Around this time last year, when the days were getting darker and the horror holiday was almost here, I decided to go on a new journey: To explore all the Castlevania games that I missed out on, specifically the exploration based 'metroidvania' ones. It was an amazing experience. This year I'm starting on a new journey, but I was reflecting on all the games I played and realized I never even wrote about most of them. That's why, in this article, I just want to go over the Castlevania games I played and share some brief thoughts about each of them. Join me as I re-experience my Castlevania marathon one more time. I'll give a brief overview of each game and tell you what I remember most about each of them.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Symphony of the Night is the game that started it all, the game that defined the subgenre of Metroidvania that we sometimes call 'Igavania.' It's self evident that it made a brilliant impression on me; I went on to play all of its successors, after all. Beautiful sprite animation and magnificent music populates every frame of this game as you explore an enormous castle jampacked with secrets. And as an added bonus, there is some truly meme-tastic voice acting.
What I remember the most about Symphony of the Night is the presentation and the sheer size of the game. When they revealed I had an entire upside down castle to explore, I just felt overwhelmed and very impressed. But more than that, the game really whet my appetite for this franchise and genre.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Circle of the Moon is the second Castlevania game and first GBA game I streamed. The power disparity between the PlayStation and the GBA is huge, and as such, the game is much less technologically advanced than Symphony of the Night. But there is beauty in simplicity, and Circle does a lot with what it has. You can equip cards that give you various abilities and buffs, there are plenty of secrets and the story is very different; you're not a Belmont or Alucard, in fact, the game feels completely disjointed from the franchise and is considered non-canon. I still really liked it though!
What I remember most about Circle of the Moon was its music and the final boss. I really love this game's rendition of the 'Sinking Old Sanctuary. And no other final boss in the franchise gave me this much trouble. I had to dedicate a full, several hours long stream just to make it through. But get through it I did, and I don't think I encountered a harder challenge anywhere in the series.
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance was a huge step forward for Castlevania on GBA, but only in some ways. Visually, it's incredibly vibrant - probably because the muted palette of Circle of the Moon made it really rough to play on the GBA's unlit screen. With much more impressive visuals and a story that actually involved a Belmont, what could go wrong? Well, the game had to surrender its musical quality to make it work, which meant the otherwise well composed tracks sounded grating or unpleasant most of the time. It also had no breakable walls hiding secrets. Aside from that, though, it's impressive and draws heavily on Symphony of the Night in many ways.
What I remember most about Harmony of Dissonance was being introduced to a new Belmont, Juste, and that I really liked him as a character. I also appreciated them bringing back the "upside down castle" concept from Symphony of the Night, but in this game, it's a parallel world not unlike the Dark World introduced in games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Aria of Sorrow is the third and final GBA Castlevania, and it's the game that most defied my expectations. It took everything I thought I knew about Castlevania and threw it out of the window: It takes place in the future, it takes place in Japan and you're playing as a previously unknown character called Soma Cruz. Even so, it shows the fruits of Circle and Harmony's lessons, having both a strong soundtrack and appealing visuals. It introduces the concept of 'Souls', unique abilities you can acquire from every single enemy in the game, which allows for a truly insane amount of ways to play.
What I remember most about Aria of Sorrow was the compelling and surprising story and incredibly innovative soul system. The twist with Soma caught me off guard and I really liked Julius Belmont as a character. The rendition of 'Heart of Fire' that plays in a certain scene with him is etched into my memory forever.
With Dawn of Sorrow, we finally made the leap to Nintendo DS, and what a leap it was! The game looked amazing and the soundtrack was even better than Aria of Sorrow's. The game is also unique in that it is a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow; direct sequels don't really happen in this series, usually. I really liked the story and characters in Aria, so it was a joy to see Soma and the gang again. In most ways the game did what Aria did but better, although the slightly forced implementation of the touch-screen made me lose a few boss battles.
What I remember most about Dawn of Sorrow were the snowy opening area (I love snow-themed areas in games), charming enemy animations, memorable boss battles and incredible soundtrack. My favorite track is still Dracula's Tears, give it a listen for something spooky and catchy:
Portrait of Ruin is another game with many daring decisions. It's not about Soma or the Belmonts, it has two playable characters you can switch between called Jonathan and Charlotte. The game revolves around using both characters in tandem and to your advantage. Instead of just exploring a castle, you're also exploring painting worlds in the castle which lead you to very unique locations - a bit like in Super Mario 64. I later learned that the story tied in with a Sega Genesis classic, Castlevania: Bloodlines. Visually, it's a bit more colorful than Dawn of Sorrow, but not much more advanced. In fact, I did find myself missing the Soul system that had been in the two prior games.
What I remember most about Portrait of Ruin is the dynamic between the two characters, Jonathan and Charlotte (in both story and gameplay), the many worlds you could visit through the paintings and the charming enemy animations.
Castlevania: Bloodlines
After realizing that Portrait of Ruin tied in with Castlevania: Bloodlines, I decided to take a break from the Metroidvanias and try this classic style Castlevania on Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. It only has six levels, like the original on NES, but it's tough as nails from start to finish and it took me about four hours to get through it. It has two playable characters of which I apparently picked the hardest one to use, so that might be why.
What I remember most about Castlevania: Bloodlines is how incredibly difficult it is. It's a great game with great visuals and music, but at the end, I was about ready to give up - that's how challenging it got by the end!
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Portrait of Ruin shook up the Castlevania formula by having you travel to many smaller worlds. Order of Ecclesia, the third and final Castlevania game for DS, takes this to a new level and consists almost entirely of smaller areas that are connected by a world map. The only truly large area is Dracula's Castle, and it's the final area you go to assuming you ignore the optional content. Even though the game functions like the other Metroidvania Castlevanias, many of the areas are small and several of them are completely linear, revolving more around fighting enemies - strangely enough, it feels like a step back to the old Castlevania games, even though its story has very little relevance to the Belmonts. But it also expands on the shared ground between Metroidvanias and RPGs by having a town with friendly NPCs that give you various quests to complete. This game brings back the 'souls' in a certain way; the main character, Shanoa, can absorb magical glyphs. These glyphs can be found or dropped by enemies, and when absorbed, Shanoa can use their powers.
What I remember most about Order of Ecclesia is the compelling story between Shanoa and Albus, as well as the game's stellar soundtrack. Dawn of Sorrow has my favorite individual track on the DS, but Order of Ecclesia has my overall favorite soundtrack. Just listen to 'An Empty Tome,' the track that plays as Shanoa, having lost everything, finally approaches Dracula's Castle.
