This demo for Ruby Quest: Undertow has a solid first half, but I wasn't a huge fan of the second half. It's quite the substantial demo, too -- I played for about 3 and a half hours. Thankfully it picked up at the end, but as the title of this review suggests, it's a great example of a survival horror game. This includes some of the more frustrating elements the genre is known for, such as some strict inventory management and the occasional frustrating puzzle that kills the tension. Those who are huge fans of the genre are probably used to such things. Although I love survival horror games, they're things I can personally do without.

That being said, this is a very well-made game and I won't spoil any of them, but I loved all the little animated cutscenes. They're usually there to accent a scare and the devs really go all-out with them. There's a lot of attention to detail in the art, even though the overall style is fairly simple and cartoony. I wouldn't exactly call it scary, but overall the atmosphere was amazing. I had plenty of moments where I dreaded going into the next room or felt really tense about whether or not a monster was going to show up.

The plot for the game comes from Ruby Quest, which was an imageboard text adventure. I wasn't around to play that nor have I seen the original, but I enjoyed the story despite a fairly typical premise: you wake up in a weird science facility; there's zombie-like monsters and weird science going on as you bumble around. Although there's not a huge amount of dialogue in the game, each character felt distinct and I wanted to see what would happen to them. Naturally, the demo raises more questions than it answers about the story. While the original story is complete and presumably something you could look up, keep in mind that this game promises to expand on some parts and change a few things.

Getting used to the controls may take some time. You use S to bring up the action menu, which is your main way of interacting with objects as enter functions more like an "examine" command. Combat involves using ctrl to get into your combat stance, then shift to attack or Z to dodge. I played on normal mode, which even then the game recommends you run from enemies. That's what I generally did, which made for some tense chase scenes. I died many, many times to the second enemy encounter as I tried fighting him, but really... don't bother. It's more fun that way. This version of the demo includes an autosave feature, which helped prevent me from getting too frustrated whenever I died to an enemy.

But... here's where I start getting into some things I didn't like. There's a fundamental problem to horror games regarding difficulty. If it's too easy, you're not likely to feel tense or worried, but if it's too hard, you'll be seeing the same scares over and over. There were many points where I had to redo a section or spent so long on certain puzzles that I stopped being engaged and started being annoyed. This conundrum extends to puzzles too, since yeah, easy ones aren't worth including, but getting stopped in your tracks because of one thing just killed all the tension.



This safe in particular was one of the biggest mood killers for me. I just happen to be terrible with combination locks IRL, and video game ones are no exception. You're given the first solution to this puzzle, too, so there's no actual thought involved beyond "do you know how to use a combination lock?", and after you input that solution... you learn that part of it was wrong. And you have to brute force the other part. Most of the puzzles weren't this annoying, but this marked the transition from enjoying myself to losing my patience. I actually played this over the course of a few days, as once I hit this part I just found myself tired of fussing with inventory management and dealing with certain areas.

Another sore spot: there's a section where you have to turn on some lights while wandering very slowly around a large, empty, and dark map. You'll occasionally be chased by a monster that's hard to avoid, and if you're touched you get teleported to what felt like random spots in the map. It made me dread playing the game in a very un-horrific sense.



If you're patient and tolerant of some finicky puzzles and don't mind inventory management, these aspects of the game probably won't bother you as much. If you find yourself getting frustrated, take a break! There's an in-game notes and hints system, making it easy to come back and pick up where you left off. I recommend this to anyone who's interested in survival horror games. I did get into the game overall despite ending with some complaints, and I look forward to seeing if this gets finished!

I'm a person who's terrible at puzzles and kept thinking "gee, I wish there was a walkthrough for chumps like me", so hey I wrote a walkthrough. You can find it here.