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Its Lock

  • Kylaila
  • 08/03/2015 10:04 AM
  • 617 views
The Mansion is a short less than hour long horror game without any direct battles, focusing on exploration and survival.

You are on your way to visit your mother when you crash and wake up in a strange mansion.
While it has a promise of evil workings beneath what you see, it introduces this theme fairly late and is bland, stretched and has questionable orthography throughout the entire game. The writing really brings this game down, as it does focus on the underlying story a great deal.


So .. you are just coming out of nowhere. Okay.

Nevertheless - it is the first game of the creater, and one can note the progress they have made throughout the game. The later portions are much more engaging and make way for a sequel.

First I would like to note the music selection - although ripped mostly from Resident Evil, the series that inspired this game, it creates a very solid, mysterious atmosphere. Especially later sections up the game and mix in darker tunes as the game progresses and get more intense.
The chase music from Amnesia is a debateable one, as it is very iconic, and does not mash as well as the rest of the music. It grew on me over time, however, even as it did not have the impact early on.
What also grew on me was the serene track in saving rooms, they made for a nice break and released the tension building up - I really loved reaching every single one.

Music alone does not make a horror game - and as the tunes are not completely eerie or scary by themselves, as they more set the stage, than create it - the sounds are a crucial part of any horror game.
They are fairly underdeveloped here - some sounds are frankly hurting the atmosphere, such as the usual dungeon-walking-down-stairs music, or healing or other very light sound effects. Whereas the closing door sounds are still as good as ever.
Sadly, there are no additional soundeffects for the usual rooms - there is a growling sometimes when you are about to face a monster, which you will recognize with monsters, but it never really sets the stage for surprises. Why do we hear the little girl only after we have seen her? Why not before that?
Why is there no destruction to be had? There seem to be people killed only recently, seeing as there corpses are nearly laid out and have not rotten away to skeletons. Then how you do not hear sounds in any of such a direction?

The game over scream is fairly mild and reminded me of someone falling down a hole. It sounded natural, but not like someone being brutally murdered or taken by surprise, which made for raised eyebrowns more than anything else. The one enemy creating noises is fairly .. not scary, so it is hard to connect the sense of dread with the sounds.

Sound design can go a long long way to make environments more engaging, and scary. I would argue the best horror osts incorporate sound in their music tracks. I remember the battle theme of Silent Hill 3 reminded me strongly of heavy breathing, accompanied by the feeling of heart beat and more through the controller, this creates a perfect description of adrenaline rushing up during the fights, which set the stage perfectly.

The Mansion

Now then, the exploration itself is following the tradition of find the right items to procceed at the right doors. The mansion itself is gigantic, and completely senseless as we are used to. There are stone walls looking like a basement on the 4th floor, with metal gates and all, ripped beds standing around in random corridors, as well as beds and pianos being the most common furniture everywhere. Aside from one dining room, one kitchen, and a few prison like, stoney areas, there are only ever bedrooms to be had.


If only I knew!

90% of the doors are either locked or stuck, the corridors themselves are following the pattern of doors distributed everywhere, so while you have a hard time orientating yourself well, you can really only ever use that one door which will bring you further. You may have no idea of the building, where you are, why you are there, but at least you can proceed.
You basically start out from the top and make your way down to the exit. On each floor, you need to get some code, solve some puzzle or find an item to procceed from your safe saving room. These indicated by your diary save point, as well as serene music playing, often contained notes explaining the story events.

I commend the design to be in a way which allows for a linear progression - there is either the choice of revisiting the same corridors time and time again to eventually get into all of these locked rooms, or to abandon these entirely and focus on getting out.
Strangely designed or not, it was clear that you did not need to backtrack, and that you can proceed if you find a door. There is no additional content to find, and you can traverse easily through the building. Seeing that your only goal is to get out of the mansion, you actually do this for once! A nice breath of fresh air.

The event chain is fairly predictable - get item/key/solve puzzle, leave safety room, encounter monster, repeat.
However, as you progress, monster start showing up, the rooms get warped and stranger, before you return to a more normal interior and leave the mansion.

Puzzles are a very mixed bag. I realize they are only a means to progress the game, but the hints could have been given in a more stylized matter.
It literally says "PS: The date is the code" on one letter, where it could just have some flavour text completing the hint on the actually code-lock - such as "in memory of your birthday". It seems unnatural in the way it is used.
The kitchen being on fire without ever affecting other rooms or being deemed dangerous is strange, and other than these you usually just fetch items to proceed one way or another. They are fairly easy overall, and there is a brief walkthrough available.

Story

Now this horror game is about escaping alongside finding out what is actually happening.
The problem is that many points make little sense, starting with your main characters acting in complete apathy early on. Finding corpses, being brought somewhere without anyone watching over you or even a note saying what happened to you or what is going to happen to you, does not seem to worry our protagonist in the slightest.
Only by the end of the game where you find notes written on the same day, planning murders to do, does your protagonist start to freak out, or actively worry. Before that, you greet the stranger you meet without a shred of doubt and walk about trying to thank the mansion owner while ominous music is playing and a shadow is surrounding you - that makes for a disconnection with the player experience, as it is not neutral, either.


I beg your pardon?

You could either portray it with a silent protagonist, merely taking in what is happening around him and trying to find a way out, or a more personal one - one worrying about visiting his mother, being on time, having had an accident and waking up in a strange, dangerous place. As it is, the reactions are unnatural.

There are many random jump scares of flashing images, which simply put .. bored me. It seemed as though they were only added for the sake of making it a horror game, but completely left out later in the game where they actually could have made a difference, as tension was building up.

So you have murders going on in a mansion, the owner going mad, but there is also more going on. First of all there is the "why did he go mad?" backstory, and then also the "what is he trying to do with these murders?" bit developing into the actual plot of what is going on right now.

While sacrifices and the like are all interesting, there was far too little meat to be had. The reasoning as to why he went mad was simply ... too easy and too slim of a reason. A love can make you mad, but only under special circumstances - when the love makes up your sense of self and your sense of life. Portraying going made by simple stating "love, DUH!" is unfortunately not enough to make it coherent or believeable. There was a puzzle around the "path to insanity" which frankly is a completely odd and unhealthy description to make. Being happy, then after a sad event beoming sad and starting to grief does not necessarily equal insanity! Or a road to insanity.

The butler's story, too, was only hinted at and never made into an actual backstory. Just adding more text to what he went through to make him the loyal servant he is would have made a huge difference! Still, I enjoyed his description a greal deal.

The workings beneath the strange monsters are never explored, although they would have been a very interesting subject where you could freely let fantasy do its wonders - as they are beyond normal understanding and workings. You never find out why there are monsters in the first place. What is their purpose? Were they created? Did they just show up? Obviously not, so what happened?


You get used to it after the 10th time.


The creater could really need the help of a writer or at least someone to spell check. There is barely any line without typos or grammar mistakes, such as always exclusively using present tense when past tense is required, missing all apostrophes in "it's", "won't", "don't", random capitalizations such as "Theres no Hole here", as well as many typos slipping through such as "pafe" instead of "page".

What it comes down to is a fairly simple linear horror game, but it is unfortunately unable to take advantage of the underlying story, or to make the exploration itself engaging and interesting.