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A Game About Exploring Haunted Town

My playtime: 00:28:38 (last save).

Intro
Around me, crimson-stained leaves is a short horror game about a bunch of people who are exploring a haunted town.

Graphics
I know that i'm not a fan of horror games but the atmosphere makes me scared even when i arrived to the town for the first time. I think i'll get a heart attack if there's a jumpscare in the game but luckily there isn't any.

Story
The story starts a bit confusing with two people in red talking in black backgrounds about wanting to go to a certain town. I think it'll be better to just put them in a normal, non black backgrounds and environments just to familiarize yourself with the characters.

The rest of story is great though; i got the mysterious and horror vibe in it. You can gather a little bit of information along the way to piece what happened on that place. If you're lazy to do so (which actually beats the purpose of the game), there will be an explanation of the entire thing later on near the end of the game. There is also a little twist in the story and i really like it. The game isn't as scary on the later half of the game though but i'm stil enjoying it.

The game
First of all, i noticed that the menu can't be interacted with keyboard at all; you have to use mouse to use it. Luckily, you don't need to use mouse all the time to play the game because it's gonna be annoying to do.

You'll start the game by exploring a town. You can familiarize yourself with the place or gather some informations that are left by the people in the town. As i said before, the town's atmosphere is very spooky and the lightning also helps a lot with it. Sadly, i hardly hear any music in the game (even the screams don't really noticeable at all). I think will add more suspense on the game if there are any though.

There will be some minigames that you have to do to determine your survival. However, you'll get an instant game over once you lose and you have to either watch the long game over screen or reload the game entirely (since you'll have to reload from your previous save when that happens anyway). However, reloading the game takes a long time to do because there's this black screen before the main menu shows up. It gets boring if you die a lot of times, which happens to me on the first minigame (the one where you're supposed to run from the yellow haired boy) since you need trial and error to complete it.

Pros:
- Great atmosphere
- Minigames

Cons:
- No music
- Game took too long to load

Conclusion
The game has a great spooky atmosphere in it and the story is also great for a horror story.

Posts

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Thank you so much for reviewing "Around Me", aquatorrent!
It's nice to see that you felt scared with the town at first. This time I tried to avoid any kind of heavy jumpscares as one of my older projects used them and people didn't really like them. That's also why I avoided using loud screams.
For the introduction, I tried to create the effect of telling a story through silhouettes, though I agree that it may be confusing as the player is meeting a lot of characters at the same time. Thanks for the suggestion!
I'm also glad to see you liked the rest of the story, the twist and how I explained most of the events, since I tend to think that I did an awful job explaining stuff in this game, haha.
Regarding the menu thing, that's weird. It should work by pressing Z/X (Start/Escape depending on your keyboard config.) and the arrow keys. Using the mouse was meant to be the alternative way unless the player preferred it, except for the minigames.
A lot of people said the game needed more music and I kinda agree with that since the game is too silent during some points. Back when I made this game I was a bit afraid that adding music would've made the player feel more comfortable/relaxed.

For the minigames, I didn't realize how annoying was the entire process of dying and loading a savefile again. If I update/fix this game, I'll make sure of adding quality of life improvements to remove/improve stuff like that. I don't want to stress anyone >_>.
Again, thank you for this review, it will help me a lot to improve the quality of my current projects!
Well i admit that some stuffs are a bit confusing at first, but it becomes clearer as i progress the game. The ending also helps a lot explaining the story (since they show what really happened) so i'm sure you did a good job out there

No problem! Take your time, and thanks for making the game!
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