HIGH The story feels both boundless and handcrafted. 

LOW Some reused art assets here and there.

WTF A girl who wears a tomato mask  

I keep asking myself, have I really beaten The Hundred Line?

Sure I’ve completed the story — I’ve reached the end credits a little under 40 times now, acquiring nearly half of the 100 available endings. But those 60-or-so endings that remain… they vex me, I tell ya. Not only do they make me second-guess whether or not I’ve really completed The Hundred Line in any meaningful sense, but they also make me wonder whether I’ll ever fully conquer something this vast and labyrinthian.

In general, I hate how bloated games have become. I’m just not interested in titles that prioritize endless Content — to me, they feel like a futile and demeaning attempt to numb the player’s brain and senses. The Hundred Line is different, though. Its endless length is filled to the brim with a number of story routes which vary wildly in tone and genre, acting as a veritable index of modern videogame storytelling, and genre storytelling in general. I continue to be entranced by The Hundred Line’s endless possibilities, in awe of its gutsiness and ambition. 

Despite the bizarre turns the story takes over the course of its gargantuan runtime, the setup is (relatively) simple. The protagonist, Takumi Sumino, is living a blissful (yet boring) existence in the Tokyo Residential Complex, a futuristic, sealed-off metropolis. One day, Takumi and his childhood friend Karua are accosted by mysterious, cartoonish alien creatures called ‘Invaders.’ Takumi is then prompted by an equally mysterious robot to use a special power to fight these Invaders.

Afterwards, Takumi is transported to the titular ‘Last Defense Academy,’ a school that seems to stand within the ruins of a devastated Earth. Awaking at the academy with the robot, Sirei, and a group of quirky fellow students, Takumi is told they must defend the school for 100 days, protecting ‘something’ within the complex that is ‘critical to humanity’s survival.’ 

It’s difficult to summarize The Hundred Line without spoiling anything, given the ways in which the setup is expanded and twisted throughout the initial playthrough and all subsequent runs (which then allow the player to make choices that drastically alter the course of the story). However, to put it in a nutshell, it largely summed up as a combination of Visual Novel and Turn-Based Tactics.

As The Hundred Line cannonballs through different genres and tones, even plot elements that were initially relegated to the background take on new dimensions of significance and pathos. The characters, who can initially feel like caricatures (a ditzy samurai, a morbid goth girl obsessed with lurid videogames, etc.) acquire additional texture as the player spends more time with them, many acting as a sort of secondary ‘star’ of their very own route. It all feels like staring at a painting from different angles, a ritual that becomes comfortably familiar while still having the capacity to surprise and delight. 

This dizzyingly panoramic effect is increased by the fact that, in many cases, the individual routes feel so distinct that each is like a self-contained story unto itself. Certainly, some routes and some endings feel more like ‘True’ endings and routes than others, but The Hundred Line seems open to the idea that the player should shape their experience, in a manner that can only be accomplished in the medium of videogames. Even if the player decides to move on before clearing all 100 endings, they will undoubtedly find a route that feels like a cathartic stopping point.

The Hundred Line’s gargantuan visual novel story is frequently broken up by tactical RPG sections. Players have a pre-determined number of moves each turn, called ‘AP’ with which they can move any unit as many times as they like. This shared pool of moves is the key to The Hundred Line’s excellent gameplay, enabling its best feature — a sort of Shin Megami Tensei-esque extra turn system. By killing larger enemies, the player can gain AP. Also, every attack contributes towards building a ‘Voltage’ gauge, which, when full, grants the player’s units the ability to launch powerful Area-of-Effect attacks at no AP cost, among other possible effects. 

It’s easy to see how these pieces fit together. Combat revolves around efficiently targeting sets of elite units, gaining Voltage, and looping powerful attacks. Often, the player can burn down a huge wall of units in a single turn, which feels both joyously appropriate from a narrative perspective (defending a lone human outpost from an endless barrage of Invaders) and continuously novel from a gameplay perspective. Even though there are a limited number of enemies in The Hundred Line, the play continues to engage as the challenge to ‘solve’ enemy setups with greater efficiency ramps up. It’s a freeform and highly encouraging form of player experimentation — more like a puzzler than tactical RPG, almost. 

Both the story and the gameplay, in fact, are united in a sort of easygoing, confident attitude — they both welcome the player into a playful garden of limitless variations, inviting them to take their time and experiment with the systems and narrative possibilities at their own pace. Unlike many modern titles, The Hundred Line is huge content-wise because the developers just felt that it should be, and it’s not attempting to hoodwink the player with hours upon hours of empty, padded content. Each writer for The Hundred Line’s numerous arcs clearly had their own vision, each slice feeling like a necessary part of The Hundred Line’s grand mosaic. 

Even if I never completely beat The Hundred Line, even if I’m never able to see what that entire mosaic is supposed to look like, I’m just glad I got to play around in its world for a while. 

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Too Kyo Games and Media.Vision, and published by Aniplex. It is currently available on PC and Switch. Approximately 115 hours were dedicated to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: according to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, and Violence. The official description reads: This is a role-playing game in which players follow a man recruited to an academy tasked with protecting humanity from destructive invaders. The game contains visual novel elements largely presented as still-screen images and sound effects. Cutscenes sometimes depict instances of violence and blood: characters stabbing themselves with swords as blood erupts from their wounds; a character decapitated off-camera; a knight figure cutting its own throat, resulting in large spurts of blood. Gameplay combat is turn-based, with players selecting movements and attacks from a menu screen to battle colorful demon enemies; players use swords, axes, bats, and fantastical guns to defeat enemies. Some scenes depict/discuss sexual themes: a woman covered in cake imploring a character to eat it off of her while she moans; a character telling players’ character “let me grab them b*obs!” A handful of scenes depict characters partially nude, with hair/arms/weapons covering their breasts; one character is depicted with partially exposed buttocks. The word “f**k” appears in the game.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. All the dialogue (and other essential information) is delivered via subtitles. In addition, there are no essential sound cues within the combat system. Thus, all elements of the game are fully accessible without sound. 

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The distinct 2D art.

LOW The experience often feels like a prototype.

