no amount of analysis is going to make a game you considered boring suddenly entertaining. What I do want to talk about is how we criticize these types of games and why I appreciate the genre so much.

At the risk of sounding like some kind of elitist, walking simulators are not games. It’s an easy mistake to make seeing as they’re marketed as games on gaming platforms to gamers, but that’s just a ruse. A game requires rules, scores, winners, and losers. The best walking simulators, like Night in the Woods, don’t have any of those. Walking simulators typically focus entirely on narrative and any actual gameplay mechanics will, likewise, often be centered around narrative.

So why would an author choose to develop a video game rather than just write a book? Well, typically, novels are written by a single author and, thus, that author has total authority of the narrative. The reader is just along for the ride. But what if that isn’t the tone you want to cultivate? What if you want to subvert expectations and empower your reader instead? The answer is a growing, but still underutilized, genre that I believe will have a profound impact on storytelling in the future.

Ergodic literature is defined as requiring non-trivial effort to navigate. While a traditional novel requires the reader to simply read the words in the order written, an ergodic text will require some form of special effort from the reader. The most famous example of ergodic literature is House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski in which multiple narratives are presented to the reader in disjointed fragments of text taking various forms, like emails or hand-written notes. The story is there for the reader to find, but the reader must construct it themselves. This means the reader is no longer a passive observer, but an active participant.

“So why does this matter?” I hear you ask. “Are you too good for traditional narrative structure all of the sudden?” First of all, you don’t even know me, Mr. Judgement. Secondly, if you are trying to illicit a certain feeling or response from your audience, ergodic literature is able to engage readers in a way a 20 hour lecture from an author just can’t. Stories like The Dionaea House by Eric Heisserer (the writer behind Arrival and Bird Box) engross the reader in a dark, supernatural mystery that they aren’t simply reading about, but solving themselves through emails and blog posts. Similarly, the SCP Foundation, an increasingly popular ergodic collection of stories, offers an entire universe of content for readers to explore while discovering, and often creating, unique narratives.

The definition of ergodic literature is vague. Technically, a moldy stack of old newspaper is considered ergodic literature. Like many genres, most people just know it when they see it, but, to me, ergodic literature is a story that can only be told by making the reader participate. Reading Mother Horse Eyes, a story written entirely in Reddit comments over several years, involves combing through old posts and replies, searching for clues that tie the incredibly confusing and splintered narrative together. Likewise, The Stanley Parable, a game about exploring a surreal office space, could not be told as a linear novel because the involvement of the player is itself integral to the narrative.

Video games are one of the most versatile, unique, and criminally underused story telling mediums available. Many AAA games put tons of money into a game’s story just to make you feel like you’re watching a movie and, while I love games that do this like GTAV and Mass Effect, if I wanted to watch a movie, I would watch a movie. We generally expect games to be a certain way and when they aren’t we usually judge them for what they’re not instead of what they are, but that’s like giving Titanic one star because it wasn’t funny enough. 

If we judge narrative games for their lack of common or traditional gameplay we will only ever see the same games get made. It’s completely fair to dislike walking simulators, or any genre for that matter, for any reason. If you prefer first-person shooters or fighting games, you do you. I’m personally not a huge fan of turn-based RPGs, but I would never criticize a turn-based game for it’s lack of platforming and I believe it’s worth considering, before you decide to play or review a narrative based game, what is this game trying to accomplish?

#video games #narrative #walking simulator #ergodic literature #scp

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Oakwood Review

As almost anyone who has played video games regularly will attest to, games based off of movies are rarely very good. Usually, this is because developers are limited in what they’re allowed or able to accomplish due to restrictions placed on them by the owners of whatever IP they’re working on. Frequently, a studio will release a game alongside their movie to cash in on the excitement, as well as confused, but well meaning, parents who are aware their child likes both video games and A Bee Movie.

