Steam Horror Game Roundup Part 2 - Doorways

[RightClickSaveAs]

Another game I picked up for cheap ($3.50) is Doorways - Chapters 1 and 2

Short Review
This has some good ideas, but gets bogged down with lots of backtracking, cheap jump scares, and... platforming? Yeah, there are some puzzles that are just you jumping over gaps and pushing things around so you can jump on them. It's episodic, which seems to be a bad idea for a small indie game, and I wasn't interested enough by what I saw to check out the next episodes, if/when they come out. I didn't dislike the game but it was pretty forgettable.

Long(er) Review
In this game you play some sort of detective. It's intentionally left mysterious, but apparently you can travel through certain types of weird doorways that lead you into the worlds of the criminals you're trying to catch. The areas the game takes place in are really abstract and I think are supposed to represent the minds of the criminals you're tracking, rather than being any sort of real world locations. Or the game is just too low-budget to make complicated maps, so they go for big open levels that have a strange sense of scale. Either way, it's not explained at this point.

Most of the scares are obnoxious, like the kind you'd find in a flash game, and involve loud noises and things happening suddenly, like ghost faces jumping up in your screen or you having sudden visions of horrible things.

The voice acting is really good, it's done by the actor who does Daniel in Amnesia: Dark Descent.

The puzzles aren't difficult, but they do involve backtracking constantly. It feels like the game's length was really padded with this, as you'll go back through the same sections up to 4 times in some places.

One questionable design decision they used is to change the player's speed at different points in the game. I can see the reason for this, especially in one section where you have to go through a narrow hallway filled with statues that may or may not be alive, at which point the game slows you down to a slow walk and kills all the sound and music. This was pretty effective at creating tension, but takes control away from the player more than I like to see. Also you have to go through this hallway 3 more times. Thankfully, for all the fetch quests you have to do, the game lets you move at a pretty fast run.

This was $3.50 on Steam for the summer sale, if the idea sounds intriguing I'd check this out if it goes on sale for that or cheaper again, but skip it otherwise.

[gagaplex]

I actually own this and Anna (Extended Edition) but didn't find the time to play either yet. I guess they both aren't that great, but have some potential. I think I got them from either an Indie Gala or a Bundlestars sale, so the price was really, really low and I can't really complain.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Yeah they're definitely worth checking out if you got them cheap. I'm really curious what you think of Anna, I hate those kinds of puzzles so much it really soured me on the good parts of the game.

[matt]

Thanks for doing that! I *hate* first person platforming with a passion, so maybe I'll skip it on principle.

[Grabthehoopka]

Such a shame, since it has such a good premise, just like the good premise/disappointing execution The Cell with Jennifer Lopez. Oh well. Add one more to the pile.