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In the desert... no one can hear you scream!!!
TheRpgmakerAddict- 07/03/2023 12:49 PM
- 303 views
Hello travellers!
Here we are, with another review of a very old and very popular classic rpgmaker game: Desert Nightmare. This Rpgmaker2000 horror game was originally made by Kelven in german, and later translated into english by AznChipmunk. Are these names familiar to you! Well, they SHOULD BE, since Kelven is the author and AznChipmunk the translator of another horror game I reviewed last year (here you can find the review if you missed it before!).
This game is unrelated to the other one and it's another self-contained little story, anyway it starts in a really peculiar way: a teenage girl named Sandra Richmont is on a trip in California with her parents, but after a quarrel she's left by them at a desolate gas station in the middle of the desert. Unable to call her parents and too far from home to go back she walks and arrives to a town called Dusty Creek, unfortunately this place won't turn out to be really safe. And there are some secrets of no natural origin...
Monsters? They're big, fat scorpions... maybe giant scorpions? Ok, still scorpions, nothing else... I guess!
If you were looking for a survival horror adventure game, well congratulations, you just find one! Desert Nightmare can be considered a dark adventure, even I didn't find any kind of really scary moment, even if the are some tense situations. Being an adventure, the game has abviously no battles, but just tasks and puzzles that are normally divided into two different categories: the classic adventure puzzles and enigmas, that require finding and using items and solving enigmas, and the enemy scenes in which you have to escape, hide or trap the enemy. Or you will get a game over (and also a death scene).
For the most part puzzles are pretty simple, the only problem is that sometimes it may happen to be a bit unsure about what you're supposed to do next (this happens in many other adventure games too anyway), but luckily there is a walkthrough, if you need it! Oh and remember to save, and the game uses savepoints, so you have to make some stops once in a while because it happened tome that some deaths were a bit unfair, so it's better avoid losing too much progress!
OPS! That was not a good hiding place... and this means Game Over!
That's really classic game isn't it? What's less classic is probably the graphics and assets used by Kelven, that like in the previous game I reviewed, are often custom made or edits (including a custom made menu) and the final result is pretty good, I guess.
There aren't many games I played that are set in a modern world, and here we've some really good mapping and a realistic setting. What's even more interesting is that lots of items, even the useless ones can be interacted with, and that's noteworthy! Place are detailed and well animated, just see the rotating ceiling fans, for example.
Music and sounds are also pretty good, I liked them even if the scream heard each time we get a game over can be a little annoying, and also the music is mostly composed of short loops that can become repetitive after a while.
Anything bad? Well to be honest the story is so-so. Ok, don't get me wrong it's not bad, still some things are left obscured and unexplained, at least this was my experience and I may be wrong, in any case I won't explain, just try it by yourself and see. This is also not a particularly original plot (man, but Sandra's parents are terrible!), but I guess it's ok, pacing is also pretty good and the translation is fine except for a couple of typos (like "tihs").
Jake is a badass, he can even scare dogs with a couple of words! Whoa! I've never been able to do that!
Final Verdict
Desert Nightmare is a classic, but once again this is a game I can really recommend only to those players who are fond of short horror rpgmaker games. It has a bit of lack of polish in some areas, and also some chase sections are a bit unrefined, but in half of these cases the issues are probably due to the limitations of the Rpgmaker2000 engine, while the rests could have been perfected.
In any case this is stil a classic horror adventure, not too scary but pretty good in my opinion!
Here we are, with another review of a very old and very popular classic rpgmaker game: Desert Nightmare. This Rpgmaker2000 horror game was originally made by Kelven in german, and later translated into english by AznChipmunk. Are these names familiar to you! Well, they SHOULD BE, since Kelven is the author and AznChipmunk the translator of another horror game I reviewed last year (here you can find the review if you missed it before!).
This game is unrelated to the other one and it's another self-contained little story, anyway it starts in a really peculiar way: a teenage girl named Sandra Richmont is on a trip in California with her parents, but after a quarrel she's left by them at a desolate gas station in the middle of the desert. Unable to call her parents and too far from home to go back she walks and arrives to a town called Dusty Creek, unfortunately this place won't turn out to be really safe. And there are some secrets of no natural origin...
Monsters? They're big, fat scorpions... maybe giant scorpions? Ok, still scorpions, nothing else... I guess!
If you were looking for a survival horror adventure game, well congratulations, you just find one! Desert Nightmare can be considered a dark adventure, even I didn't find any kind of really scary moment, even if the are some tense situations. Being an adventure, the game has abviously no battles, but just tasks and puzzles that are normally divided into two different categories: the classic adventure puzzles and enigmas, that require finding and using items and solving enigmas, and the enemy scenes in which you have to escape, hide or trap the enemy. Or you will get a game over (and also a death scene).
For the most part puzzles are pretty simple, the only problem is that sometimes it may happen to be a bit unsure about what you're supposed to do next (this happens in many other adventure games too anyway), but luckily there is a walkthrough, if you need it! Oh and remember to save, and the game uses savepoints, so you have to make some stops once in a while because it happened tome that some deaths were a bit unfair, so it's better avoid losing too much progress!
OPS! That was not a good hiding place... and this means Game Over!
That's really classic game isn't it? What's less classic is probably the graphics and assets used by Kelven, that like in the previous game I reviewed, are often custom made or edits (including a custom made menu) and the final result is pretty good, I guess.
There aren't many games I played that are set in a modern world, and here we've some really good mapping and a realistic setting. What's even more interesting is that lots of items, even the useless ones can be interacted with, and that's noteworthy! Place are detailed and well animated, just see the rotating ceiling fans, for example.
Music and sounds are also pretty good, I liked them even if the scream heard each time we get a game over can be a little annoying, and also the music is mostly composed of short loops that can become repetitive after a while.
Anything bad? Well to be honest the story is so-so. Ok, don't get me wrong it's not bad, still some things are left obscured and unexplained, at least this was my experience and I may be wrong, in any case I won't explain, just try it by yourself and see. This is also not a particularly original plot (man, but Sandra's parents are terrible!), but I guess it's ok, pacing is also pretty good and the translation is fine except for a couple of typos (like "tihs").
Jake is a badass, he can even scare dogs with a couple of words! Whoa! I've never been able to do that!
Final Verdict
Desert Nightmare is a classic, but once again this is a game I can really recommend only to those players who are fond of short horror rpgmaker games. It has a bit of lack of polish in some areas, and also some chase sections are a bit unrefined, but in half of these cases the issues are probably due to the limitations of the Rpgmaker2000 engine, while the rests could have been perfected.
In any case this is stil a classic horror adventure, not too scary but pretty good in my opinion!