Sadly, some movies never get the games they truly deserve. For decades, games made about the Alien franchise were action packed and focused largely on combat, practically ignoring the entire first film. It wasn’t until 2014 when Sega published Alien Isolation that the same feeling of tense hopelessness from the original film was captured in a game. By attempting to mimic the aesthetic and atmosphere of the first film while creating mechanics that make you feel like a helpless astronaut, Alien Isolation became not only the best Alien game, but one of the best horror games of all time.

Oakwood was not produced by some big budget studio. In fact, Breaking Dimensions, the studio behind Oakwood, consists of only two people and, while the game is not officially based off of any movies, the inspiration it draws from the original Jurassic Park are very obvious, beyond just the inclusion of dinosaurs. This, combined with tense, Amnesia-like gameplay make Oakwood a must-play if you’re interested in survival horror, especially at the very reasonable price of $4.99 on Steam.

Gameplay

Oakwood follows Madi as she arrives at a remote campground to meet her friends for a week of outdoor fun. Things take a turn when you find an abandoned campsite left behind by your group. Much of the game involves exploring the different environments, digging up notes and clues as to what happened to your friends, and to the campground at large.

While certain aspects of Oakwood are reminiscent of Slender: The Arrival, such as the scattered notes, the flashlight, and the graphics, it is actually more similar to Amnesia: The Dark Descent in terms of gameplay. Unlike Slender, all encounters in Oakwood are scripted so you never have to worry about turning around and unexpectedly finding a raptor behind you. Overall, the enemies make plenty of noise, always indicating when the player is actually in danger. While some may argue this decreases the overall tension of the game, it gets the player to lower their guard making the scenes of intense danger more exciting and frightening. 

Story

While simple, the story of Oakwood gets the player to ask a few interesting questions. What happened to your friends? Where did these dinosaurs come from? Who is responsible for this? Unfortunately, few of these questions are answered by the end of the game leaving me pretty dissatisfied. 

That isn’t to say Oakwood is not entertaining. As previously mentioned, the inspiration taken from Jurassic Park becomes extremely obvious in certain scenes. At one point, your character must sneak through a dark and maze-like kitchen while avoiding raptors and at another point you must stay completely still to avoid the gaze of a T-rex. 

For some reason, however, the game never refers to the enemies as dinosaurs, similar to how nobody on the Walking Dead calls walkers “zombies”. This broke my sense of immersion specifically when your friend calls the T-rex a “giant thing” over the radio. I can buy that a normal person might not know what a dilophosaurus is and maybe they wouldn’t know what a velociraptor was if they had never been into dinosaurs as a kid, but do you seriously expect me to believe that an adult human of the 21st century wouldn’t recognize a Tyrannosaurus Rex? 

FInal Thoughts

Oakwood is extremely short with my playtime being a little under an hour, but that hour is packed with interesting locations, creepy atmosphere, and tense gameplay. For only $4.99 on Steam, Oakwood is well worth the price and should be a part of any survival horror, or Jurassic Park, fan.

Purchase Oakwood from Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/890970/Oakwood/

#oakwood #video game review #video games #survival #horror #survival horror #horror games

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Tattletail Review

There is something about taking an innocent object or concept, like a child’s toy or Christmas eve, and turning it into something evil. Few things creep me out more than a spooky puppet or an old nursery rhyme or Zipper the Bunny Day Bunny from Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I don’t think that last one is supposed to be scary on purpose, but I stand by it. Horror is all about subverting expectations and giving a Victorian doll a knife and an unquenchable thirst for blood is an effective, if often overused, way to accomplish this.

I’m obviously not the only person who feels this way. For proof, look no further than to the many popular Creepypastas based on famous cartoons, like Squidward’s Suicide or Bart Dies. These dark parodies, as TVTropes.com calls them, can lure the reader or player into a false sense of security by taking advantage of their sense of nostalgia before pulling the rug out from underneath and revealing the truth.

Tattletail, released in December of 2016 by Waygetter Electronics, follows a child just five days before Christmas. After opening a present early, the game becomes a fight for survival as the player explores the house and completes tasks for the titular Tattletail all while avoiding Mama.

