Kidnapped

Spoilers may or may not abound.

Kidnapped is an hour-long horror-adventure game by DarkGamer. In it, a boy named John gets kidnapped by some loony who hates kids and has a tragic back-story or something. While the effort is there, I suppose, the quality is not. As you will hear later in rant-mode, I quit on the final section of the game due to a myriad of bad game design choices, a huge difficulty spike and an entirely different mod of play.

Gameplay

I love adventure games, but this one was keys, keys and more keys. And the Noise “Metter” was an empty addition. Bonus- Final section rant with full spoiler action!

The gameplay in this game was really very plain. In the game you go around opening doors so you can open more doors and eventually come to a really frustrating conclusion. Despite how engaging this sounds, it was very boring.

The first thing I will talk about is the Noise Meter, or, as it is spelt for the entirety of the game, in the walkthrough and on the thread, Noise Metter. The noise Metter is a little bar at the bottom of the screen that increases as you move, open doors and fail (or succeed) password entry. If it fills, the scary man comes and eats you and you get a big fat game over. Over time the bar decreases so you don’t game-over from walking, except when you do.

Now, there are many ways this could be an alright feature. A room where there is an echo, so when you move the bar doesn’t go back down, could be used in conjunction with a maze, or another type of puzzle, as an interesting diversion. A room where you HAVE TO go above a certain volume to trigger something, and your footsteps alone aren’t enough, would be kinda cool.

But the fact is, in this game, this system does nothing but give you random game overs. Every so often, if you’ve just been walking and you open a door, you will get a game over. Well, doesn’t that sound fun? The solution to this kind of problem? Just stand on spot and wait. Yep, you could be waiting a good 5 seconds just to open a door, for no good reason at all. This would be tolerable if the system served any purpose, but the fact is, it doesn’t!

Now before I go no to my next point, I’d just like to complain about one thing- the walk-speed is slow. And the maps are big and numerous. This is a problem on its own, but it is made worse by the party system.
In this game you play as three characters separately- The smart chick, the brute and some punk who plays instruments. You can cycle between them by pressing shift. Each of these characters has their own ability that you need them for, such as ramming open doors, reading and being tall.

Now, I like these systems, but this one had lots of problems. The first one is very similar to my complaint about the meter – why bother? Every thing you have to do involving which character you have to use is either blindingly obvious or painfully obscure. For the obvious ones, it’s just a lot of trouble switching around. For the obscure ones, it’s a case of “who the hell would’ve thought of THAT?” and a visit to the walkthrough. A lot of the trouble stems from the character roles being taken too far – only the smart chick can even look at things, while only the brute can move a small stool. It’s just really annoying when these things get out of hand wile adding nothing.

My other complaint about this system is that swapping characters takes you to where that character was when you last swapped. Combined with the massive maze of maps and the slogging speed of the characters, it ends in scenarios like such; “Go to this room. Oh, I need the brute. Okay, switch. Slog… Slog… Slog… Done! Oh, I need the chick… Slog… Slog… Slog… Done! Okay, there’s a key here! And it’s the same shape as the keyhole at the start of the game! Slog… Slog… Slog… What? I need the brute in this room? Oh…”

Unfortunate also is the fact that the need for each character isn’t even close to balanced. You will need the brute for almost the entire game, then you will occasionally have to switch to the chick to do something that the other two characters are clearly capable of doing. You will find that music dude is needed a total of two times in the entire game, to do things that are plainly obvious. It’s clear he’s only even in the game because it’s commonplace to do these things in threes, but then why doesn’t John count as the third?

The actual adventure-styled gameplay in the game is very lacking. It’s all keys, doors and chests, and finding which matches up to which, with a few poorly designed puzzles chucked in the middle. I feel this game really missed the mark on what makes adventure gameplay fun. What makes it interesting isn’t arbitrarily finding which key fits in which lock – even platformers have this level of adventure gameplay in them! It’s about, in some ways, watching how a game world reacts to your meddling.

What do I mean by this? Consider the following. You’re playing a game, and you come up to an evil guy sitting on a big pile of explosives. If you’re playing an RPG, it’s widely accepted that you won’t get to go up to the fuse of one of the explosives, use a small fire spell, then run like hell. But if you’re playing an adventure game, you fully expect the game to respond in some way when you try and use a pack of matches on the pile – even if it’s just a “Oh no you don’t!” message) – and that’s what makes it fun; it’s using your logic against the logic of the creators and resolving a situation in a unique, but logical manner.