In a way, my Castlevania journey was leading up to this - to experiencing the two revivals of the series, Curse of the Moon and Ritual of the Night. I started with Curse of the Moon, a retro style game heavily based on the classic Castlevania games. It expands on the concept by having 4 characters with unique abilities and has a twist - instead of recruiting the additional characters, you can also kill them to upgrade the one main character instead.
What I remember most about Curse of the Moon are the beautiful sprites and incredible 8-bit tracks... and the tough as nails difficulty. Let me share my favorite music track from the game, 'Defiler of Taboos':
I played through the beginning and end of a series, and in a way, a whole subgenre of games. And this revival of that formula - Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - was the end point, and it was a glorious experience. In Ritual of the Night, you play as Miriam, a Shardbinder (a person who can absorb demon powers) tasked with exploring and destroying a castle summoned from Hell itself. The game draws from the best parts of its predecessors and is everything I could've hoped for. In style, the game is most like Aria and Dawn of Sorrow, because Miriam absorbs demon powers just like Soma. This is the only game in this list that I dedicated a full article to, so I won't waste too much more treading the same ground. Have a look if you're interested: https://steemit.com/gaming/@arjendesign/some-thoughts-about-bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night
What I remember most about Ritual of the Night is the incredible presentation, especially the soundtrack. I've loved so many soundtracks in this series, but this might be the best one since Symphony. I also loved the new alchemy crafting system and the sheer amount of ways to play; 5 slots for 5 unique types of souls can lead to some crazy and broken strategies. Since I've done it for so many of these, have one more amazing track:
Thanks for joining me on this little recap of my journey. I'm aware this article is a bit more messy and subjective than my usual stuff, but I just wanted to reminisce a bit. Now, I've officially called 'Ritual of the Night' the end of my Castlevania journey, but more content will be added to the game - and there may yet be future games in the Bloodstained series as well. So instead of calling the Castlevania journey done, let's say it's on break until good old Iga makes us another one.
While we wait, I've finally started playing the Resident Evil games, another series I missed out on back in the day. I'm making my way through Resident Evil HD and can't wait to share my thoughts on that game.
That's all I wanted to say. Thanks again for your support, and have a very happy Halloween!
I decided to try another indie horror game. Today's subject is Uncanny Valley, released in 2015. This one was a lot more obscure than the others I've played, but it was reasonably well received, so I decided to give it a try. I got to an ending, of which the game claims there are many, but there were so many frustrations along the way that I don't know if I'll be returning to it. Credit where Credit is Due
Before I launch into the main point of this article, which are my complaints about the game, I do want to point out some of its positive qualities. For one, it looks and sounds great. Its visuals use pixel art, but it doesn't necessarily draw its style from a specific retro game.
Pixel art combined with complex lighting is an aesthetic I can appreciate, and the game sounds good as well. I also enjoyed the player character's expressive animations, especially when running. And even though the characters' sprites are basic, good design ensures you'll always tell them apart.
I've mentioned in the last few horror articles that a lot depends on when the game puts its cards on the table and reveals exactly what the deal is. This is another point in Uncanny Valley's favor. It has a few dreamlike visions involving scary shadowy figures, but in terms of the 'real world,' there is a lot of build-up. In the game you play as a recently hired security guard. You're tasked with looking after a building that recently fell out of use and make sure nothing bad happens while the powers that be figure out what to do with it. To get to work you have to walk through a dark forest every night, and you can't properly use your flashlight while running, so it's always a little tense, even if nothing ever happens. I spent several nights patrolling the abandoned building and piecing the information together before anything scary happened. You could even find tapes and listen to them to find out more about what was going on, and initially, it was satisfying to interact with the characters and start figuring out what had really happened in this old building.
But when the building lost power in the story, the game completely lost its momentum and all the small but frustrating design problems came crashing down on top of it.
Bad Communication Kills
For context, I'll give you a quick explanation of how the game works. It's another 2D puzzle exploration game that functions much like a point and click adventure. It comes closest to Silence of the Sleep, a game I played recently, as you can also run, use a flashlight and use items on objects.
The text boxes in Uncanny Valley are rather small. This would be fine if the characters barely spoke, but they actually have a lot to say. This results in sentences getting cut off in the middle a lot and forces you to press the button to continue the dialogue constantly if a character has more than a three word sentence to say. In spite of the importance of the dialogue, the developer decided not to let it interrupt the gameplay - so you can walk around and interact with things with the dialogue box still overhead and can only progress the dialogue with a separate key from the interact key. To be specific, you interact with E and progress dialogue with the space bar. Problem is, moving around or interacting with stuff can overlap the dialogue, and in some cases, even glitch it out to the point that two dialogue boxes appear on top of each other.
This separation between the dialogue and gameplay caused me endless frustrations as I played the game. Sometimes my character would be right on the edge of a screen transition. A dialogue box would suddenly appear and I would instinctively press E to progress it, only to move to a new screen and skip over the dialogue entirely - or a character would be talking to me, I'd press E to progress, which accidentally had me examine an object and skip the dialogue as well. In a game that revolves around mystery and figuring out vague clues, it's completely unacceptable to be able to just easily miss dialogue like that. There was even an occasion where I, somehow, managed to go right back to bed after waking up. I interacted with the bed, the character said "I shouldn't be sleeping on the job," I pressed E again and then he proceeded to sleep on the job. No separate question or option, just the fact that I pressed interact twice had me make what could've been a fatal decision against my will. The game also aggressively autosaves at every step to ensure you can't just jump back a step.
At one point, a major story progression occurred, and the lights in the building went off. I received an objective to fix the lights by turning on the power again, but it was very unclear how. I don't know if the lack of clarity was because the developer failed to write proper instructions, or if the weird way the dialogue was implemented caused me to skip over the explanation. Regardless, I found myself stuck on this objective and actually think I got an ending before ever resolving it.
From this point onward, I'm not sure if the game was glitched, but the player character went from regularly speaking to barely speaking or interacting at all, even when he really should. For example, at one point, I found the corpse of a recently decreased person, but could not interact with it. The player character never acknowledged it and continued on his merry way without this gruesome discovery affecting progression in any way, even though it really should have, as the body was in the same shed I needed to go to to fix the power. The player character also refused to try to fix the power, simply stating that he didn't want to "mess with it."
