The Red Curse

Okay, I don't know if this is the creators first attempt at making a game but I feel that I need to lay down my thoughts after playing through the demo.

First of, the story. I know the urban legend on its own and I won't speak on if it is bad to involve an urban legend or not, that is up to the creator and I think that there might be a lot of creative things done with it. But the story is told in the blink of an eye, no soothing into it or learning to know our character. When I booted up the game I felt more like I was reading the quick summary at the back of a DVD box than actually engaging myself in a story. You don't need to have a 3 hour long prologue but ease the players into your story and universe.

Hiking in on that last part, the main character is all but none existent. I know nothing of who she is or what she does. The demo does not flesh out on this at all. I can understand an escape scenario does not give room for a lot of development but to emote feelings the players need to be able to feel something for the character and it is hard feeling anything for a person that has no real personality.

As for the maps, these are what tipped me off that this might be a first time project (pardon me if it is not). They are way to big and spacious and most of them comes down to simply being a big square or rectangle. It's good to keep some space to run around but most of the rooms were horribly empty and that's what conveys a bad map. Some of the rooms did not need to be that big or could have been divided in the middle to create a feeling of it being an actually house or room rather than just a standard square.

And the game play. My Freja on a cupcake, the game play. I will start with this. Don't, I repeat DON'T, make ALL your events triggered by a player walking on it. These triggers are best left for trigger puzzles or if a certain cut scene needs to be triggered by a player moving over a certain spot on the ground. I had to run like an idiot over the same tile around four times to solve the first puzzle with the monster and after that I found myself just getting more annoyed that every single tile was activated by me stepping on it. The letters become especially aggravating since I need to step on the exact right tile to even activate it, instead of looking at the object and pushing the space bar. In short, kill all the player touch triggers and replace them with you activating them with the "activate" button on the keyboard.

Besides that I found some tiles I could run straight through. Among them a shelf in the kitchen and the phantom plant in the corner of the kitchen that I could run straight through.

Geez, this review has been very harsh I must say but there was a lot of mistakes that has been made here. I read that you are aiming to release a longer game and then I implore you to look through these things. Releasing a full game in the same state as the demo is a very bad idea since there are a lot of fixing to be done.

If you're a first time maker of this game, then I excuse myself for going very harsh on your game, I don't generally like doing that but when there were so much troubles I felt that I needed to inform you of it so that the finished product could be a more pleasurable experience, both for you and the player. So remember, just because it needs fixing doesn't mean that it is beyond rescue. Just work hard on it and put your nose to the grindstone and it will be fine!