Blank Slate

Intro

"Blank Slate" is a horror puzzle game developed by AestheticGamer using RPG Maker VX Ace. This game was created for Ludum Dare 26 in 36 hours and the theme was minimalism. And as usual I'm probably not the best person to cover these kinds of games. After all, horror games tend to end in ways that are rather off putting for me so I'd advice taking my opinion with a grain of salt.

Does this Meet the Theme?

If you want the quick answer than I'd say this game definitely meets that theme. For a longer answer the game meets this theme in a few ways. One of the more obvious is that a lot of areas in this game are rather limited in color as well as the main character having very few features beyond a basic human body shape.



And the game continues to meet this theme well beyond the most obvious section of the White Zone with there being very few objects for the player to see or interact with on many maps.



So this game definitely captures a very minimalistic look. And this minimalism also translates to the story itself which is so paper thin I'd be hard pressed to tell you what this game is about beyond reaching a room apparently containing the playable character's mom who eats one of his arms. Though why she does this is never explained. She just claims it's equivalent to something the player did and that his arm was adequate payment. Though considering how weird this game is I suppose it having an ending that just makes you go WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST PLAY!?! should be expected.

Gameplay

On the gameplay side of things the player needs to solve various puzzles. Though a lot of these puzzles are highly annoying in my opinion since most of them will just result in your death if you make a mistake. As such, most of the puzzles feel like their comprised of beginner's traps. And the most obvious offender is a section of the game where your chased by a monster through a simple maze. You'll quickly arrive at a section where you can jump around and then enter one of many different paths, but only one of them is actually correct. As such your likely to pick the wrong one and get eaten. And while this can arguably be a decent jump scare the first time. It quickly gets annoying to run through this area multiple times trying to find the correct path. And even if you manage to realize your on the wrong path and turn around. You can't enter the jump section again in order to choose another route. So once you've selected the wrong path your a dead man walking and better of just running right into the monster to speed up the process of getting a game over and being able to load from your last save file.

In fact, this section of the game was so annoying that one of the other reviewers gave up instead of subjecting themselves to the trial and error needed to find the correct path. To be fair the player is given over a dozen paths to choose from. So I can see why this would get old rather quickly. In fact, I chose to make getting through this section easier by watching AestheticGamer's Let's Play for the game. That way I wouldn't have to keep trying to figure out which path was the correct one on my own.

Sound

Sound wise the game is rather limited, but this game is also extremely short as well and will take most people around 15 to 20 minutes to complete. So there only being a handful of songs really isn't that much of a surprise. Though there are a few areas of the game where the lack of music is rather odd like the title screen and end credits. There's even an area in the game world itself where it lacks background music as well, but on a brighter note the music chosen definitely adds to the creepy atmosphere of the game.

Conclusion

While I realize "Blank Slate" is a game made for a game jam in a rather limited time span. This game is so full of beginner's traps that I know it can and even has pushed players away. Even I wanted to give up on this game and only got through it because I could use the developer's video guide in order to avoid certain traps or even just get the correct answers to certain puzzles handed to me. As such, I'd only advice playing this game if your okay with dying a lot.