It Moves couldn't have come into my review queue at a better time, as it was 12am at the time of playing, so I decided to do everything I could to go into it with every opportunity to become absorbed into the tale. Lights off, headphones on, drink needs met, brightness properly adjusted. Close to Halloween too; sometimes fate likes me I guess.

Unless this game gives me nightmares, in which case my luck is par for the course.


Story
First off, it was a great idea to have the narrator be the main character when he is older, as giving narrating dialogue to a child is much harder.

The story starts off simple enough, the brother we never actually see has moved to the room across from the old one he shared with the narrator's younger self. He's not given a name, instead all his dialogue is spoken as "You". I don't scare very easily now, but when I was his age my imagination made everything into something scary while I tried to sleep.

Now that the boy doesn't share a room anymore, this will be the first night sleeping alone. The narrator sets the stage by foreshadowing what comes next, and so the nightmares begin in earnest.

I've always been fascinated with the concept of dreams, so the atmosphere drew me in from the get-go. I obviously don't want to detract that experience from the readers, so let me just say that everything works together to create it, and every now and then you'll get a symbolic nugget of the story, sometimes hard to understand, if it's supposed to make sense at all. One thing does make sense however, each form of dialogue inside a dream is there to capitalize on the fear the end of the nightmare is representing.

Every time you wake up from the nightmare, something sinister takes the place of where the brother sleeps. The buildup to the reveal of the creature is helped mostly by the narrator's descriptors and the constant sounds. It does a good job in trying to get the player to imagine what it is, instead of jump scares ruining it for you.


Gameplay
As this game mostly focuses on giving you chills through the atmosphere, gameplay elements aren't very numerous, but what is there adds to that chilling atmosphere. Every now and then there will be a quick puzzle, but most of your time is spent exploring the narrow corridors of the nightmare and seeing the wonders moving around you.

I actually solved the first puzzle without realizing I had to step on the stones in a certain order to lower all pillars at the same time. Future puzzles aren't any harder to complete, but the creator does something to make up for it. Think of the puzzles as a tool for immersion instead of a distraction from it like most horror games tend to do. The closer a puzzle gets to being solved, the more frantic the atmosphere gets, until it reaches a breaking point, often to the main character waking up. And waking up is where the horror begins.


Graphics
A large (if not the largest) portion of the game consists of you looking at the eerie dreamscapes, so you'd hope that they'd be pretty to look at. With things constantly going on in the background and all around you, there's more to the looks than flair, but damn is this game good looking.

The only thing I recognize are the character sprites from Sithjester, everything else was custom made? Either way things pulled me in and wouldn't let go until the credits were done, and a big part of that is the dark visuals that are still very clear to the naked eye.

During parts where your character moves, things grow even darker, but your character has a radius of sight that makes the darkness an asset to the game and not a hindrance like in many others. Paths were clear and the attention to detail was nearly obsessive in nature.


Sound
Combining seamlessly with the graphics, the package is only completed once the sound is factored in. Sounds travel with the character, so for example the rattling of chains are loudest when near them, and the further you go the quieter it gets until it's no longer heard.

The music is also eerie and compliments the various sounds you'll be hearing to increase your tension. I love when games use sound for tension instead of throwing something at you at once (akin to jump scares). The reason being it builds up gradually, making it the perfect tool for making the player feel unsettled, instead of one quick scare that completely releases the tension. When a player is unsettled, then you have the means to scare them beyond just the scope of when the game's over.


Bugs for the Dev
♦ Not really a bug, but the charset you're using for the mother is technically meant to be used for a male character. It can still give off that motherly look though, so it didn't bother me after the first encounter.


Stray Observations
♠ I fell in love with the font as soon as I saw it against the windowskin. It looked very professional, and having it bold the capital letters was a nice touch.
♠ A cold, unwelcoming breeze? Of course I'll choose to go downstairs.
♠ Monologues were fantastic and set the mood.
♠ When the boy mentioned feeling out if it while playing with friends, I thought it would be touched upon a bit more. Kinda sad that it wasn't.
♠ What is Anna Corp?
♠ Impossible to get a game over, fit with the whole nightmare theme.
♠ I've been seeing some pretty good Credits scenes lately, but this is the first time I got to move around in one.

I really enjoyed my time with the game, despite the dreams and actual plot feeling like disconnected stories. I tended to enjoy traversing the nightmares more-so than the tale being told, but I'm a dream junkie, so any chance to delve into the dream concepts of others is something I always look forward to.

I only got chills once so things were more uncanny than scary, but we'll see whether or not I have nightmares since I'm pretty much sleeping after this review is written. If I do, I'm blaming you.