WTF The Man In Yellow.

If there’s one thing about Void Sails that I can say with absolute certainty, it’s that every member of its three-person dev team gave it their absolute all. This is no grift, and no quick asset-flip — the developers are clearly passionate about the world they have created, and the potential to remix established sci-fi and fantasy tropes into truly novel forms. 

In some cases, this passion directly translates into aesthetic success. Overall, however, I ended up feeling that Void Sails’ ambition exceeded its grasp. Most of its elements ultimately felt more like sketches than finished work… but these are intriguing sketches, that stimulate the imagination!

The world of Void Sails could be best described as ‘Treasure Planet meets Lovecraft,’ which is a compelling pitch if I’ve ever heard one. Humanity, still in a sort of primitive Renaissance phase, has spread out across the stars, its various interstellar holdings connected by flying ships. The protagonist is given charge of one of these ships, and tasked with finding their missing father by an enigmatic figure known as ‘The Man in Yellow.’ Their father was a researcher, investigating the mysterious ‘Veil’ between ordinary reality and the incomprehensible dangers of the Void. 

With all the necessary exposition out of the way, Void Sails begins in earnest, with gameplay almost evenly split between 3D space combat and 2D, text-based storytelling sections with RPG skill checks. Both halves of the gameplay have their merits, yet both feel let down by brevity and simplicity. 

First, the space combat. Sure, the ship feels appreciably weighty, with a slow turning radius successfully providing the illusion of controlling a huge, complex machine. By zooming in, the player can take control of their side cannons or their forward laser, which takes time to charge but deals a massive amount of damage. Charging the laser draws energy from the same pool as the ship’s boost power and its shield. Naturally, mastering the careful use of this shared resource is a significant part of Void Sails’ combat. 

Overall, the combat feels satisfyingly finicky at first — maneuvering to hit enemy weak spots with the WSAD keys while aiming with the mouse provides a delightfully odd sensation, like mastering an old flight sim in miniature. Unfortunately, this sensation doesn’t last. After getting over the learning curve of the controls, it’s ultimately simple enough for anyone to master well before the end of Void Sails’ scant runtime. This simplicity is compounded by the fact that Void Sails offers up an extremely small slate of enemies, most of which operate on predictable cycles of behavior that are easy to solve. One of the main baddies, for example, is a robotic thingy that can only be damaged from behind, so it slowly spins at a regular pace, allowing the player to take potshots at their leisure. 

The storybook segments are slightly more successful, I would argue. The 2D art is lovely, and despite some clunky sentences here and there, the prose does a decent job of evoking a larger world on a small budget. The short story encounters the player finds while exploring the cosmos are often effective enough (alien hatcheries, weird cysts, etc.) and the NPCs possess a certain amount of personality and charm, despite being little more than sketches in most cases. 

That’s the critical flaw of Void Sails, however — the fact that nearly every element feels like a sketch. All of its mechanics, archetypes or aesthetic ideas deserve more attention. Despite their evocative nature, the story sections, for instance, feel barebones from a mechanical perspective. Void Sails only possesses three different stats for skill checks — Perception, Knowledge, and resolve, yet the player can only determine their preferred skill distribution by answering three different background questions at the start, narrowing the potential roleplay possibilities. 

But even if these stats could be freely determined by the player, the skill check system would still feel somewhat unsatisfying as many of the skill check moments don’t have any real mechanical or narrative consequence, and many more only allow the player to test their lowest stat — unfortunately, failing checks sometimes permanently lowers one of the player’s stats! Naturally, I found myself straight up unwilling to risk attempting some skill checks, even if the chance of success was decently high, as I didn’t want to get caught in a miserable spiral of losing points in an already-low stat, leading to worse results in future skill checks, leading to even lower stats, and so on. 

Despite how thinly-sketched I found many of these elements, I have to admit that I was surprised when Void Sails ended as abruptly as it did, with an ending that largely focuses on the protagonist’s relationship with the characters met along the way. However, it wasn’t a well-rounded wrapup, things simply… end. It felt like listening to someone tell an interesting story for a few hours, only for them to suddenly stop mid-sentence and walk away.

Given the clear talent and passion on display here, I firmly believe that Ticking Clock Games are capable of building Void Sails into something a bit meatier, or perhaps crafting a different, more fully fleshed title in the future. They’re a studio to watch.

Rating: 5 out of 10 

Buy Void Sails – PC

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Ticking Clock Games. It is currently available on PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.  There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. This game contains mild fantasy violence, and references to somewhat frightening sci-fi horror scenarios, but for the most part there isn’t any objectionable content more drastic than that. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. All the dialogue segments (and the text adventure segments, of course) are delivered with subtitles, and the combat features visual cues alongside sound cues. Thus, the game is fully accessible. 

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. 

The post Void Sails Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The lovely fairy tale-esque aesthetic. 

LOW It doesn’t feel as expansive as it should.

WTF: A mean witch keeps turning my citizens into hungry skeletons! 

Let’s go ahead and state the obvious up front — yes, Fabledom’s cutesy aesthetic is generally representative of its overall accessibility compared to other titles in the city-building genre. There’s not an overwhelming amount of parameters and building types to keep track of, and they’re easily available. It’s difficult to make citizens upset, and Fabledom allows the player to grow a settlement at their own leisurely pace, letting them relax and take in the vibes. 

However, the ‘softness’ and accessibility of Fabledom doesn’t necessarily take away from the strength of its simulation, or its status as a unique entry within the genre. Forging confidently ahead, Fabledom asserts an identity of its own by importing a few mechanical elements from other genres, to fairly strong results. 

Fabledom’s initial setup is simple, effective, and delivered in the form of a cute little storybook. The tale takes place in a land of wonder and prosperity, in which kings and queens send their grown-up children out into the world to build their own kingdom from the ground up. And… that’s pretty much it! At this point, the player is released into the world along with some peasants (the most basic type of citizen) and a few supplies. 

Like the majority of city-builders, Fabledom is essentially a sandbox — players can place structures, roads, and other materials wherever they wish, slowly growing their population as new citizens join their kingdom at regular intervals, but newcomers to the genre can enable a handy tutorial system that provides a series of objectives. These start out small and ask the player to engage with Fabledom’s entire range of mechanics — it’s an absolutely perfect intro for anyone intimidated by the genre. 

