Xenos

So, most of you who know me probably know that I'm a huge horror fan, so I'm always excited to jump into a horror game. And Xenos is exactly what I like. A mysterious, unsettling mystery with gore thrown in, not to mention I LOVE seeing gay characters in media. It gets me really excited. Xenos did not disappoint at all, I pretty much loved it.

I'll start with the graphics. The game uses the Pop Horror City resource pack, a very nice pixel art pack which I'm always happy to see being used. The developer also does a good job at avoiding 1x1 pixels.
The music was, uhh, honestly I sorta had my volume down to like 4% so I didn't hear most of it. Other than the music box song, which was nice, so that's enough for me! The door sound effects were very nice too.
The gameplay is quite simplistic. You walk around, trigger cutscenes which lead to more cutscenes. That's alright, though, horror isn't a genre I expect much from gameplay wise. Where the game really shines is its story and characters.
It doesn't start off very good, if I have to be honest. The main character is walking around his apartment and there's corpses around and stuff. Turns out this is just a dream! I'm generally not fond of games starting with ''oh, what a weird dream'' so the opening made me set my bar pretty low for how good the story would be. Luckily, it turned out to be quite good!
It has a good mystery straight off the bat with the an entire cult comitting suicide, and you playing as detective Mark trying to solve the mystery. There is a pretty good reason as to why he wants to solve it, though.

They deliver this twist about 10 minutes in and by that point I was already so intrigued by the mystery and that twist that I forgot about the terrible opening.
Later parts of the story are also quite good. I've always been a fan of rituals and demons and stuff as well, so I enjoyed hearing about the eerie story of the cult members' deaths.




After that point, you explore a manor to find out what happened while being accompanied by your adorable sidekick, Charles, and later, by your neighbour Ashley and the police chief, Raymond. Not only are the characters named well, their personalities are quite well too! Mark and Raymond are generally just your typical peeps, but they both try hard and despite not being as awesome as Charles and Ashley, they are still likeable. Charles is my favorite of them all - He's that one adorable gay sidekick that you grow to like more than the main character. He delivers really nice witty lines and is just a nice guy in general. Ashley isn't particularly interesting on her own, but her interactions with the other characters are what makes her likeable.


There are a few flaws in the game, however. There's a LOT of passability issues. I ended up walking on a lot of objects, and even on the roof at some point in the basement. There are a few grammar errors too, though I didn't mind it that much. I also found out that after escaping the basement, you can go to the upstairs bedroom and Ashley will still be on the bed, even though she left a while ago to, you know, betray you and stuff. So aside from the few bugs and weak opening, I really can't think of anything bad. It's a really good game after all! I give it four gay partners out of five.