Tattletail is obviously a parody of Furby and, like Furbies in real life, your Tattletail is possessed by the devil. Or at least Mama, the Teddy Ruxpin style matriarch of the Tattletail toy line, is possessed. Be conscious of your Tattletail’s needs and make as little noise as possible or else she’ll attack, short circuiting lights around the house and disabling your flashlight when you see her.

Gameplay

Tattletail’s gameplay primarily consists of wandering around the rooms of your house while completing various tasks, mostly involving finding an object, clicking and holding that object, and then moving onto the next task. The catch is that making too much noise will attract the deadly Mama whom you will need to avoid while completing the tasks and maintaining your Tattletail’s status bars.

The Steam page refers to Tattletail as a “virtual pet horror”. Like supernatural tamagotchi, Tattletail requires constant attention. You’ll need to feed, groom, and charge Tattletail’s battery to keep him from making noise and attracting mama. While this mechanic adds a level of challenge to the experience, I feel it adds very little value to the game overall. It appears as if these status bars only exist to pad out the gameplay while giving Tattletail something to do.

That’s another issue I have with this game. Tattletail isn’t evil like mama is, but he is, at best, useless and, at worst, a liability. Until the very end of the story, Tattletail does nothing but screech about being fed and brushed. Tattletail is cute and somebody obviously put a lot of work into his design, but the game can sometimes feel like one long escort mission with the world's most annoying and dangerous charge.

The pacing is well controlled, which is crucial for an effective horror game. Slow periods of exploration and exposition are intertwined with fast paced periods of tense escape. These instances are easily distinguishable, giving the player a safe moment to catch their breath while simultaneously dropping their guard.

Visuals and Sound

Visually, Tattletail is atmospheric and immersive. The level design and VHS aesthetic evokes feelings of nostalgia, at least if you grew up in the 90s. Everything, from the interior design of the house to the upbeat commercials with annoyingly catchy songs, exists to contribute to this feeling of being a young child of the 90s just days before Christmas. Tattletail does this beautifully.

A ton of thought and care obviously went into crafting the Tattletail character. While extremely similar in design, I actually find Tattletail’s face to be a lot cuter and less terrifying than that of a real life Furby. The voice acting, which consists entirely of prerecorded lines for Tattletail and Mama, is excellent and very convincing. Thanks to the hard work and incredible attention to detail by the developers, Tattletail looks and sounds like a real toy.

Story

Tattletail is a very short game. I was able to complete the entire story, plus the DLC, in less than two hours. This isn’t bad, though. Tattletail tells a disturbing and dark story of a mysteriously recalled toy. With a narrative that includes urban legends, haunted toys, and dangerous conspiracy, Tattletail could, itself, be described as an interactive creepypasta.

Final Thoughts

The length of the game as well as the compelling narrative keeps the gameplay from ever feeling stale and the persistent need to refill Tattletail’s status bars can be annoying at times, but never so much as to ruin the game. I’ve never played a horror game with a companion like Tattletail making this game quite unique in my book. I’m interested to see what else the “virtual pet horror” genre has to offer.

Purchase Tattletail from Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/568090/Tattletail/

#tattletail #video games #video game review #horror #survival horror

[freechaosgames]

Narcosis Review

When developing the 2001 PS2 cult classic, Ico, director Fumito Ueda followed a design strategy that he would later refer to as “design by subtraction.” Summarized, it essentially means doing one thing well instead of multiple things poorly. Decide what you want your game or story or film to accomplish and then remove anything that does not contribute to that vision. 

For a recent example, let’s look at Doom 2016. That game is about being the Doom Marine, relentlessly tearing through hordes of demons and feeling like an unstoppable force of nature. Every design choice contributes to this vision. The player never has to stop to reload meaning they never have to back out of the action to pause. Likewise, health is dropped by enemies when “glory killed” encouraging players close to death to run into the action instead of away from it. Each of these design choices factor into the overall sense of power and excitement that Doom very successfully elicits.