When building their kingdom, the player will need to employ citizens to staff all of their buildings while also producing supplies and keeping everyone happy enough to continue increasing the population.

It’s easy to staff buildings and move citizens between them (citizens don’t get unhappy about being moved, so the player can juggle them at will to maximize output) but it’s through careful management that some of Fabledom‘s depth begins to emerge. 

At regular intervals, ‘visitors’ come to the player’s kingdom. The number of visitors who are then interested in joining the kingdom depends on the overall happiness rating, and this in turn depends on a number of factors such as the amenities near citizen homes, the current level of hunger, how heavily the populace is taxed, and more. Fabledom doesn’t have the endless nested menus of a Paradox title, but it still creates some nice dilemmas for the player by juxtaposing a few of its key systems in order to try and achieve an optimal state. 

Even if a player masters the city-building stuff immediately, Fabledom still contains a few unique wrinkles that they can poke away at.

Early on, the player can spawn a ‘Hero’ who can then move around the map. Between city-management tasks, the player can order the Hero to interact with randomly-spawning events, often leading to combat encounters or management decisions. They can also send them on missions to other kingdoms in order to collect rewards and affect their affinity with that kingdom’s ruler. 

Oh, I haven’t even mentioned the other kingdoms yet! The player can interact with the leaders of neighboring kingdoms by doing quests for them, sending gifts and eventually marrying them, if they so desire. Yes, Fabledom has dating sim elements! In aggregate, these gameplay adds make Fabledom feel more engaging on a personal level than some other city-builders do — it feels more active.

That said, these unique elements could use some expansion and elaboration. There aren’t as many randomly generated events in Fabledom as I’d like. Seeing repeated events isn’t game-breaking, but it did begin to make the world feel a less expansive and reactive.

Also, considering the narrative weight given to the dating and marriage elements, I can’t say that my own choice felt particularly notable or weighty — the final cutscene doesn’t even seem to reflect the player’s choice of partner, and — beyond a passive bonus — marriage itself doesn’t seem to have much of an effect after that point. 

While some of the reaches Fabledom takes end up a little empty, there’s no denying that it remains a friendly, streamlined, indie take on city-building that not only offers quite a bit of charm, but would also be a great place for a genre newcomer to get their feet wet.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Grenaa Games. It is currently available on PS5, Switch, XBO, PC and XBX/S.  Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed (I seemed to reach a cutscene marking the end of the game’s story, but play continues as normal after that point). There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Mild Fantasy Violence. There’s no additional consumer information available, but I can’t think of any objectionable content beyond the (very mild) combat sections. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized.  Every gameplay element has a corresponding visual cue, and all the dialogue is accompanied by subtitles, so the game is fully accessible. 

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Fabledom Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH A pretty solid soundtrack.

LOW A comparatively weaker second half. 

WTF A girl with a humongous rifle!

I hope it doesn’t sound like too much of a diss when I say that The Glass Staircase feels more like a mood board than a videogame. It’s a short collection of combined elements from different genres and mediums that the creator is clearly passionate about — their Itch page states that it’s “an homage to PS2 survival horror and Italian zombie movies” — and designed to appeal to a subset of nostalgic indie fans. 

Now, I’m usually not big on nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake (I think it’s a crippling emotion, to be honest) but I have to admit that The Glass Staircase recreates the low-poly survival horror aesthetic accurately. Characters look satisfyingly crunchy and pixelly when far away, the minimalist music filled with midi thrumming recalls Akira Yamaoka’s Silent Hill soundtracks, the third-person perspective utilizes old-school Resident Evil-style tank controls, and so on. 

In fact, it recreates the aesthetic so faithfully that the first half of The Glass Staircase — which features no combat, allowing the player to wander an empty mansion and its immediate vicinity as the score thrums on — creates a kind of Uncanny Valley effect via withholding just enough of the genre’s hallmarks to make the player feel like there’s something off about the experience. There’s not even a save room or manual saves in general, just a few autosaves. 

The Glass Staircase’s story, mainly delivered through letters found by the player, is both familiar and vague in the same slightly askew manner. The affair takes place in the early 20th century, and is centered around some girls trapped in a decrepit mansion and given various ‘tasks’ through a mysterious intercom system. As it turns out, the mansion belonged to a mysterious man conducting sinister experiments after his return from the Great War, where we worked as a combat medic. 

The story hits many of the beats the player will probably be expecting, but the storytelling style (along with the dialogue, which is almost entirely delivered in short, cryptic bursts) feels strange and mysterious due to its brand of offbeat indie minimalism. The first half of Glass Staircase feels lonely, longing and degraded in an interesting way — in the same manner that, say, vaporwave does.

That may seem like a bizarre comparison, but I genuinely felt that loneliness and longing, not menace, in The Glass Staircase‘s first half. For about an hour, I was quite enthralled by the willingness to force the player to inhabit a survival horror world exhausted of all its customary elements like a nostalgic gamer returning, time after time, to a set of aesthetic ideas that no longer hold the same fascination. 

Unfortunately, the second half of The Glass Staircase plays things far straighter. The player gets a gun basically out of nowhere and the shift into emulation of classic survival horror’s combat and puzzling was far less interesting as its cracks began to show.  

The handful of bossfights were particularly aggravating to me. The fixed camera angles didn’t add suspense — they simply impeded accurate movement and changed angles so frantically that it became irritating. Also, due to the dodo-brained boss AI giving chase, the player typically runs in a circle for most of the encounter while accidentally slamming into objects they can’t properly see. 

In one odd circumstance, a boss (the first one) didn’t seem to function at all! The few times I fought them, I shot them once and they immediately ran out of my camera’s view. Either they’d suddenly begin running at me again when I approached, or they’d sit still on the other side of the room while I calmly pelted shots at them.