The way I reached an ending seemed like a series of complete non-sequiturs. I found car keys in one of the apartments, used them on a car parked in front of the building, crashed into some gangsters, got beat up and then woke up in a home with a wife the player character didn't know, even though she identified him as her husband. I found another corpse that I couldn't interact with in the storage room, tried to use a glass shard on it just to see if anything would work, but apparently I dragged the item too close to the main character because he proceeded to attempt suicide with the glass shard. This then led to an ending that was much, much more horrifying than the suicide would have been. I won't spoil it, but it was bad enough that I might not want to go back even if the game wasn't a frustrating mess. I remember sighing and rolling my eyes in exasperation several times in a row during that sequence of events because I had no idea how my choices had let to any of what had happened, and the ending managed to actually spoil some critical details about certain characters that I probably would've found out had the story progressed normally.
This is a situation where the old saying "Keep it simple, stupid" applies. Just let me progress dialogue with the interact key and just stop the gameplay for the dialogue. The player won't mind if the dialogue is important and well written. And if you're going to have them separate, make absolutely sure nothing is permanently missable. If you set goals, make them easy to find - not insultingly easy, just make sure it's clear. And if ANY interaction is going to lead to something you can't go back on, like deciding to sleep on the job or committing SUICIDE, you could at least give me a little prompt asking me if I'm sure, or you could at least not autosave every time something happens. I don't even know if I got the ending I did because of a bug, a glitch or sheer bad luck, but in choice-based narratives you never want the player to think "I don't know how my choices affected this at all" at the end.
Out of the Valley
That was my initial experience with Uncanny Valley. I wish my experience hadn't been so negative, but I can't lie and say I enjoyed it so far. But like I tried to emphasize by starting the article with some positives, there is a good game under there somewhere. Maybe the skipping dialogue and confusing interactions were partially my own fault; maybe one or two freak accident glitches that normally never happen somehow got in the way. So I do think I want to give the game another chance at one point. If I do and my impression of the game doesn't improve, I'll leave it here, but if the game redeems itself, I'll owe it another article. We'll see, but until then, I'm moving onto the next spooky experience.
It's still the month of Halloween, so I had a look at the 2016 indie horror game 'Pony Island,' a self described suspense puzzle game in disguise. The game represents part of a recent trend for games to amuse or horrify using meta game elements - that is to say, the game is aware it's a game and uses that to its advantage. It's hard to review a game like this in the traditional sense, but I still wanted to share my experiences with you. The order is going to be a little different than usual, but please bear with me. Equestrian Evils (Premise and Metanarrative)
Pony Island gets 'meta' right from the get-go. The premise is that you're a person playing a game on a haunted arcade cabinet - so you're playing a videogame on your computer, wherein you play as a person playing a game on an arcade cabinet. That's where the rabbit hole - or pony stable - starts, and it only goes deeper from there.
Pony Island drops the cute act really fast; there's no long con here. It's interesting to compare it to 2017's Doki Doki Literature Club, which takes a few hours before it gets scary. Pony Island describes itself as a game in "disguise," but the shenanigans begin as soon as you get to the menu proper, which forces you to fiddle with the settings before the game actually functions. One way of doing it isn't better than the other; Doki Doki would have no tension and basically just be an edgy jumpscare game if it played its cards too early, but Pony Island would get tedious and annoying if it just let you play the basic runner game that 'Pony Island' supposedly is for an extended period of time.
So that's how it starts. You're stuck in an arcade playing on a haunted arcade cabinet, and trying to escape by making your way through the dark depths of Pony Island. There's only one way to achieve your goal - seek out the game's three core files and delete them to destroy the game for good.
While the game hinges strongly on the idea of being a game inside a game, it doesn't actually do stuff like mess with files on your PC. You won't be required to dig through the game's files or find a clue posted on your desktop like certain other games with meta elements that I won't name specifically. There are only a few really strong stand-out moments, and I will admit, the game really did get me with those. There's one particularly brilliant moment of deception that you'll know when you see it.
There is a hidden background story to be found about the player character and their history, but that's optional and will require you to dig a bit deeper.
All in all, I like the game's story and meta elements, even if the latter are mostly limited to what happens within the borders of the game. The setting is interesting and distinctive right off the bat, but it keeps you grounded by giving you a clear and easy-to-understand goal. What? Escape. How? Delete the core files.
Struggle Against The Creator (Gameplay)
The way Pony Island controls is very simple - you mostly use the mouse, and on some occasions, the keyboard. What's interesting is how the context changes how you use the mouse completely. After fiddling with the settings and solving a few basic puzzles, the arcade cabinet finally starts Pony Island, and it's an endless runner. Now your mouse isn't used for selecting options, but rather, you can use the left mouse button to jump.
The gameplay during the runner sections is very basic, but the game continues to evolve. As you play, you're constantly addressed and berated by the developer - Satan. He constantly changes the game, often adding unfair or tedious elements, and you have to "hack" around those with little programming puzzles. For example, after you've cleared a level in Pony Island, he adds devil heads that circle around you and kill you and there's nothing you can do, so you hack your way through the options until you unlock a cheat that lets you shoot lasers.
A lot of the game's puzzles involve changing things around the actual runner game to progress, but I don't want to spoil too much of it - this game is at its most fun when you let it surprise you. But I will say that the majority of puzzles - the programming puzzles I talked about earlier - essentially have you figuring out the and changing the flow of a simple program to make it work for you. You do this by dragging around simple commands represented by icons, like arrows that change which lines get read, to different places. It's funny that Human Resource Machine, a puzzle game revolving entirely about simple programming puzzles, was released just a few months prior to Pony Island. The two games have completely different ways of going about it, but it's an interesting comparison nonetheless.
Pony Island's gameplay is fairly simple when you learn how the programming puzzles work. The runner gameplay is a basic two-button affair and there are many moments where you simply explore menus looking for another way forward. On rare occasions, you're asked to type a password or ask a question, but don't expect it more than a handful of times.
You can lose at Pony Island, but it's not very punishing and usually sets you back only a small bit. Some of the runner stages do drag on a little bit, and it can be frustrating if you lose your focus and die near the end so you have to do the whole thing again. The game's simplicity is to its advantage almost 100 % of the time, but I would say the longer runner stages are the exception.
All that's left to say is that the game is quite short, but there are optional tickets to find throughout the game, so there's plenty to do for players that love to discover secrets. You'll really need to think outside the box for some of them.
All in all, Pony Island's gameplay is simple but effective, consisting of simple reflex-based gameplay, mouse-based exploration and puzzling, with occasional typing and a lot of secrets to discover.
Back to the Arcade (Presentation)
Pony Island's presentation is basic, but effective. There are a few layers to it; the game is actually in 3D, but you spend almost all your time with your face stuck to an arcade cabinet, so you'll only catch glimpses of the arcade around you or the hand of your player character if you acquire a ticket.
