Konstandin review
as @ 18/04/2014

Although you probably already knew that.

What Is It, Though?

Team Galanx's Konstandin is a horror game demo that teases themes of violence, insanity, and a character portrait of a man who is losing his edge mentally. But that is all it does - teases us with a few details, and no idea of the big picture. The demo is short (~15 minutes), and features a string of events that I cannot make sense of. The string of events and horrors that the protagonist faces are like puzzle pieces that I can't fit together yet, but unlike an unfinished jigsaw puzzle, I suspect that these pieces won't fit together well in the final puzzle anyway. What I see currently is attempts at metaphorical imagery and spooky surroundings, that convert into a thoroughly disjointed experience with minor puzzles that are the only interesting diversions.



Story

Waking up in his house in the middle of the night, 26 year old Rinor Avdiu can't find his wife Aulona. After following a dark appirition into the night, he confronts a series of trippy mental challenges in order to solve the mystery of his wife's disappearance.

Even at the end of the demo, I have no idea what the story is. I have no reason to care for the main character, because I have no idea about his past or his characteristics, despite the minimal dialogue. Attempts to convey the storyline or characters via metaphorical imagery, such as climbing on a person's giant face, or receiving a dagger to the back, fall short to explain any sort of personality to the main character. After a while, these scenarios begin to feel like cheap tricks, scares built just to raise my adrenaline, rather than serve the story and the atmosphere.

What I would call Konstandin, as at this demo, is a collection of tricks and twists designed to make you think that there is a set of complex mysteries behind it all, where the answers to these questions are either too simple, or non-existent. Even if the developer has planned the whole story, right now it doesn't seem like it.

To elaborate, the game is based on a legend of a cursed knight named Konstandin. It is the exploration of the mind of Rinor and his growing mental insanity. On the gamepage, it has a bio outlining the character of Rinor. Apparently he earns his living through art commissions and design, and is a typical gamer who enjoys playing online games. This seems like a really interesting character, but none of this deep personality is revealed in the game. There is no exploration of his loving, kind or caring traits which are described in the bio. Character development will help the player confide in the main character, but in this game, it is non-existent. There are no introductory scenes to help us establish rapport with the character. There is no reason to care at all.



Graphics & Presentation

The major strength of Konstandin is its polished graphics and beautiful world. There is immense attention to detail in animations, art and overall polish of what has been planned. The title screen has a scroll beautifully dripping of blood. The environment consists of lush nature and rolling fog, with a lot of custom material. The character portraits on the gamepage are incredible, with beautiful detail and an impressive style. I suspect a large portion of the gam'es development time has gone into making this game as beautiful as it can possibly be. But this game sadly proves to be one of the many examples of RPG Maker games that are beautiful in screenshots but mask very shallow gameplay.

I will say that there are a great very many beautiful assets to this game. A lush background of trees, with custom drawn sprites and a very hand-drawn feel. The maps are immaculately constructed, albeit with very simple paths to walk through. The sense of atmosphere is strengthened by the creepy nature of certain visuals, but I was still left looking for at least a glimpse the visceral creepy feeling of titles such as Miserere or Gingiva to dirty things up. The art style seems too cute and friendly sometimes to elicit a frightened response from me. The only parts where I jumped were moments when objects came at me at a frightening pace, or a large scream was heard (or both). There was one moment where a silhouette knocked on a window that was slightly creepy, but that effect was executed more effectively in Ib's intro.

Still, the world is very attractive to look at, and features a great many custom resources and particle effects that make Konstandin pleasing to the eye.



Gameplay

Konstandin features an impressive facade of graphics that mask major design flaws. It feels like very little of the game is planned, and it is all completed as the developer goes. The gratuitous jump scares feel cheap, and instadeaths abound in plenty. There is a puzzle involving a key and a tree that provides some relief, but as I mosey my way through a haunted house of fears and scares, there is neither anything that surprises me, nor makes me feel anything. I feel that Konstandin's developer must rethink the various gameplay mechanics of the game to help knit a cohesive plot.

The tree puzzle features a selection of various items to see which one will be able to snatch a key from a giant tree's grasp. Each item selected has a custom ending that adapts to your choices. However, I got the feeling whilst playing the game that these decisions were kind of arbitrary, and I had no way of telling which decision was the right one until it was made. This decision was perpetuated throughout the game by providing many dead ends with instant deaths at the end of them, with no apparent reason as of the culmination of this demo. A haunted hallway provides a neat diversion of "guess-the-synonym" puzzles that prove to be somewhat head-scratching, yet made total sense. This was a small highlight in the game, but did not comprise much of the game's gameplay. If there were a lot more interesting diversions and factors at play in Konstandin's fabric of events, then I would be interested. But as of now, the events are too disjointed to make sense of.



Conclusion
The ideas that modern horror films, literature and games perpetuate over and over again are merely mimicked in Konstandin's current demo, with no innovations. Unless events get a lot more interesting really soon, this game will remain a style over substance affair. A little re-evaluation of design decisions and how to construct a coherent story will prove immensely profitable in the long run.

Thanks for reading.