Narcosis is a first person survival horror game released in 2017 by Honor Code Inc. and it is the perfect example of what happens when this advice isn’t followed. The immersive and intricately crafted setting as well as a compelling narrative are constantly overshadowed by poor gameplay and other design choices. While beautiful and atmospheric, no story is worth the pain and frustration you will experience playing Narcosis.

Gameplay

Narcosis includes combat, stealth, platforming, and puzzle sections and fails miserably at every one of them. The most confusing decision made by the developers has to be including an oxygen meter that has to constantly be refilled. Its obvious that some poor 3D artist and level designer put a ton of effort into creating an atmospheric and realistic world for the player to explore, but the O2 meter ensures you will not get to see any of it. For some reason, the developers built a gorgeous and intricate environment just begging to be explored and then added mechanics that force the player to run through the levels as quickly as possible. To make things more frustrating, any time the protagonist sees anything even remotely cool, he starts hyperventilating, using up his oxygen faster. See a dead body? Critical oxygen consumption. A giant squid? Critical oxygen consumption. An old timey scuba ghost? Oddly, he seems totally fine with that.

The combat consists of flailing your arms while holding a knife, but judging distance is near impossible and it seems like the knife only works half the time anyway. Your character is unable to strafe left and right so stealth sections force you to avoid enemies without looking at them, which is irritating when you’re maneuvering through small hallways and you only have to stand somewhat near an enemy to be killed by it.

The platforming sections are the absolute worst, though. Whoever decided this game should include platforming was definitely a serial killer. There is no other explanation. The slow, imprecise movement, the jump that has to be charged before you use it, your inability to look down. Every decision seems to have been made in an effort to make this game the least fun it could possibly be. To make things more frustrating, you are often required to jump on oddly shaped models, like sofas and desks, but your character is barely capable of walking over small rocks let alone an upside-down office chair. This ensures that you will get to play the same platforming section over and over and over until you finally make it through or decide to kill yourself.

Story

The story and worldbuilding of Narcosis is where the game is at its best. Much of the lore and exposition can be found through exploring the levels, which really adds a feeling of immersion. Unfortunately, you often won’t have time to appreciate this aspect of the game because you’ll be too busy searching for another oxygen tank. 

You will encounter the corpses of your various crew mates while exploring the facility and finding them unlocks information about who they were. The fact that every dead body has a name and a story adds a lot of weight to the catastrophe you currently find yourself in. Though, again, looking at these bodies for too long increases your oxygen consumption forcing you to spend no more then a second looking at these gruesome, but well crafted, scenes. The story of Narcosis is decent and the ending was a surprise, but it just isn’t worth the effort to play through the entire 3 to 4 hour campaign.

Final Thoughts

To be blunt, Narcosis is not good. It isn’t fun and I’m pretty sure the level “The Water’s Edge” gave me an ulcer. The never-ending frustration of trying to navigate the game’s mechanics outweighs any feelings of fear or suspense. Narcosis should have been a 45 minute walking simulator without any combat or platforming, but instead Honor Code padded it with annoying and counterproductive mechanics that absolutely ruin the experience.  

Purchase Narcosis from Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/366870/Narcosis/

#video games #video game review #narcosis #survival #horror #survival horror

[freechaosgames]

Boogeyman 2 Review

First person, point-and-click survival horror games such as Five Nights at Freddy’s are a niche genre. A lot of folks don’t like horror games at all, and many horror fans don’t get too excited about an exceedingly difficult timed gauntlet of constant death. Nevertheless, these types of games have grown in popularity over the years and Boogeyman 2, by developer Barry McCabe,  is a fun, if not particularly scary, entry to the genre, with its straightforward gameplay and  emphasis on sound and light. Boogeyman 2 includes a virtual reality option which I was, unfortunately, unable to play so this review will be exclusively aimed at those not using VR.