But most of the game's sights and sounds happen right there on the arcade cabinet, so let's discuss those.
Once the game starts properly, the visuals are much like what you'd expect from an old arcade cabinet, maybe even a bit more basic. The sprites are simple in shape and the visuals are mostly black and white until Satan adds some colorful visuals to the game a bit later down the line. The clever use of filters and visual effects will convince you you really are looking at an arcade cabinet.
Basic though it may be, I really liked the designs in the game. You'll encounter a few demons throughout your adventure, for example, and they're portrayed in various ways - from simple sprites to ASCII art. They're all recognizable and interesting looking, which is praiseworthy considering the lack of detail.
The sound design is right up there with the visuals. Most of it is distinctly retro, but there are many fun details to it - for example, different characters making a different sound when the words they say appear on screen. The game has many punchy and glitchy sound effects to emphasize your progress and the corruption occurring within the haunted game. There are also a few good music tracks, including the one that plays when you finally play Pony Island for the first time. It's really communicates the tension that what you're playing is not just a cute runner game.
The game really does look good, but I will say that it's never all that scary. At best, it'll unsettle you or fool you a few times, but most players will probably not feel any genuinely fear or terror when playing.
All in all, the presentation can be summarized as simple but effective. It keeps it all very basic but good use of effects and interesting and creative designs really elevate the game, even if it's not all that scary.
Conclusion
Pony Island is a short, fun puzzle horror game with an interesting spin on having a 'meta narrative,' with a few meta moments that'll really throw you for a loop. It doesn't do anything crazy with its story, but it's entertaining and will probably surprise you a few times as well. The game has unique puzzles, many of which revolve around "hacking" the game by fixing the broken programming with your own logic. It also hides many secrets for the enterprising player. It wraps all of this up in a retro presentation that'll convince you you really are at the arcade playing on a haunted arcade cabinet. The runner segments are basic, but they aren't really what the game is all about.
_ Another Spooktober article complete. I played another game just earlier today, but I haven't decided if I'm going to write about it yet. Stay tuned for more content in October!
We play games for a multitude of reasons. For the challenge, to explore a new world, to get social. But sometimes a game is just therapeutic, just busywork to zone out to. I recently had a look at 'Viridi,' a game where you maintain a small garden of potted plants. It's hard to say if you can even consider Viridi a videogame, but I still wanted to share my experience. My last few articles had a pretty negative angle, so I just wanted to write something nice about a chill little piece of software. Sowing the Seeds
Viridi is at its most interactive when it begins. You're given a few choices, like the plants you want to start with and the pot you want to keep them in. Once you're all done, it's a matter of planting the seeds where you want, watering them and then turning off Viridi to check back again later. The plants grow in real time, so this is truly the kind of game (or experience or software) that you just check on every day.
This is how my little garden looked right after planting the seeds:
After everything is planted, all you can really do is water your plants, but they can be killed if you overwater them, so once per plant is usually enough. Viridi is very lenient, though, and plants can be overwatered pretty severely or left without water for some amount of days before there are any real consequences. It makes sense, really - the last thing you want is a therapeutic game about maintaining a garden to stress you out. I actually forgot about the game for a while after trying it, but came back to find my garden perfectly fine and starting to bloom quite nicely.
A nice touch about Viridi is that, when you open the game, it shows a sped up version of the growth your plans have undergone while you were away. There's something satisfying about that.
Reaping the Rewards?
Once your plants are fully grown in Viridi, that's it. Or that would be it, but the otherwise free game allows you to buy additional plants and other decorations if you so desire. But if you're not exactly in a position to spend money on digital plants, you don't need to worry; you get a free plant every week.
Beyond that, though, that really is all there's to the game. But maybe that's all there needed to be. Just a little garden of your own to take care of when you feel like it. Another nice thing - if you want to keep your garden safe, but don't have the time or motivation to start up the game, you can set it to 'vacation mode' to essentially freeze time for your garden. Once it reached a state I liked and I decided I was done with it, I did just that.
Though it's ultimately very simple, I really did enjoy taking care of my garden in Viridi for a little while. There's something to be said for little therapeutic experiences that focus on something so wholesome and inherently pleasant as taking care of some little plants.
Viridi Vidi Vici
I made my garden my way, but there are many options - not to mention, the fact that you get random free plants means your garden will always be a little different from everyone else's. I'd like to invite everyone who has a few spare minutes to try out Viridi, make their own garden and maintain it for a few days and post a picture of it here. I'd love to see what other people can make.
I've finally finished 'Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma,' a game I was so mixed about that I actually wrote a preliminary article detailing the reasons I was taking so long to get through the game. Now it's finally time to get really deep into what exactly I liked and didn't like about this controversial conclusion to a well-liked trilogy. I'll structure this much like the articles on the other two games, as I'll be comparing them a lot.
Gameplay Dilemmas (Escape Room Gameplay)
999's escape rooms worked with restricted angles, while Virtue's Last Reward had you moving through escape rooms on a set track. Zero Time Dilemma finds a happy compromise by giving you a static position in the center of the room, but allowing you complete 360 degree control over where you look. This comfortable and consistent style does come with a price, however: There are no multi-room escape segments like in 999, and no larger rooms with complex layouts like in Virtue's Last Reward. The game also gives up the idea of having a harder secondary puzzle or separate difficulties like Virtue's Last Reward; there is only one solution, and the characters will aggressively hint at the solution whether you ask them to or not. All in all, I'd describe the gameplay in puzzle rooms as more streamlined and comfortable, but maybe just a bit too simplified as well.
Some puzzles force you to back out if you enter a wrong solution, most likely to prevent you from trying to brute force it, but this occasionally felt like an annoying waste of time.
As far as I know, there were no fatal mistakes in the prior games' escape rooms. For some strange reason, however, there was a single escape room that could trigger a 'game over' if you failed the puzzle. I thought this was very strange and inconsistent with the other games, and all the other escape rooms in the same game. I admit that I could've simply missed other occasions where this had happened, but it just feels out of place in general; Zero Escape is all about reaching bad endings as a consequence of your choices, not because you didn't get a puzzle right on the first go.
One thing I did appreciate is how quickly puzzle rooms wrap up when you get the solution. There is no meandering like in Virtue's Last Reward, where you acquire a code to a safe which you open to acquire a key which you use to finally open the door. When you find the solution, boom, 'you found it.' The game doesn't waste your time at all in that regard; a positive way the escape rooms have been "streamlined."
