Jeremiah's Bedroom

Jeremiah’s Bedroom is a self-proclaimed horror game that could do with a little more horror and a little less upbeat minigame.

The Graphics:

Some are custom, but they’re mostly old RTP-style. The graphics are consistent and don’t look out of place, but the problem is they’re all too bright and cheery. For a horror game, it doesn’t create the mood of one. The mapping could also use some help. The game is set in an apartment, but the only walls in it are seen outside the main door. The spaces are too wide open and could’ve been condensed a lot. The custom graphics don’t stand out or look bad, but once again, they were far too bright for a game that’s supposed to be spooky.

The Audio:

Viewtiful picked a good soundtrack for this game, with only one exception. The cooking minigame he used has an upbeat RTP track that contrasts with everything else way too much. The other songs are rather grim and help set the mood well, but their effects are offset too much by the game’s cheery graphics. This pretty much destroys the atmosphere, leaving you with creepy music in an otherwise pleasant setting. This is a graphical problem more than anything else, but it cuts into this department as part of the overall feel.

The Story:

Intriguing enough to work. The events of the plot get the point across without being too wordy or melodramatic. This is another area I feel that suffered due to the colorful graphics, though. The story itself does a good job, but it’s detracted from so much that it loses its impact.

The Characters:

The story is about Elizabeth, an aging woman who obsesses about her son, Jeremiah. She demonstrates some depth in the woes of her life, but her dialogue doesn’t always feel believable. It’s like she says things only for the sake of saying them, rather than because it’s something she would actually say. I don’t know if that made sense, but her dialogue could use more emotion and feeling.

The Gameplay:

This is more like an interactive movie. The only real gameplay occurs with the cooking minigame, which I think would’ve been best left out entirely. The minigame has you running between four stoves spaced way too far apart, and activating them in time with a color-changing indicator at the top of the screen. It’s almost impossible to succeed in, there’s no penalty for failing, nor any reward for winning. Furthermore, it breaks up the flow of the story and destroys what little impact the plot and music have set up. It either needs an enormous tweaking or removed completely, but that’s just my opinion.

So, this game has a decent story and soundtrack, but ultimately fails to deliver due to the graphics choices and highly disruptive minigame. Condensing the maps to get rid of extra space and choosing a darker graphic style would help immensely. The cooking minigame is just about broken, and would need a lot of work to implement functionally. In light of these issues, I give this game a:

3/10