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Ah shit where are my keys

(Visuals & Audio) 4/5
Let's talk about this first. Okay, so the game starts off very strong - the first area you're thrown into is very nicely mapped, you have a great ambient thunderstorm going on accompanied by a cool lighting effect. The audio fits well and the flashlight does a decent enough job of showing the way while obscuring a good deal of your vision. The footsteps and few sprite animations that play out are also a nice touch - atmospherically, I think the game does an excellent job of hooking you into it.

However, it doesn't quite make good on its creepy vibes. . .

(Gameplay) 1/5
. . . because nothing really happens. The game is a walking simulator. About 75% of the time spent playing the game will be walking back and forth, collecting keys, and then testing all of said keys on every single closed door. There are a few ghostly incidents that happen along the way, but nothing about the game gives you incentive to be worried or creeped out by anything that happens. It's just another minor obstacle in your epic quest to shove your keys into every door. A handful of puzzles come your way, but to say that they're interesting or that they add to the experience is a bit of a leap.

(Story & Writing) 1/5
The protagonist sneaks into the school to pick up something he forgot - the rest (until you reach the end) is told in tiny pieces through the notes you find, although almost all of those notes are just a list of unrelated objectives for you to complete. It's hard to call the end anticlimactic because there was barely any build-up to it in the first place.

(Conclusion) 2/5
To wrap this up, I think this project can be best described as a game that is the sum of its parts. Because of its strong, atmospheric intro, it looked like it could've gone somewhere interesting at first, but its sense of mystery and tension unravel as you start to realize that it's just a cover for a key collecting game.

Now, I think it's definitely possible to have created a genuinely powerful or unsettling experience without a real 'threat' in-game as was the goal, but let it be known that the way to do that is not to use a mind-numbing chore as the main gameplay focus unless you've at least got good characterization or a good story to back it up.

That said, get out of the way, infinitely crushing darkness. I've got to get to the next door to see if one of these keys will fit.

Posts

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Oh my, I feel somewhat sorry that you lost your time writing a review for this... thing. xD
Since it was a mere experiment for the Halloween contest, I never put very much effort into it. And I also have to admit that horror just isn't my genre. xD

Maybe I'll someday put more than a month of sparsely scattered work into this project and make an actual game out of it... until then... I wholeheartedly agree with your review. :,)
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