Of course, this is a small Itch title, seemingly developed by one person — I hardly think it’d be fair to judge it too harshly for its rougher edges. Nostalgia-driven retro horror players don’t come to these sorts of projects for triple-A polish, anyhow. No, they’re looking for ideas and styles that bring the back to a moment that was popular a few generations ago. Yes, the style of The Glass Staircase is predicated on nostalgia, like so much of our current cultural output, but there’s clearly a craving for this sort of old-school design and aesthetic, and it’s a craving that The Glass Staircase will undoubtedly satisfy for an hour or two.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Puppet Combo. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, XBO/S/X and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC.  Approximately 2 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.  There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: according to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Violence. There’s a decent amount of fairly explicit gore in the game, as well as some brief moments of nudity. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized.  I don’t recall encountering any puzzles or enemy encounters that relied on audio. In addition, the little dialogue that the game has is all communicated via subtitles. I believe this game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post The Glass Staircase Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The quiet beauty of its digital world. 

LOW Some slightly simplistic puzzles.

WTF Don’t forget to find all the ducks! 

Botany Manor is solitary experience. Throughout the course of its fairly modest runtime, the protagonist is roaming a large manor alone, and they’ll never see another living human. The only time they indirectly interact with others is when they receive mail at the manor’s gatehouse — and in those instances, the sender is always gone by the time the player reaches the gate. 

In a soothing way — rather than creepy or melancholy — the intense isolation gives the impression that the player is literally walking within, and taking stock of, their personal history and inner desires. This approach feels delightfully congruent with Botany Manor’s abstracted mechanics and slightly minimalistic visuals, and overall Botany Manor feels strange in a way that is truly unique to videogames. I may have some issues with a few specific elements, but I can’t deny that the experience was breezy and deeply satisfying. 

The year is 1890. The player assumes the role of Lady Arabella, a botanist returning to her sprawling Victorian manor after a trip away. She immediately sets out to finish a herbarium for a publishing house, to be titled ‘Forgotten Flora.’ In order to complete the book, she needs to grow a list of exotic flowers, and growing these flowers is the goal of nearly all of Botany Manor’s puzzles. 

The herbarium itself functions as a sort of diegetic UI element — it contains a map of the manor that slowly fills out as the player explores, as well as two-page ‘bios’ on each of the flowers the player needs to grow.

To deduce how to grow the flowers, the player must search their environment for clues and successfully match those clues they to the correct flower. These clues can take any form — a newspaper article, a poster, a hot water faucet and more. The fact that nearly any object capable of being examined is also capable of being a crucial clue encourages a certain calm, inquisitive attitude towards Botany Manor’s spacious environments. I began to regard the manor itself with the same sort of wonder and care that Arabella herself must feel, a process made even easier by Botany Manor’s bright, beautiful, painterly visuals. No offense to the puzzles, but the baseline feeling of navigation — of just existing in that digital world — was my favorite part! 

In fact, while I realize that Botany Manor is a puzzler, I almost would have preferred it to have ‘cluttered’ the environment a little more, perhaps offering a few more interactable objects that weren’t clues, a bit more written material to add texture to Arabella’s world, and so on.

These things do exist to a certain degree, of course–in particular, there is a running narrative thread throughout Botany Manor related to Arabella’s position as a woman in male-dominated society and the struggles to have her scientific contributions acknowledged as hers, an extension of herself and her perspective. Other subsidiary elements of this thread (such as Arabella’s written correspondences and household possessions related to her married sister Elizabeth) further highlight Arabella’s desire for independence and a space of her own, away from the masculine establishment that insists on dismissing or co-opting her work.

Botany Manor’s chosen theme can make the isolated game environment feel even more isolated and stifling–as one explores more and more of the manor, one almost feels adrift and drowning alongside her, robbed of the ability to communicate with the outside world. However, this makes solving the puzzles and making the flowers bloom even more satisfying. With the additional narrative context, solving puzzles feels like a work of art and an act of defiance all at once.

So yeah, even more narrative context surrounding the puzzles would have been nice! As it stands, the clues for the puzzles feel a little obvious and not fully integrated into the world. These clues and their connections to each other often feel conspicuous in a way that robs the puzzles of potential challenge.

For instance, the player might come across a book on Morse Code, a newspaper article veering into a digression about Morse Code, and a portable telegraph machine in fairly close proximity, all standing out among the minimal set decoration. In these sorts of cases, it’s quite easy to begin the process of fusing these clues into a solution. In fact, at times the puzzles feel less like puzzles and more like scavenger hunts. That isn’t necessarily a problem if the vibes are on point — and they usually are — but really, if my dumb brain can consistently solve these puzzles without too much trouble, the difficulty might need to be bumped up just a bit. 

On the other hand, it could be argued that the ability to solve each puzzle without gathering every clue (which I did a few times) acts as its own sort of modular difficulty slider. A truly enterprising player could challenge themselves to solve each plant’s growth using the smallesy amount of clues. And, even if I was underwhelmed by the puzzle design at times, I admit that the flower blooming in seconds at the end of nearly every puzzle more than makes up for any quibble I could bring up — this fantastical flora leads to moments of beauty, wonder, and pause.

At the very beginning of Botany Manor, the player needs to grow a flower capable of filtering air pollution. Prior to growing the flower, the area they’re cooped up in is shaded dull brown. But then the flower blooms, a beautiful color palette seeps into the scene, and it all seems so perfect for the briefest of moments. Even if I wasn’t a fan of every design decision Botany Manor made, it was all worth it just for these glimpses of transcendent beauty.

I would’ve gladly stayed in that manor for longer, if I could have. 

Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Balloon Studios and published by Whitehorn Games. It is currently available on Switch, PC, and XBO/X/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E. This game contains no objectionable content that I can think of. It seems completely suitable for children of all ages.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not offer subtitles. From what I can tell, all of the clues and instructions are delivered through text and visuals. There is one puzzle that incorporates audio to a certain degree, but I believe that it is solvable without sound. I believe this game is fully accessible.

Remappable controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Botany Manor Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH An ingenious, unique core mechanic. 

LOW A slightly homogenous, limited soundtrack. 

WTF The announcer, who seems straight out of a 2003 DDR cabinet. 