Moving on from the quality to the quantity, Zero Time Dilemma is a small step back. Both 999 and Virtue's Last Reward feature 16 escape rooms, many of which are much larger than Zero Time Dilemma's. Zero Time Dilemma, on the other hand, only has 13. With the rooms being smaller and shorter, you'd think there would be room for more, but perhaps this is because the game is more focused on the segments outside the escape rooms.
All in all, I don't have any major problems with the escape rooms in Zero Time Dilemma. They're more streamlined and simple, but are still filled with entertaining puzzles and minigames to solve. It is a shame that there are fewer of them, though.
Zero Interaction (Visual Novel "Gameplay")
I referred to this section as "visual novel gameplay" to be consistent with the articles about the other two games, but in reality, there is almost none. Between the escape rooms and major decisions, there are only lengthy cutscenes. Very early in the game, you're allowed to pick between a few conversation topics - although you need to pick all of them eventually - and after that, cutscenes are just that; animations that play out without any input from the player. Some useful functionality was kept, however. You can still pause at any time, and scenes you've already seen can be skipped. Even so, it feels frustrating to have control removed from you at every turn; it feels like you have a very passive role outside of escape rooms. This way of doing things also removes the possibility of showing the player what the player character is thinking at all times and doesn't allow for describing the environments in much detail.
But what really sets the Zero Escape games apart is the branching narrative, and this game certainly has its own spin on it.
A key point of the game's story is that the characters are injected with memory erasing drugs after each segment, so they have no idea which events take place when - for this reason, the player is also kept in the dark about the structure of events until you complete them. Each "event" has its own, smaller flowchart with 2 to 4 branches depending on choices. Once you complete them, you'll learn their position on the global flowchart, but until then, they are represented as a group of unorganized images in a circle, many of which you can access in whatever order you choose - there is a set for each of the three teams.
Allowing the player to experience the story in a nonlinear order is an interesting and daring design choice, but it doesn't do the pacing any favors. Depending on what events you happen to choose, you could be faced with several escape rooms all in a row with very little else in-between. I do appreciate the option of switching between the teams at will, as you may get tired of certain characters after a while.
One of the major facets of the visual novel gameplay that is still intact is the choices, and I'm happy to say they are an improvement over the other two games in various ways. In 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, your choices amounted to little more than choosing a door or choosing to 'ally' or 'betray.' There weren't really wrong decisions, you just picked the branch you wanted to go down. In Zero Time Dilemma, choices take many forms; from entering in a name to answering multiple choice questions, from simply choosing action or inaction to things determined by random chance.
This is one of the major advantages of having many smaller "isolated" flowcharts, all taking place in separate timelines - it allows for many more of these choices, and it allows them to have dire consequences. Picking the wrong door in 999 or Virtue's Last Reward could eventually lead to a specific bad ending, but Zero Time Dilemma isn't scared to let your characters die in a horrific fashion the moment you slip up. In fact, instead of just having a few major turning points with a decision, every single event has a choice of some kind. I can gladly say that out of the three games, the choices in this game had me the most tense.
All of these separated events and small choices are going to feel overwhelming and unpredictable compared to the neatly structured 999 and Virtue's Last Reward and they certainly make a confusing first impression, but looking back at it, I really enjoyed seeing the flowchart slowly come together. Playing a major story event, seeing some common threads between another and checking the flowchart to see how they relate becomes a game in and of itself, and the more you play, the more you see everything is connected - the game just takes its sweet time showing you the connections. The awkward pacing is still a concern, but I can really see what they wanted to achieve with this structure and it is a success in some ways.
The game has preserved a few other good habits from its predecessors - you can jump to any point in the flowchart at will if you wanted to make another decision and it's always clear how many branches there are.
All in all, a lot was lost in the transition from visual novel to cutscene, allowing for less insight into the characters' thoughts. The nonlinear structure is a daring design choice that pays off in some ways, but hurts the pacing a little. At least there are more choices with higher stakes and immediate consequences, many of which force you to think on your feet, which is a nice step forward.
Zero Steps Forward (Presentation)
I think it's fair to say that this is the game's greatest misstep. I discussed it at length in my preliminary thoughts, but it really can't be understated what a huge leap backwards this game is compared to 999
and even Virtue's Last Reward. I disagreed with Virtue's Last Reward's decision to use 3D models for its characters, but in retrospect, the models had a cute and simplistic charm that - while still not as good as the beautiful drawings from 999 - at least had its own charm. Zero Time Dilemma uses more "realistic", detailed 3D models, and that's where the problems begin.
Back when I studied Game Art, my animation teacher shared this important guideline about animation: the detail of the animation ought to match the detail of the art. South Park can get away with incredibly simplistic animation because the art, too, is incredibly simplistic. That kind of animation could never work with Disney's much more complex animated classics. I was reminded of this lesson when I saw Zero Time Dilemma in motion. Every movement is slow, simple and very robotic, which is all the more grating because of the detail in the 3D models. Worse still, because the developers opted for hours of cutscenes instead of visual novel segments, you'll be watching these 3D models stiffly shuffling around for the better part of the game's runtime. And the problems don't even end there; just like in Virtue's Last Reward, the lip sync is not good and voices will regularly play over closed mouths. Parts of characters will sometimes clip through their own bodies or through setpieces.
The camera also barely moves in cutscenes, cutting from place to place and seemingly mostly to try and hide awkward movements or prevent the animators from having to do more work. All in all, it just seems like amateur work and I don't understand why they opted for this style if they lacked the resources to make it work. Spike Chunsoft made a similar mistake with Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, a spin-off of the Danganronpa series. Fortunately, that game still had moments of important dialogue depicted with the handdrawn 2D portraits, but during gameplay and more active cutscenes, the characters were portrayed by somewhat simplistic 3D-models. Strangely enough, they were still a lot better animated than the characters in Zero Time Dilemma, even though the latter (2016) came out a year after the former (2015).
In the game's defense, there are parts of the presentation that look good - the interfaces. Little motion graphics animations play whenever you have to make a decision or when you start an escape room, and these are all very slick and fun looking. It makes you wonder why they didn't capitalize on their strength in 2D design more. Was it really less effort to make these 3D models?
The music in the game is fine, but it borrows many of its tracks from Virtue's Last Reward. I'll post one track that I like - it often plays after you've made a good choice that'll move the story forward:
The audio mixing wasn't always great, however, with the music occasionally drowning out the voice actors. It didn't happen a lot, but still often enough to notice.