Gameplay

You play as a little girl, just about to settle down for the night when your weird victorian doll (that every little girl has) informs you that something is coming to take your soul and that you better gear up if you plan on surviving the coming nights. Over the course of seven days, the boogeyman will attempt to kidnap you by entering your room through several different entrance points, like your closet, your window, or under your bed, and you’ll have to shine your flashlight on him before he takes you. The difficulty ramps up significantly night after night with the boogeyman finding new ways into the room and entering through multiple ways at once, ensuring notably greater challenges as you progress.

Boogeyman 2 boasts an amazingly immersive diegetic interface, with every aspect of gameplay being communicated to the player through in-universe sound and visual cues. Nearly every entrance through which the boogeyman can come in has a unique sound that plays when he’s nearby and his eyes glow bright yellow so that are easily visible in the pitch black, as long as you’re being vigilant and keeping an eye out. These helpful tips won’t stop the game from throwing some curveballs your way, however. Gameplay is kept fresh as the weather changes, muffling all noises because of a blizzard or occasionally lighting up the entire room with lightning, and the boogeyman uses your eyes and ears against you. Lights will flicker out at the exact worst time, electronics will loudly interrupt your panicked searching, and toys will be thrown across the room, all in an attempt to distract you.

Unfortunately, the nature of these types of games prevents them from being truly terrifying, in my opinion. Any fan of these timed challenges and steep difficulty curves will know that losing is a fact of life. Counter-intuitively, death is not always good for a horror game. The thousandth time Freddy Krug- I mean, the boogeyman pulls me under the bed is obviously not going to be as frightening as the first time. Eventually, the jump scare and scream effect that accompanies every single death becomes more annoying than anything else and it’s easy to want to throttle your doll’s neck every time you die and she reminds you to “use your ears, as well as your eyes.” I know how to play the game, you little freak. I just suck at it.

Graphics and Sound

The overall creepiness factor is increased tenfold by the fact that the entire game takes place in a child’s bedroom. The shelves are filled with kids toys and the walls adorned with crayon drawings. My personal favorite is the drawing of the boogeyman that was obviously not drawn by a child, but by some concept artist. My personal head canon is that you described the monster to a professional police sketch artist and then hung the picture on your wall to remind you what you’re fighting for.

There are only two character models in the entire game: the boogeyman and your dog. The artists behind this game obviously put a ton of effort into the style and animation of the boogeyman. His contorted smile, his red, shining flesh, the way he crawls across the floor to your bed. It’s all extremely well done. The dog, on the other hand, looks like the boogeyman is wearing your dog’s skin. The model is boxy and awkward and the animation is jerky and unrealistic. I know I said this game wasn’t particularly scary, but the thought of having to sleep in the same room as that dog fills me with terror.

Final Thoughts

Boogeyman 2 isn’t for everyone. Frequent jump scares, a steep difficulty curve, and no real narrative to speak of means this game is meant to be enjoyed by a more niche audience, but what Boogeyman 2 sets out to do it does extremely well. While the game is fun playing on the desktop, it’s obvious that it was made for virtual reality which I, sadly, was unable to play. Boogeyman 2 holds up well using a mouse and keyboard, but I imagine it would be terrifying in VR. Overall, if you’re a fan of games like Five Nights at Freddy’s or Emily Wants to Play, you will very likely also enjoy Boogeyman 2.

Purchase Boogeyman 2 from Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/567130/Boogeyman_2/

#video games #video game review #boogeyman #horror #horror games #virtual reality

[freechaosgames]

Unforgiving - A Northern Hymn Review

Birds fly, fish swim, and the Swedish make video games. Don’t ask me why, it’s in their blood or something, but they’re great at it. Minecraft, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Crusader Kings, and Goat Simulator were all developed by studios in Sweden. Unforgiving - A Northern Hymn is an open-world, first-person, survival horror game heavily inspired by Swedish folklore. The story, enemies, and environments all reflect this and, let me tell you, Swedish fairy tales are a lot darker than I imagined. The gripping narrative, unique enemy design, and well-crafted locations will keep you invested for the 3-4 hour playtime, even if the gameplay can become dull and predictable at times.