For a rhythm title, Spin Rhythm XD’s appeal is hard to sum up in a few easy words. In a world without narrative and possessing stripped back and strict methods of interactivity, rhythm games bypass the usual videogame criteria to play on the dark corners of our lizard brain that simply crave new interactive sensations. 

The hook of Spin Rhythm is right in its name — rather than being a simple tapping or button-spamming title where the player presses the corresponding button as a note passes through some sort of ‘judgment zone,’ the judgment zone itself is able to be spun by the player in order to line up alternating red and blue blocks with red and blue notes coming down the screen. These basic notes are then either tapped individually, or automatically counted as successful hits when they pass through the correct color. 

Spin Rhythm expands on this basic idea, of course. Even on the early difficulties, there are sections where the player is asked to flick their analog stick (or their finger, if they’re using the touchscreen) to one side or another, seemingly imitating a DJ scratch. As the player advances through the difficulty levels, Spin Rhythm adds even more wrinkles, such as held notes that need to be released at the right time to continue the combo, or additional note types using the shoulder buttons. 

Throughout it all, the root of the Spin Rhythm identity lies in the fact that the horizontal movement of the judgment zone is often just as important as the vertical movement of the notes downscreen (or, perhaps, more important). This leads to different sensations than the average tapping-based rhythm game.

There are often sections, for example, where the player is simply allowed to hold the judgment zone in place as a stream of both red and blue notes flow down the screen. Staying still in the middle of this blizzard as the judgment zone automatically gobbles them up like Pac-Man tickles a part of my rhythm brain I didn’t know existed. These moments often exist in combination with other characteristic nuggets of Spin Rhythm’s feel, such as a series of back and forth horizontal spins, all of which reset the position of the judgment zone while making the player feel like a calm and collected DJ in the middle of a note inferno. 

It’s a bit hard to describe how these basic concepts and sensations make a player fee, but it’s important to evaluate whether or not a game got them right — and Spin Rhythm XD very much gets this right, no matter what peripheral is used to play. 

As for the Switch version, the player can either use a Pro controller or the Switch’s touchscreen in the style of a mobile rhythm game. Both methods are satisfactory and I’d imagine that the average player could get by using either one of them though I’m sure each mode has a bit of awkwardness on higher difficulties.  

More divisive, I expect, will be the soundtrack. With a decent amount of exceptions, Spin Rhythm mostly uses EDM tracks from modern record labels. To many, the structural similarity of the songs here (verse-chorus-breakdown-verse-etc) might be a turnoff, but I hope this doesn’t end up being the case.

Regardless of what one thinks of the individual tracks, the note structures exhibit a lovely level of homespun detail, feeling appropriately congruent with the song they’re representing while also containing a nice amount of artistic interpretation, appropriate for a rhythm title that doesn’t follow a single instrument for the full duration of a song. 

Details such as this tightness and flair of the notes, the expressive UI — even things like the fact that there’s a preview of the notes scrolling along underneath each track in the song select screen — speak to a level of passion the devs seem to have for the genre, and perhaps a desire to create an experience that is equivalent to their favorite rhythm games, not merely a pastiche of older titles. 

And so, the Switch adds yet another solid rhythm game title to its growing library and reinforces the idea that the console is becoming the go-to destination for both handheld and couch-centric rhythm gaming shenanigans. It certainly helps that Spin Rhythm is so welcoming to players of all skill levels — seasoned rhythm gods, beginners, and even perpetual mediocrities like myself. Spin Rhythm does its best to keep the groove going for everyone. 

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Super Spin Digital and published by Super Spin Digital. It is currently available on the Switch, PC, and Mac. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 11 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. 0 hours were spent in the local multiplayer mode. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E, and contains Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Language. My guess is that these descriptors are related to some of the lyrics in some of the songs, and perhaps some of the different album artwork or background areas. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. However, the color of different note types etc. can be altered. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered or resized. Though it is understandably quite difficult to play a rhythm game without sound, Spin Rhythm XD offers tutorials that are easy to complete without sound, and all other information is presented visually. Theoretically, it would be possible to progress purely using pattern recognition. 

Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable. Spin Rhythm can be played in a few different styles — as a purely touchscreen experience, controlling movement through the Pro Controller’s gyroscope, or using buttons and the analog stick. For the default controller scheme, the player moves an analog stick back and forth to spin the judgement zone, presses A or B to tap the red or blue notes, and presses RB or LB to hit the green notes.

The post Spin Rhythm XD Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The cute, rotatable isometric perspective.

LOW A huge number of technical shortcomings.

WTF The occasional extremely sudden switches in location and perspective.

I’m not usually the type of person who complains about technical issues in videogames, but this principle of tolerance has a limit. 

In the case of Hercule Poirot: The London Case, for instance, the technical and logistical problems are so persistent and so acute that one can’t help but feel the presence of the developer in every scene, at every moment, scrambling to create a coherent experience. I applaud their efforts, in a certain sense. They’re clearly passionate about the source material, giving The London Case the feel of a charming puppet show put on by some well-meaning children. But, charm can only carry one so far when the mystery itself, the foundation of the whole edifice, is so consistently obscured by so many shortcomings. 

Let’s start this off with a compliment though. I like that the developers opted to create their own original mystery, rather than adapt a story from the Poirot books. Instead of starring old man Poirot, The London Case casts the detective as a fairly young person in charge of escorting a precious painting from Belgium to a London art gallery for display.

Naturally things go awry, leading to a winding, twisty series of mysteries within a larger mystery, but before all that, the player is placed in a tutorial level on a boat headed for London, allowing them to become acquainted with The London Case’s style and the rhythm of its gameplay.

Immediately, I was struck by the awkwardness of the presentation — the low detail of the environments, the stiltedness of the character animations, and whiplash transitions between scenes and camera angles during cutscenes and dialogue sections. That said, I did enjoy the way the player can rotate the scene at will like a little diorama, picking out clues through a shift in perspective. For some arbitrary reason the camera can’t be rotated when walking, which is frustrating given how slow the walk speed is, but… oh well. 

The intro section also introduces other main gameplay elements that will persist throughout the experience, a mixed bag that began to truly sour for me as the hours wore on.

