I’m going to be a bit lenient with this game, not to the point of giving it an all clear and not talking about the bad points but because it’s an indie game and while it’s a full release I hope they come back to it to add more maps, more monsters etc. because it need some fixing+additions. As always, this is my opinion as all other reviews are, also there’s a TL;DR at the bottom which will have some things that I didn’t mention during the rest of it.
Author: Taric the Gameknight
Steam: Released
Developer: CivilSavages
Publisher: CivilSavages
Genre: First Person Platformer
Release date: 23 Sep, 2016
Type: Single-player
Alright to get started I thought I’d point out something that causes me great annoyance with games, usually indie games, there is no tutorial. You have to work out everything all by yourself, I mean you can look at the controls in the F.A.Q. on the main page but that prepares you for nothing that you’re going to be going through. To escape you need to find both a heart and the door code but to win you also need to buy your family presents so that they’ll let you come back home since they sent you here in the first place. The door code won’t be something you need to see and remember, you find it as a square pick-up then it’s displayed on the bottom of the screen. You will also need to find different keys to unlock different areas colour coded to Blue, Green and Red. There are burgers to throw, their use however remains unknown to me.
Second it’s a maze based horror game with monsters, pick-ups, ability boosts and traps. The monsters consist of 5 different creatures, one being a TV headed creature that reminds me of the Big Daddy, another looks like an incredibly angry Fish Man then we have 3 that are similar. There’s what looks like other contestants/mutants, people who’s eyes and skin have turned a green/brown shade, one of which walks around on patrol (I’ve only seen it on the second map), another that is found praying to either tv screen or one of the keys you need to access other areas of the maze and finally, a ninja that does the same things as the patrolling mutant. While all of these have the same programming to hunt and kill in a bee line to you which gets boring and easy to exploit (unless one backs you into a corner in which case you’re down 1 of 3 lives) I noticed that the Fish Man will attack the Mutants and kill them for you, I don’t know if the others have interactions such as these, but I liked it at the time.
The graphics are detailed which is something I like, everything looks good and everything feels like it belongs in a space station maze. The controls aren’t great but they are very manageable, when jumping you feel like you’re floating but you get quite a bit of control in the air so it’s not all bad. The sounds are good in general but I’m just going to say, no matter how low you turn this game down, the monster roars (specifically the Fish Man) will be close to deafening. My sound mixer has the game at 1% and in game I turned the only sound option down to nothing (Please add a sound option for general sound, including the monster roars) and it still sounded like it was at 100%.
The maps themselves are not very diverse in their rooms, while the game randomly generates the dungeon each time you play. The rooms themselves are very much copied over with not a lot changing from run to run and this could do with a little work but it’s not bad, just something I noticed after playing map one 3-4 times. Traps are great, they work as intended but are not unfair, if you’re observant then you’ll have no trouble with them.
Overall I don’t think it’s a bad game just a game missing a lot of polish and stuffing. It had/has potential and I know it can live up to that but right now it falls a little short.
TL;DR
+ Graphically looks good
+ Abilities to give you an edge
+ Controls well, maybe a little “floaty”
+ Traps feel like traps, most of the time you’ll die because you didn’t see it (jumping into a spiked ceiling)
+ Nice twist on the maze escape with having to buy gifts to truly “escape”
+ Fish Man kills mutants for you
+ Map randomization per run
+/- Monster model variety is there, just not differing behaviour
+/- Short game times, I’ve finished maze 1 twice and almost finished maze 2
+/- Room uniqueness is low, you’ll see the same rooms almost each and every run
+/- Monsters are much slower than you and can get stuck on corners every now and again
+/- Heart Model can be hard to make out in a dark room missed it once, a light from the thing under it would fix this entirely
+/- I’ve only seen a few abilities in 5-6 runs, slow-mo, speed boost (feels like it does nothing), 3k money and sub-zero (freeze nova)
– No tutorial, this is always going to be something that will annoy me because I’m not given any idea of what I can do or what I can work with
– No sound option for the monster noises, Fish Man scream is the worst jumpscare you’ll come across and it’s at 100% volume
– Not a lot to do, limited re playability right now. Needs more levels, maybe a level editor could give it some life if that’s possible to implement.
Summary:
Not bad, not good but has the potential to be so, so much more.