I personally felt that the voice acting in this game was somewhat weaker than its predecessors. It's fine in normal conversations, but whenever shocking or horrifying things need to happen, not all the voice actors can convincingly communicate it. I think this was especially noticeable because Zero Time Dilemma has many more shocking events than its predecessors; almost all scenarios have a choice that can potentially lead to injury and death, and in some scenarios, both options do.
All in all, the presentation is bad. Slightly more detailed models and neat interface elements can't make up for awful animation, bad camera work and dull environments. The music is still fine, though it does re-use many tracks from Virtue's Last Reward. The voice acting is also decent enough, but has more rough edges than before.
Wrapping up a Trilogy (Story)
While I won't go into specific spoilers, Virtue's Last Reward left a lot of things open to be resolved by its sequel - it was a lot more ambiguous than 999 in that regard. Zero Time Dilemma, being the third and final part of the trilogy, therefore has to deal with the expectations of resolving everything that was left unresolved in the last two games. Does it? I'll share my conclusion at the end of this segment.
In Zero Time Dilemma, the cast of characters is once again trapped in a closed space and forced to play a life or death game. In this case, the game is a lot more mean-spirited and revolves strongly around sacrificing others or presenting problems that are unfair and based on chance. You won't be an hour in before you're asked to decide which 3 of the 9 characters have to die, and the choices only get meaner from there. To really drive the point home, Zero himself repeatedly shares anecdotes about how good people were hurt or killed by unfortunate coincidences and ends these stories with "life is simply unfair, isn't it?" This is a major theme in the game.
Zero Time Dilemma is unique in that it has three protagonists, each of which is the leader of their 3-person team and in charge of making the important decisions. Unfortunately, I have a lot of problems with the cast. When it comes to the 9 main characters, 5 are new and 4 are returning characters from the previous games. I want to talk about the returning characters, so there will be minor spoilers in this section:
Leading C-Team is Carlos, the first character you'll play as. I played through the entire game and still couldn't get a very clear view of what kind of person he is, a problem worsened by the fact that the cutscenes don't allow you to see the characters' thoughts. He's a fireman and he has a sick sister, and that's basically the extent of his character. He does have a background and motivation, but it's pretty bare bones.
Leading D-Team is Diana, one of the more likeable characters. Unlike Carlos, she plays a vital role in the story, which does mean I can't say a lot about her background without spoiling it. She's mild-mannered and unsure and seems genuinely aghast with herself if you make amoral choices while playing as her.
The final team, team Q, consists entirely of new characters. The leader and playable character is a kid with a weird round helmet on his head, who is simply called Q.
Q is pretty shy and scared, as you might expect from a kid in this situation, but he's also surprisingly intelligent. He's this game's amnesiac, because every Spike Chunsoft game has to have one of those. He becomes more interesting as the story progresses, and he's the only remotely likeable character in his team. He's accompanied by Eric and Mira, the worst characters. Mira mostly hangs back but does try to guide Q into making amoral choices, while Eric constantly verbally assaults Q and even gets physical with him at times. The only remotely interesting thing about them is the romantic relationship between Eric and Mira - whenever the topic comes up, Eric becomes marginally more likeable. It's communicated quite clearly that he deeply cares for Mira, but that's hard to think about when he's screaming in poor Q's face or grabbing him by the collar half the time. But again, in the interest of fairness, there are a few really decent humanizing moments between even the hard-to-love members of Q-Team.
One thing you'll notice about how the teams are structured is that the playable characters are all fairly plain and passive - even Diana, as decent as she is. They seem to exist mostly as a faceless player character, a way for the player to view and interact with the more interesting couple of characters that accompany them without getting in the way. Personally, I would've preferred just having control of the more interesting characters instead of having to observe them as a third party. It's particularly egregrious that Carlos, Eric and Mira have so precious little to do with the overarching story. In 999, every character is involved in the Nonary Game for a very particular reason, but in Zero Time Dilemma, it's just a mish mash.
Setting aside the characters' relation to the overarching story, I've mentioned that the characters I don't like do have good or humanizing moments. The reason why these characters stay unlikeable for an extended period of time all comes down to the structure again. You can play the events in any order, which means the game has to account for that. So, in the game, Zero injects the participants of the game with a convenient memory erasing drug after most events. This means that with most events, they all think it's the first time they've woken up, and their entire arc restarts from the beginning. Eric may freak out at Q, grab him by the collar, but then learn something about working together to survive and apologize... and then the memory drug kicks in, and the same thing happens again in the next event. The nonlinear structure and memory drug cause a lot of general repetition; expect to hear about Carlos' sister for the "first time" several times, and many other stories as well. If you commit to completing all the events, you'll get past this eventually, but it'll test your patience. And of course, the repetitive parts can't be skipped because they're "technically" new scenes.
The structure isn't the only reason for the repetition, of course. I think having the three teams completely separate from each other is to the game's detriment as well. Both 999 and Virtue's Last Reward had the fantastic idea of allowing you to take different paths which allowed you to accompany different characters and different combinations of characters. I didn't get bored for a second doing the alternate branches in 999 because it gave me completely new insights on how certain characters interact with each other. In Zero Time Dilemma, each event just has you waking up in a room with the same three characters. Sometimes one of the characters is missing, which is a worthwhile attempt at making it more varied, but it doesn't really compare to seeing all new combinations.
Moving on from the characters, I want to talk about the story itself.
As I said, the characters are once again involved in a death game, but the rules are much harsher this time. The game won't end until at least six participants are dead, after which the survivors will be allowed to escape. This does raise the stakes quite nicely and gives a far greater incentive for the participants to betray each other than in the last games, where cooperation was ultimately always the best strategy.
For starters, I do want to give credit where credit is due. Like I mentioned under gameplay, the structure is interesting. It has its problems, but there's something to be said for seeing a story get built up one fragment at a time and seeing how all the good and bad endings connect to each other. The flowchart even changes shape as you figure out vital plot details. Just like the other Zero Escape games, you actually need to explore multiple branches and choices to see everything, and this game just takes that to a whole new level. If we leave out the repetition and the characters I don't particularly care for, it's actually really cool how the story builds up. I'd say it gets really good after you've done the first set of events for each of the teams and you enter a long string of interesting story developments where you jump from timeline to timeline. Unfortunately, things start to fall apart again near the end, and it all boils down to the conclusion.
The reason why this death game was organized, and who the mastermind behind it is, are both twists in the story that just don't land. The game does a lot of lying by omission to make it work and continues to introduce new concept after new concept. For example, the game casually springs a room on you with alien technology that allows you to send a copy of yourself to a different timeline, or a new character suddenly comes out of nowhere. Some would argue that there is clear foreshadowing to these events, but when I think of foreshadowing, I think of twists that surprise me and yet make me go "Wow, I should have seen that coming," not twists that force me to completely reinterpret everything that's been said and done to make it work. In a moment that has become a bit of a meme in the fanbase, the mastermind behind it all actually proclaims "My motives are complex." This is the antithesis of 'show, don't tell.' We're just informed that, yes, the mastermind's motives are complex.