Broadly, the player is asked to inspect the environment and talk to suspects for clues (occasionally interacting with 3D objects to pick out specific details), then connect these clues and other info in a series of deduction ‘webs,’ solve point-and-click-style inventory puzzles, and present the correct evidence during deduction sections. Some of the 3D objects are quite lovingly rendered (such as the knife that the player examines during the first chapter) but The London Case seems to arbitrarily assign both the important points of the object that need examining, as well as the placement of these important points. 

For example, an early chapter has the player examining a painting central to the mystery — arbitrarily, Poirot chooses to focus on the halo above the figures’ heads as a point of interest the player needs to select in order to advance. There’s no particular reason why Poirot would focus on this particular selection of the painting above any other, and moreover, there’s no reason why the player has to click on a specific section of the halo in order for the click to register. There’s a vague indicator when mousing over an area that contains an inspect-able point, but in my opinion it’s not enough to compensate for a minigame that often feels like padding, and an exercise in trial and error. 

Speaking of trial and error, all of the deduction sections (both the webs and the presentations that the player makes to other characters) can be failed an infinite amount of times, with zero penalty. Also, it’s not possible to go through with accusing the wrong person, or otherwise come to incorrect conclusions.

I realize that the developers are drawing on a larger point-and-click style when it comes to this lack of fail states, but it’s a little dissatisfying to play as a detective when there’s zero opportunities for failure. In contrast, a title like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments allows the player to come to completely erroneous conclusions, while letting them check their answer if they’re curious. There’s something very flashy and satisfying about coming up with the perfect conclusions when the possibility of failure exists, which is something that rarely happens in The London Case given how generous the safety net is. 

Instead, The London Case tries to offer a different avenue for player expression via the slightly nonlinear case progression, but more often than not I found myself wishing for a more streamlined — and coherent — experience.

At one point, Poirot recognized blue paint on an article of clothing, even though I hadn’t yet brought him to the room where the blue paint originated from! Other similar moments (such as a puzzle where the player is attempting to lure a cat out of a hole in a confession booth, which needs to be completed before Poirot is able to even able to talk to the cat’s owner about its whereabouts) suggest a story that has failed to take into account the true freedom required for such non-linearity. 

The London Case occupies a strange sort of middle ground — it wants to facilitate player freedom, while at the same time telling a focused point-and-click story with little room for deviation. Perhaps it would have functioned better as a more pure narrative experience — a visual novel, for instance. It certainly would have been easier to avoid the technical hiccups in that case! 

Rating: 3.5 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Blazing Griffin and published by Microids. It is currently available on PS5, PS4, Switch, XBO, PC, XBX/S. This copy of the game was via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Drug References, Mild Violence. The official description reads: This is a puzzle/investigation game in which players follow Hercule Poirot through a mystery involving a stolen painting. During the course of the investigation, players can examine corpses and hear dialogue about murder. One sequence depicts a character being shot (off screen); another man is knocked unconscious off-camera. One clue/item in the game is cocaine residue; text and dialogue discuss the negative effects of the drug.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Every puzzle and story beat has a readable visual cue as accompaniment, meaning that the entire game can easily be played without sound. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable. When controlling the game using a keyboard and mouse, the player is able to choose between two different key layouts. With a controller, the controls are not remappable: the left stick is used to walk around, the right stick is used to rotate the camera, X is used to interact with objects, Square pulls up the Objective screen, and Triangle pulls up the inventory screen.

The post Hercule Poirot: The London Case Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH A few really nice quality-of-life features.

LOW Poor performance at launch, even on high-end machines. 

WTF Sometimes a massive tornado will just sorta roll through your city and wreak havoc. 

To me, there’s a certain kind of artistry involved in developing a sequel that’s nearly identical in aesthetics and mechanics to its predecessor. This isn’t to say that every hacky triple-A series with a yearly release schedule is dabbling in high art, of course. Rather, sequels that hew close to the original vision but wish to stand on their own merits require a sort of careful attention on the part of the developer. They must treat the original like a lump of clay, paring down superfluous mechanics and streamlining good ones until untapped potential of the original is fully revealed. 

Cities: Skylines II definitely opts for this sort of careful, iterative approach… though I’m still not sure whether or not that was the right decision. While it does streamline the previous core gameplay loop in a way that makes much of the experience smoother and more satisfying, it also places more emphasis on the ‘human’ aspects of the city, to mixed results — at least for now, prior to any DLC releases. 

The start of a Cities: Skylines II run unfolds much the same as the first one — the player is presented with a mostly-empty map featuring a small handful of connections to the outside world via highways and the like. Immediately, the player can begin building the city of their dreams by setting down roads, zoning for commercial, residential, or industrial buildings, bolstering their citizens’ happiness and productivity with a variety of city services, and so on.

The early game rollout of roads and basic services (such as water and electricity) feels less painful now thanks to a few smart tweaks like the ‘grid’ tool. In a few clicks, they can set the length and width of an entire series of roads, making the creation of suburban housing units or industrial centers feel totally effortless. Essential services now feel far easier to implement, as well. For example, instead of manually placing water pipes, the majority of road types now feature a built in ‘network’ of underground water pipes, sewage pipes, and electrical wires, meaning that buildings are automatically connected to these networks when they are built next to a road. 

These handy tools, combined with a more robust set of tutorial popups, make the early game absolutely fly by. Clearly Cities II wants to empower the player to create as soon as possible, allowing novice players (and experienced pros alike) to focus on the more detailed and human-focused simulation elements of the sequel. 

On the right side of the screen, the player is delivered a constant stream of social media posts from citizens and businesses in their city. Clicking on the names of the uploaders warps the camera to their location, allowing the player to see them going about their day. From an isometric view, the player can see these mini-Sims walk down the sidewalk, park their cars, wait outside their burnt-down house as the firefighters deal with the wreckage, and more. Every single member of the city can be ‘followed’ by the player as well, keeping their profile within a handy tab and adding their significant life events to the constant stream of social media posts.

