Deadly Shutter (REMASTERED)

Deadly Shutter is a horror game that starts in a classical manner: Himeko and Kujiro are two students of a japanese university, and they are romantivally involved. During a romantic walk together things go weird when a strange house appears from nowhere. They decide to explore it and guess what? Some thing bad will happen... but I am pretty sure you were expecting this. What happen next is what you will experience playing this game, Deadly Shuttere REMAKE! (but I never played the original one... anyway it's ok, I guess this does not matter much!)

Oh I forgot to say that in the game our alter ego and protagonist of the story is Himeko, the girl, while Kujiro, the boy, is a companion/secondary character.


Why? Poor fluffy little things!

I admit that the first thing that attracted me were the screens and some scenes: despite the use of the standard RPG Maker MV rtp graphics, some maps weren't bad at all, and in many occasions there the use of lighning and zoom that I found rarely in other games, so it was a distinctive style. Not bad. And then there was the fog.
Oh. The FOG! At first I believed it was a nice effect that added to the atmosphere of dread and mystery, making the experience more immersive...
And yes, it was in the beginning, then it became a bit annoying because it's so thick that it's difficult to see anything!
And yes, I think that some effects are good, but if used sparingly! It's a pity because I saw many good ideas and... nah! The excessive fog was really one of the most memorable aspects of the game, and that's not a good thing!

Anothere important aspect was that "shutter" in the title: I am pretty sure that everyone knows what "deadly" means, so I'll focus on "shutter", that in photography is a device that allows light to pass for a determined period.
This is taken from Fatal Frame, titled Project Zero in some countries, a japanese survival horror series (consisting in five entries) with female protagonists that use Camera Obscura, objects created by Dr. Kunihiko Asou that can capture and pacify spirits.


Please say CHEESE!

Guess what? Those games were probably the main source of inspiration for Deadly Shutter, unfortunately the choice of relegating one of the most interesting features, the act of capture and pacify ghosts, in this game is relegated to the last five minutes of play, in a game of about one hour and 20/30 minutes. But why? Also the tutorial doesn't help much to understand how that system works, anyway after you will figure out that system, it will be really easy to win each "combat" encounter. Really.

But if this is the final five minutes, what's the rest og the game? Well the usual classic horror gameplay with some chase scenes and a lot of walking around collecting diary pages, reading dialogues between the two protagonists and solve the occasional (simple) puzzle. Of course there are save points and save remindes, but these aren't always placed in dangerous locations, so... I admit this create a tense atmosphere! Music also enforces that and in my opinion is another well made part of the game.
Instead I did not like so much the extreme linearity of the game that is just a looong narrow corridor: don't expect exploration or optional choices and different endings, you go from A to B to C, until Z. And sometimes there is little reason to the sequence, for example a locked door will suddenly and magically unlock only after you examine a particular item.
That has NO correlation with the door, this just *magically* happens as the house *magically* appeaed out of nowhere. Maybe the spirits decided to open the door after they saw that we did everything? Meh...


We lost Kujiro! But we have the...

... Final Verdict!
Ok, I am often easy to please, I mean I played games with graphics and plot that were really worse than what this game offers. Still they had some quality that made them stand out. Unfortunately this is not the case of Deadly Shutter because how the best elements are used: fog is overused, combat is underused, and what's left is a rather average and extremely linear game that lacks the originality and cool narrative I expected in the beginning.
There are also some map errors, but the mosr annoying part for me was the abscence of (logical or illogical) explanation to most events of the game that just "happen". I can tolerate this if it was a surreal game, but no, it's a horror game, and sadly one that doesn't stand out or entertain particularly the player.
Uhm ok. Better luck next time!