When you're done, and I mean really done with all the endings, the game just ends unceremoniously without resolving much of anything. You can read up on what happened to some of the characters afterwards, but in terms of what you see in-game, it's all very ambiguous and fails to give any closure or pay-offs for everything it set up, not to mention all the things the prior two games left unresolved. Maybe Virtue's Last Reward just set the expectations too high, and they simply didn't have the resources to cover all that ground? But regardless, the ending left me very disappointed and unfulfilled. I spent a truly ridiculous amount of time getting all the endings and exploring every single story branch, just to leave everything so open? The game was content to drop minutes and minutes of exposition on me at every turn, but when the time came to neatly tie up all the plot threads, we just get another vague speech before quickly cutting to the credits.
All in all, the story in Zero Time Dilemma is deeply flawed. Half the cast is unlikeable and any character development that could've amended this is regularly reset due to the convenient memory erasing drug. The overall lack of a clear structure means you need to play through most of the game before you have any idea what's even happening and when. The ultimate reveals and ending are also disappointing and don't answer the questions that the game and its two predecessors raised. In the game's defense, the good characters are quite good and the bad characters aren't always terrible. Once you do get past the strange structure, the way the story is built up is really impressive. But that can't make up for all the problems.
Conclusion
I've already spent over 4000 words (Good Lord) trying to articulate all my problems with this game, so I'll keep this short and sweet.
Zero Time Dilemma streamlines its escape rooms, but simplifies them a bit as well. Your mileage may vary. Its presentation is where it really falls apart, however, with terrible animation and boring environments. This is made worse by the fact that you're stuck in unskippable cutscenes for minutes on end. The only high points in its presentation are its music and some of the performances. The story is very messy, with many unlikeable characters and the confusing structure working against it. There are likeable characters, good moments and the timeline jumping is always interesting, but those can't make up for the downright silly twists and disappointing ending.
Only recommended if you really, really liked the Zero Escape games - if you did, get it on sale and see if there's something in it for you.
_
Wow! This might be my biggest article yet. It took me ages to finish because, just like the game itself, it was hard to find the motivation. I write my best stuff when I feel inspired or happy, but this article is mostly a product of frustration and disappointment. I'll let you be the judge on whether or not it measures up to my other work. That's all - as always, comments are appreciated!
After enjoying Detention, I decided to try another frightening 2D puzzle/exploration game that has been on my to-do list for a long time. 'Silence of the Sleep' was released in 2014 and was developed by Jesse Makkonen. I've played a good chunk of the game, but not finished it quite yet, so consider these my "first impressions." I have some major high points and major frustrations to talk about.
Scary Flair
Silence of the Sleep is very atmospheric. It's dark, desaturated and depressing in sight and sound. Its backgrounds and environments consist of detailed drawings, while the characters - including the main character - are all silhouettes. This strong contrast means characters stick out nicely in lit areas, but are very hard to see in darker areas - you may lose sight of yourself if you're not paying attention. The first thing I noticed about the characters in Silence of the Sleep is how richly detailed the character animation is. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the smooth animation in the very first scene, and it stayed just as detailed after that.
The game has a few good and bad choices in terms of visual communication. Sometimes the objects to be interacted with are barely visible in the foreground or background - something that's made even worse by how dark the game is - and you need to turn in the proper direction to examine them (more on that when we discuss the gameplay). An example of good visual communication occurs in an area with a lot more characters; not all of them can be interacted with, so characters that are important are given something to break up their silhouette like a white shirt or red haircut.
The game's monsters - of which I have encountered 2 so far - are frightening and very uncanny-looking. They have humanoid parts, but clearly aren't just ghosts. You can only see their silhouettes, as with all characters, which is a benefit as well. You can tell that they are very deformed, frightening looking humanoids but a lot is ultimately left up to the imagination. The first time the player is in true danger of being attacked by a monster, you get an impressively scary scripted sequence as well. In this segment you're stuck in a bathroom and desperately trying to get into one of the stalls to hide, while the monster slowly approaches the door. You even get a view outside the room so you can see the monster approach in real time, making the tension even worse.
Speaking of the monsters, the game's soundtrack is as good as its visuals. Quiet hallways with atmospheric noise are broken up by the occasional somber piano or jazzy accompaniment. There isn't really much in the way of voice acting, but the monsters make some very disquieting sounds. The first monster sounds somewhere between a bird of prey and a human, while the second one sounds like an ambiguous animal with awful distortions and glitching.
The game is usually pleasant to the eye, but when you're hiding from enemies or looking through a special lens you get a ways into the game, the visuals with intense red colors and distortions can become quite unpleasant to look at. It's probably intentional, but that doesn't stop it from hurting your eyes if you stare at it for too long.
All in all, the game's presentation is quite excellent. Beautifully animated characters and unsettling monsters over richly detailed backgrounds, and a soundtrack encompassing beautiful melancholy tracks as well as terrifying background noise. Sometimes things can be a little unclear or just a bit too intense, but these moments are mercifully rare.
From Terrifying to Tedious (Gameplay)
Silence of the Sleep starts out strong. It's slow-paced, but many of these 2D puzzle exploration games are. To give you a brief overview of how it plays:
You can move left and right with the A and D keys, run with shift, look forward with W and backward with D. You press E to interact and F to toggle your flashlight. You can also aim the flashlight with the mouse, although the function is underused. You can access your inventory by holding space, and the currently held item is automatically used on things you interact with.
The game mostly consists from walking from left to right, entering rooms and examining things. Nothing too unusual yet, but there are a few small problems from the start that eventually develop into major roadblocks. One of these is the fact that you need to turn forward or backward to examine things that are in background or foreground. While turning from left to right and vice versa is instaneous, turning forward and backward takes a little while. You need to wait for the animation to play, and you can't turn from forward to backward instantly either. This makes exploration a little bit slower than it needs to be, but gets downright frustrating in dangerous situations where you need to quickly run from room to room. It feels a little unfair to get caught by a monster because the character turned around to face the door too slowly.