However, all of these systems still feel a little barebones — characters seem largely defined by employment and familial status. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, especially when it comes to a series like Cities: Skylines which seems to be reliant on its post-release DLC if the pattern of the previous installment is anything to go by. Nevertheless, I think it’d be nice if the constant social media feed and notifications on the map (indicating problems or areas of interest) were more varied and personable.

As it stands now, the player is mainly treated to a constant flow of repetitive and often unhelpful complaints from citizens, as shrill as an alarm clock. If an extremely small section of city has less-than-favorable hospital access, for example, the player will receive constant social media notifications complaining about the city’s bad healthcare. The same scenario applies to every other city service — police, electricity, sewage, and internet.

Oftentimes, these issues won’t be a pressing concern, or they won’t be fixable given the player’s current plans/financial situation. As such, the ways in which the game ‘talks back’ to the player often seem more obnoxious than helpful, and more confusing than inspiring. CSII contains a nifty skill tree allowing the player to unlock and focus on services they’re particularly interested in, a nice component the adds to Cities: Skylines II’s sense of personalization and expression. However, for the majority of my playthrough I felt that I spent a great deal of time putting out fires (real or imaginary) brought up by the busy UI, rather than expressing my own desires. 

As I alluded to at the beginning of this review, I’m sure CSII‘s idiosyncratic and compelling elements, such as the ability to follow individual characters, will be expanded on in future DLCs. But if that’s the case then — well, I hate to be That Guy, but is there any reason to upgrade from the original Cities: Skylines at the moment?  

If you’re a die-hard city fan of city builders, and the idea of a new Cities: Skylines that’s 10 percent prettier and 5 percent more interesting has you salivating, you might wanna hop on this one right away. But for the rest of us, we can probably just keep chipping away at some other 2000-hour video gaming time sink. It’s not like this franchise is going away any time soon, after all.

Final Score: 6/10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 12 hours were dedicated to the single-player campaign and the game was not completed (it does not seem to have a definite end-state). There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E, with no additional descriptors. This is a city-management simulation game in which players can build and manage their ideal city. From a top-down perspective, players monitor various statistics while using planning skills to attract businesses, residents, and tourists.

Colorblind modes: there are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not offer subtitles, but all information is relayed via a text and image user interface. The user interface can be altered and resized. Every relevant piece of information is transmitted visually as well as aurally. It is very easy to play the game without sound, and I would say that it’s fully accessible.  

Remappable controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. 

The post Cities: Skylines II Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The sheer amount of detail and care put into each map. 

LOW Way too much filler. 

WTF The AI’s passionate hatred of goats. 

The format of Crime o’ Clock lends itself perfectly to a monotonous, repetitive experience — the player is thrust into the role of a detective in the far future, working alongside a sophisticated AI named Eve. The detective is tasked with solving crimes in the past that never should have occurred and are now disrupting the normal flow of time. They solve these crimes through interacting with a diegetic, computer workstation-esque interface. 

There’s really nothing wrong with a game about a fictional ‘office job’ leaning into a certain kind of monotony as the player repeats the same simulated tasks over and over — this monotony can, in fact, serve to highlight moments of beauty and grace. In the Case of Crime o’ Clock, unfortunately, the repetition of both gameplay and plot elements is so acute, so overwhelmingly hard to ignore, that most of its positive qualities quickly become buried in a sea of mind-numbing busywork. 

In order to carry out their aforementioned detective work, the player is mainly tasked with finding different objects within large, extremely detailed isometric images, representing different frozen moments in time that occurred during the event in question — it’s a bit like the saved web pages in the Wayback Machine. For example, the player might be asked to identify an initial crime scene, with the computer telling them the approximate area it’s located in. Once they’ve identified the crime scene, the view might shift to a different moment in time, and they’ll be asked to find additional clues near the crime scene, and so on. 

At its core, it’s simply a fancy version of Where’s Waldo, but the unique twists it brings to that tried-and-true formula serve to sustain the player’s curiosity — at least, for a time. 

Crime o’ Clock  is rendered in a simplistic, cartoony style, with many of the humans represented by cute anthropomorphic characters that carry on their own lives parallel to the stories the player investigates. I won’t lie, I let out a bit of a groan when I saw the pair of Rick and Morty lookalikes in the first level, but I was tickled to see them teleporting around the map every time I shifted through time, being chased through a replica castle before making their narrow escape through a portal.

Given that the player will return to the same ‘maps’ (corresponding to different time periods) many times over the course of the campaign, it’s inevitable that they will spot people that were involved in cases they have already solved, going about their newly-peaceful lives as the world continues to advance. These small moments of recognition, along with the playful way in which Crime o’ Clock lays out its alternate vision of history — Atlantis existed, there was a ‘Great Goat Guerilla’ at some point, etc. — thoroughly enchanted me for the first few hours. 

…And then I realized how many hours were left. 

Even before I clued in to how long Crime o’ Clock was probably going to be, I was beginning to tire of the repetitive minigames it kept throwing at me. Between selecting spots on the map Where’s Waldo-style, the player’s AI partner will often ask them to solve small puzzles to progress the investigation that are meant to correspond to, say, hacking a computer interface, or checking a glass for poison. The problem is, Crime o’ Clock has very few minigames on offer. Multiple minigames are variations on the same simple matching game, and while they slowly ramp up in difficulty, their repetitive nature along with the sheer length of Crime o’ Clock relative to its simplistic mechanics (and the fact that there is zero penalty for failure) means that the player will master them all long before they’ve reached the end credits. 

At first, I appreciated these minigames for their slight tonal contrast with the Crime o’ Clock’s regular rhythm, but as the hours wore on, their appeal fell away completely, and I could only see them as padding. Really, Crime o’ Clock’s entire structure began to feel like padding, the repetition serving to elaborate on mechanics that warrant a one or two-hour experience at the absolute most. In the end, I began to feel a hopeless sense of dread pass over me, always shocked to find out just how much I had left to do. 

Thankfully, Crime o’ Clock’s final level returns to its strengths somewhat, using the Where’s Waldo format to drive home its ideas in a way that felt satisfying — but the level, too, felt just a little bit too padded, circling around its central point one (or two, or three) too many times.

