Leave

Looking at the game on the whole, there doesn't seem much at all to it. You move through a dark house, solve some basic, mainly inventory, puzzles, try to avoid the insta-death jump scares and then... it's over? Yep, the entire game shouldn't take you anymore than around ten minutes to finish. It's literally three small floors of a house, the front door, then end game. Now there's nothing especially wrong with short games, I'd rather have one of those than a game that's too long, but when one thinks "short game," it's usually something that takes about a couple, maybe several hours to finish, at least on your first run through the game. This feels barely the length of a demo. The point I'm trying to make is, REALLY short games just don't feel so fulfilling to play and complete, especially a game like this that seems in many ways set up to be something larger than what it is.

The story of the game is... well, play the game and decide for yourself. All I'll say is you're a girl in a room upstairs in a house on a stormy night where you can see out the windows a man waiting outside for you. The objective is to get outside. Why? Again, play it yourself. To accomplish this seemingly simple task, you will deal with swathes of darkness surrounding you (used very well I must admit), collect objects that will help aid you (usually shining somewhere in a room), oh and did I mention there's a creepy jump-scare monster girl after you the entire time? Yeah, try avoiding her and avoid triggering her at all costs, because EVERY jump scare, usually her face up to yours, in the game is also a game over. Certain scripted triggers will alert her presence, in which you must avoid her immediately (usually by running away). The best sequence is in the house's basement. I won't reveal anymore, but it's probably the best use of sound in the entire game, and you might also find yourself having to retry that segment at least once or twice. However, there comes a point where her presence becomes so prominent you can't help but eventually start to laugh when she kills you repeatedly for doing something wrong. And when she's seen simply in cut scenes, she does look creepy alright, but some of the ways she makes her presence look kind of goofy, like one scene where you see her hand grab the corner of an open window, then she reveals her demonic smiling face like "sup!" This isn't to say the game doesn't have a good atmosphere or isn't scary in any way, because I do think it does well in portraying a mysterious, dark abandoned household, it's just that the more overt scares also give it the feel of a haunted house theme park ride after a while.

But I mentioned something about a story in the review. So far based on my descriptions and the game's length one wouldn't expect there much room to fit a story here. Well that's the great part about it, and the thing that helps bring it above the usual jump scare/haunted house horror fare in games, whether RPG Maker-made or not. The story is revealed bit by bit through exploration, or, at least, bothering to read the diary pages around you. You'll find a number of them and as you find more they give an increasingly clearer picture of the actual events leading up to where you are at at the beginning, but doesn't do so so explicitly that you're not left with at least SOME ambiguity left. And after all this, once you finish the game and find out who the man outside is and what he's here for, the puzzle pieces are laid out for you to put together. It's just a great way to tell a story in a game. It's there if you seek it out, and if you don't, little will make sense, but if you DO seek it out and keep everything you discover in mind (if I recall correctly the diary pages are not found in chronological order) it gives you something to mull over after the game is done and gives it an extra bit of dimension. I suppose this is as good a way as any to make up for a game of a short length as this, and it certainly does it better than other games like it that I've tried.

Summary: as a game, it has OK but not mind-bending puzzles, a decently creepy atmosphere with good use of darkness, jump scares that become ridiculous after a while, and generally doesn't do anything especially interesting with the genre we haven't seen before and did I mention it can be finished in like ten minutes? But what redeems it and makes it especially shine is how it tells its story, and it's an interesting story at that, in so short a time. Because of that, and the fact that, well, it'll take up hardly any of your time at all to play and finish, it certainly doesn't hurt to give it a go during a coffee break or whenever if you're someone who isn't averse to JUMP SCARES! and horror in general.