It's not just limited to turning and interacting with doors; most of the trouble begins once the monsters show up properly. Before then, it's just an atmospheric puzzle game, but the monsters bring new mechanics with them that quickly wear out their welcome. For starters, after the first scripted appearance of a monster, it begins to patrol the hallways but won't enter any of the rooms. The initial rules are simple: If the monster sees you, it charges at you. If the monster touches you, you're dead. There is no health or anything; if a monster gets you, that's a game over. You run the risk of walking straight into a monster when coming out the door, so the game offers a new mechanic as a solution; peeking through the door, an option you get by right clicking while in front of a door. These moments feel very tense, offering you a narrow view through the door as you see the monster shamble past, but there's no risk of getting caught. The charm wears off quickly if you get unlucky with the monster's positioning and end up having to wait several times before you can finally get from A to B. The only really frustrating section with the initial monster was a variation of the mechanic they introduced earlier; listening through the door. The sound is a lot less precise than just seeing the monster pass by and knowing where it is, which means it was possible to enter the hallway and realize the monster is still too close for you to reach the door in between. You would then be forced to run back and wait again.
But the frustrations with the first monster were relatively minor compared to the second one, which introduced a whole lot of new ideas... and problems. The monster in the second area is a natural evolution of the first. It works in much the same way, but doesn't just patrol hallways; it can enter rooms and follow you inside them as well when it's chasing you. In theory, this is a great idea. It means you can't just escape the monster by entering any room. Of course, this would mean that you can never escape it, so another new mechanic is added to the pile - hiding. If you stand behind a stack of cardboard boxes and turn off your flashlight, you'll go into hiding mode. You'll know hiding mode is active because the screen will turn into an eye destroying red. If the monster enters the room with you and tries to find you while you're hiding, you'll have to play a weird kind of minigame where you need to keep the mouse cursor on a specific area in a moving slider, probably to simulate the idea of keeping your balance or holding your breath. I failed this the first time due to how quickly you're expected to respond to the bar appearing at the top right. This could be my own fault, but I still feel it could've been a little clearer.
Strangely enough, the game is very inconsistent with which doors can be peeked through or listened at, and neither mechanic is used much in this section. As a matter of fact, the second monster is very loud and you'll usually be able to tell when it's in the next room or hallway, which makes you wonder why a mechanic involving listening at the door was even introduced in the first place - it seems unnecessary. I know it was intended to let the player determine the distance by sound, but it's used for that purpose exactly once. Regardless, the monster patrols around the significantly larger area randomly as you try to solve the puzzles within.
The best horror games know that one of the biggest mistakes is overplaying your hand. If the player gets exposed to a particular threat or scare too much, they'll become numb to it. That's exactly what happened with the second monster. The area is large and its puzzles span across multiple hallways and rooms, which means you had no choice but to sneak past or hide from the monster several times. The first time I saw and heard it, my heart almost skipped a beat, but after a while, hearing its distinctive sound as it emerged from a door just made me sigh and roll my eyes. Sneaking and waiting for extended periods to prevent instant death doesn't gel that well with puzzle gameplay. There is a reason why beloved horror classics like Silent Hill 2 allow you to defend yourself and don't have many enemies that can kill you instantly; if it was any different, the puzzles spanning huge multi-room areas would just get annoying. Unfortunately, Silence of the Sleep does make that mistake.
The puzzles themselves vary, but I found myself enjoying them. They aren't overly complicated, but some of them are quite inventive - there are puzzles involving you using a special lens that can reveal hidden things if you zoom in on them just right, for example. For the rest, a lot of puzzles simply involve finding and using the right items in the right place, just like a point and click adventure. I did find some of the puzzles to be a little bit unclear, however; sometimes they drop you in a completely separate screen (some of which you can't back out of) and don't explain the rules very well. Some people might enjoy being forced to experiment with the controls on the fly, but I prefer that the rules be made clear from the start.
The pacing of the horror segments is a bit strange. There were no monsters in the prologue, there was a monster in the ending segment of chapter 1, the entirety of chapter 2 was spent being chased by a monster and I've seen no monster in chapter 3 yet, even though I'm a ways into it. If I had to guess, the game is building towards a climax in chapter 4; I'll probably update this article when I'm done with the game proper to let you know.
All in all, the gameplay is fine on the surface, but problems emerge when the slow movement and multi-room puzzle solving are combined with annoying instant death monsters that are impossible to completely avoid. The puzzles are fun, but could be better explained at times. The game's insistence on mapping movement to the keyboard and leaving only minor interactions to the mouse feels counterproductive for a game with point and click type gameplay.
This strange world Jacob has entered has very little consistency, with doors and elevators leading from a bar to a motel to a family house. It feels like it's built up from fragments of Jacob's memory. One of the only stable factors is a strange man who refuses to tell you his name, but does regularly advice you on what and who to trust. It's unclear if you can trust him, however, and while he regularly calls himself Jacob's friend, he can be very cruel and mean-spirited. There is one particularly shocking scene I won't spoil, but needless to say, it moved my opinion of this character from "trustworthy" to "not sure."
The mysterious man tells Jacob that his goal is to find out why he tried to take his own life. All the locations, monsters and puzzles seem to represent something about his past, though at the time of writing this, it still needs to come together for me. I won't spoil it either way, since I do want people interested in trying the game to find out for themselves.
The game's characters are compelling, particularly the mystery man and Jacob's psychiatrist, and the writing is snappy and simple in a good way. The game isn't afraid to have a sense of humor, despite the grim circumstances, and there are a surprising amount of distinctive characters once you get a ways into chapter 3.
I don't know if the game has multiple endings as of yet, but it does have a great deal of choices, some of which do impact your immediate environment. I'll enjoy watching other people experience this game after I finish it, as I'd love to hear their thoughts and see how their choices pan out.
Conclusion
Silence of the Sleep scores highly when it comes to its presentation and narrative. It's beautiful, atmospheric, has detailed animation and a variety of tracks ranging from threatening to somber to even uplifting. Its story shares similarities with other horror games tackling grief or guilt in a symbolic manner, but it has enough of its own flavor and compelling characters that this shouldn't be a problem.
The game really only falls short in terms of gameplay, and unfortunately, that is a major part. Tedious and overly complicated controls, an underutilized mouse and frustrating monster encounters damage the otherwise tense stealth segments and entertaining puzzles. The game is pretty cheap, though, so it's still highly recommended to fans of horror games. To everyone else, the frustration just might not be worth it. If you're interested, you can buy it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/321870/Silence_of_the_Sleep/
_
And that's that! I'm glad I got another Spooktober article out. I'll try to do at least one more, but we'll see. After all, surprises are a big part of the October cheer. Please let me know what you thought of 'Silence of the Sleep' if you played it yourself.