At the very least, I appreciated the creativity on display — the final level really hammered home the fact that the devs had a vision for the story of Crime o’ Clock that directly incorporated the unique format they chose to use, rather than offering a haphazard story applied to the gameplay after the fact. The whole thing feels a bit messy, but there’s a unique vision within it that might be brought to light with a bit of careful pruning… but I suppose we’ll never know. 

Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Bad Seed and published by Just for Games and Merge Games. It is currently available on PC and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 16 hours of play were devoted to the single—player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: according to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Mild Violence. The ‘mild violence’ mentioned by the ESRB is rendered in an extremely stylized cartoon style, and only the aftermath of said violence is ever really shown. 

Coloblind Modes: there are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered or resized. All the dialogue from the AI or other characters is fully text-based, and every game element is easily findable through the game’s interface. There is a sound-based minigame, but it is accompanied by a visual component that makes it quite simple to complete without sound. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable. Every interaction in the game is completed using the left mouse button. 

The post Crime O’ Clock Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The leanness and meanness of the overall experience.

LOW Some slightly awkward combat/stealth encounters in the back half.

WTF Some of the meanest rats I’ve ever encountered.

After playing Soma recently, I had begun to suspect that Frictional Games was becoming a tragic victim of inertia — an overcommitment to what they perceive as their strengths, rather than what their true strengths are.

Shockingly — and wonderfully! — Amnesia: The Bunker demonstrates that Frictional is capable of completely rethinking their approach to game design. Eschewing the intrusive narratives and suffocating linearity of their last few titles, The Bunker is a minimalist, intelligently-designed experience that puts story in the back seat as it pursues its true goal of sustaining pure, hypnotic dread. 

The player assumes the role of Henri Clement, a French soldier in the trenches of World War I. After getting severely wounded while rescuing a comrade, Henri was knocked out for what seems to have been quite a long time — long enough that almost all of the other personnel have either fled or died, fearful of a seemingly-invincible creature that stalks the bunker. 

…And that’s it, as far as the setup goes, save for the goal of Henri finding some dynamite and escaping the bunker, while taking care not to get brutally murdered by the Big Beasty. Simple and effective! Of course, written logs scattered around the bunker fill in the blanks somewhat, expanding on character backgrounds and motivations, but the central story maintains a clarity of purpose that perfectly feeds into the minimal, yet expressive gameplay systems. 

The player quickly arrives at a central hub room, which (for the most part) is the only place they’re able to save. There’s a map which suggests possible courses of action as the player begins to explore, but the player is free to explore at their leisure.

Adjacent to this hub room is the generator, which can be supplied with gasoline found throughout the bunker in order to keep the lights running. Much in the same way that light helps the player avoid insanity buildup in earlier Frictional entries, in Amnesia: the Bunker, the Beast is averse to light. One can venture out into the depths of the bunker while the lights aren’t powered, of course, but this is always a risk, especially if the player gets turned around and isn’t sure how to make it back to the hub. 

Thus, in a curious sort of way, Amnesia: The Bunker turns into a sort of ‘pseudo-roguelike.’ The player will often die while exploring or run out of power and scurry back to the save room, and immediately begin to plan a new route of exploration that allows them to achieve their goals more efficiently — some necessary resources, or opening a certain door.

They can defend themselves through wit (throwing a bottle to distract the Beast or stealthily sneaking past him, for instance) or through force, which mainly takes the form of a revolver the player obtains near the start. This isn’t Resident Evil 4, though — the player can only find one bullet at a time, and needs to manually load each one into the chamber, a laborious process which completely undercuts any of the fetishistic appeal the realistic gun might otherwise have. Rather than a tool of destruction, it feels like a ‘get out of jail free card’ — an extremely limited, mostly reliable method of scaring off the Beast when all other methods of evasion have failed. 

In my opinion, had Frictional Games stuck to its usual linear, narrative-first formula, the presence of the Beast as the sole enemy would have quickly become nothing more than a frustration — a repetitive, scripted-feeling intrusion into the cutscenes and visual exposition. But when the player can go more or less wherever they like in a massive underground bunker, knowing that at any point the Beast could approach their position with no real predictability, the entire experience feels like one long chase sequence — or perhaps, one long nightmare. 

It must also said that there’s one last twist to The Bunker, and it’s the way the Beast can appear without notice, reinforcing the idea that both it and the player’s behavior are equally unpredictable.

For example, the Beast is typically averse to light, but one time I tried baiting him out and running back into the well-lit hub room, only for him to chase me in there and kill me anyways. Other times he seemed to appear out of nowhere in a bright room, or, if I’d successfully hid from him, he’d often take an ungodly time to leave the area. But the player an also change things up. They can blow doors open with grenades to clear paths, or they can block holes in a wall that the Beast might try to emerge from. Whatever works in the moment is what works, and this freeform improvisation lends the entire affair a dangerous edge of what if?

The cat-and-mouse dynamic between player and adversary, so familiar by the end of the campaign yet so aggressively unpredictable every time, really does possess the texture of a bad dream, or an endless cycle that the player can never wake up from. Thankfully, the narrative’s willingness to step aside is what really brings the nightmare to life. The Beast is not used as a vehicle for philosophical musings, he is not an expression of Henri’s subconscious mind or his hidden traumas. He is brutality personified, as senseless and blood-soaked as The Bunker’s setting.

Final Score: 8/10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Frictional Games. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC.  Approximately 8 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.  There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, and Violence. The game contains a high amount of both realistic and fantasy violence (in the realistic WWI sections and the more supernatural sections), with the player character often being wounded to the point of bleeding heavily. There is a decent amount of strong language in the audio/text logs, but (as far as I can tell) the ‘partial nudity’ is quite minor — this must be referring to some of the posters placed around the bunker.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and resized. The hints, letters, found tools/objects, and other elements that fuel the player’s progression can all be found and interacted with without sound, meaning that the game could theoretically be played without sound. However, it might be difficult to detect the Beast’s presence without audio cues. The game offers a ‘closed captioning’ feature, which is meant to display noises that would otherwise not be displayed by the regular subtitles, but this didn’t seem to work for me. At this point, it’s not fully accessible. 

Remappable controls: yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. 

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