Sound and Visuals 

Swedish developer Angry Demon Studios, a team of only five, released Unforgiving - A Northern Hymn in November of 2017 and I recently purchased it on sale for $2.99 down from its usual $14.99. The game follows Linn as she is separated from her brother and finds herself alone in the Swedish wilderness at night. Right off the bat, the world of Unforgiving seems, well, unforgiving. The darkness is nearly total and fog obscures anything further than a few yards ahead of you. As such, sound is just as important in Unforgiving as light and the game is at its absolute scariest when you are only catching glimpses of your enemies. Through the rustling of the trees, the loud gusts of wind, and your own, echoing footsteps you will listen desperately for the chattering of enemies nearby, making sure to give them a wide berth. The enemy design is similarly terrifying with each monster being based on real Swedish folktales which are, again, and I can't stress this enough, definitely not appropriate for children. Unforgiving creates a terrifying world through the use of its sound and visuals, even though the graphics are nothing too impressive. 

Story

The story and world of Unforgiving - A Northern Hymn is where the game really grabbed and kept my interest. Also inspired by Swedish folklore and Norse mythology, the protagonist’s struggle is mirrored by the struggles of those who came before them, as evidenced by the large amount of expositional material scattered about the world. Nearly the entire story is told through in-game books, letters, and drawings and much of it is completely optional, requiring the player to explore the levels completely in order to put the entire plot together. I thought this was an interesting design choice as I personally tend to haul ass to the end of a level in most horror games, but the story was so interesting that I found myself exploring every nook and cranny of the various open-world environments. The plot will easily keep you hooked till the end even when the gameplay starts to grate on you.

Gameplay

The gameplay is where Unforgiving falls flat. Reminiscent of most survival horror games, Unforgiving primarily has the player searching for some keys or items to get them to the next area while avoiding a wandering, unkillable enemy. At one point, you acquire a magic harp who’s note’s can be played similar to in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or Windwaker. I was so excited, thinking I was going to discover various magic spells to help me on my journey, but you only learn two songs and they’re both used for unlocking doors. I mean, seriously? Huge missed opportunity in my opinion. The first hour or so is initially scary as you are constantly looking behind you or jumping at the slightest noise, but quickly loses its effect as it becomes very easy to tell when you’re actually in danger or not. The game’s Steam page says the Unforgiving has an “Intelligent AI choosing its own paths instead of patrolling on the same routes over and over” but I found it very easy to avoid or manipulate the enemies anyway. 

Where Unforgiving succeeds in this respect is when the lore syncs up with the gameplay. There are books and notes scattered all over the world describing the lore of various enemies as well as their gameplay mechanics. One example is an excerpt from a book describing an enemy that was cursed to live underground. As such, they eventually lost their sight, but developed acute hearing indicating to the player that they must be quiet. I love when games make simply learning about the world a mechanic in itself. The gameplay is kept somewhat fresh with a variety of different enemies that require the player to adapt and overcome. You will need different strategies to avoid the giant, lumbering man as opposed to the numerous, chittering blind imps. 

Final Thoughts

Unforgiving - A Northern Hymn is a compelling and unique narrative that will have you interested from beginning to end. While the gameplay can be boring, predictable, and at times just downright annoying, Unforgiving’s detailed and inspired world is captivating enough that you won’t mind powering through the slow parts. While mechanically similar to most games of the genre, Unforgiving cements itself as a notable entry for its intricate lore based on real Swedish and Norse mythology as well as its distinctive and unique enemy design.

Purchase Unforgiving - A Northern Hymn from Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/747340/Unforgiving__A_Northern_Hymn/

#video games #norse mythology #swedish folklore #video game review #unforgiving #angry demon studios