Unfortunately, at this point in time I think I can safely say that anyone reading this understands that if you place the correct key into a lock and then turn it the lock will open. It’s just not interesting anymore. What is interesting is how you get the key, but in this game that is precisely the problem you probably found the key lying on the ground, or by using a screwdriver on the drawers that say HEY LOOKI HAVE SOME SCREWS ON ME THAT CAN BE UNSCREWED LOOK LOOK!”. It just doesn’t carry the same level of interest as it could, or should for that matter.

And my next little rant is very spoilery so, uh, look away.


Gameplay score: 1/5. A lot of ideas, but honestly, none of them work.

Narrative

There’s too much dialogue, followed by no explanations. The characters are all flat.

A common complaint about many games is that their introductions are too long. Well, some games take it further than others. This game’s introduction is about 10 minutes in length, or about 1/6 of the entire game. It could also be summarised in one line – a boy goes missing in the forest where a creepy man dwells, and his friends go to look for him. This introduction is filled with empty conversation, which does not set the scene, or build the characters. It also oddly has no background which eliminates one way of building atmosphere. Honestly, towards the end of the introduction I was beginning to think I was playing the world’s worst visual novels. The entire scene could be cut, completely, with 1 or 2 boxes of dialogue at the bit where the gameplay starts, and the game would be improved drastically.

The characters are all really boring. The three kids are kids, the psychopath is a psychopath. That is all the characters are. I think sometimes people get confused between traits and personality – while traits can build personality, or be a base for the personality, there still has to be personality there for them to work with. The smart girl, for instance, didn’t act any smarter than the other characters, and this is one of the most basic personality traits a character could have! It’s also unfortunate that after the 10 minute exposition, the characters very rarely say anything!

There is one thing I liked about the story in this game – all of the story (or plot, I always forget the difference and it’s all semantics anyway) once you enter the mansion is shown through notes. Having said that, they’re fairly bland and don’t say much, and leave some things unresolved, but not in that “It is a mystery!” way, but rather in that “Oh don’t mind the plot hole” way that games often do.

One major problem was that the villain is only kind of given a motive. DarkGamer sets up part of his motive, which is fairly weak but is cohesive, and then goes on to add in another twist that, even if it is somehow resolved in the ending I never saw, still leaves at least 1 unfixable plot hole. This made his character weaker and gave the game no real force.

Also, for a horror game, the weak and unrealistic dialogue with the flat and motiveless characters in a very boring world really wasn’t scary or thought-provoking or creepy at all. Oh well.

Story score: 1/5 Nothing past a very basic horror plot, with 4 flat characters and a stereotype. I don’t even remember two of their names.

Audiovisual

Clashing graphics, and very trying sounds and music. Also twins.
Horror games are all about atmosphere. Unfortunately, this game is a massive failure as far as atmosphere goes, for multiple reasons.

The graphics clash, a lot. DarkGamer gets points for trying, but the non-detailed floor with slightly detailed decorations and detailed characters and other tiles. It all goes together as a complete mess. It ruins any kind of mood the game had going because it looks so bad. 2D games with chibi sprites are already at a disadvantage in this department without clashing graphics to exacerbate it.

As for the music, it’s all moody ambience and creepy music through and through. It’s very wearing, as none of it builds any atmosphere, and there is never a quiet moment.

Something many people undervalue is silence. Sometimes no music at all is really freaky. Ambience has its value, but silence, when used correctly, is ominous and very atmospheric. There is no need to have a million different ambience tracks in the one game.

One last note – the two male playable characters are near identical! (Or actually identical?) It was very annoying to switch to the right character.

Audiovisual Score- 1.5/5 Bad visuals, too much ambience.

I’ve greatly debated what score to give this. Firs it was going to be a two, but then I decided on one and a half… but now I am tending towards a one. This game has effort put in, but there are really no redeeming factors to it, as far as I’m concerned. It’s dull, it’s drawn out, and by the end it’s ridiculous. Please, DarkGamer, take this in your stride and use it to improve your games in the future. I’m not trying to antagonize anybody here; I’m just trying to help. Anyway, I’ve written two and a half standard school essays on a game I didn’t actually finish, so I’m going to stop now. Keep in mind it would be quicker to play this game than it was to write this review, so if you’re curious, give it a shot! I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but the four star reviews say to me that your mileage may vary on this one. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(SPOILERS! My playlog!)