- Engaging puzzles and horror elements
- Stunning art and visual presentation
- Exceptional story and character development
- High replayability and exploration
- Puzzles can be confusing and hinder progression
- Story becomes disjointed and unresolved
Emotions
Players are highly satisfied with the game's exceptional overall quality, especially considering it's a free title. This includes a captivating story, beautiful art style, engaging puzzles, memorable characters, and rich content with high replayability and multiple endings. The game's ability to exceed expectations and provide a fulfilling experience, often compared to top-tier indie games, is a major contributor.
Excitement primarily stems from the game's high quality, engaging narrative, and challenging gameplay, which leaves players eager for more. A significant cause is the strong anticipation for future chapters, particularly Chapter 2, and the desire to uncover more lore and story developments. The thrilling and immersive experience, including boss battles and exploration, also contributes to this emotion.
Admiration is driven by the game's outstanding artistic and narrative quality, often highlighted as exceptional for a free or indie title developed by a small team. Players praise the unique art style, beautiful music, compelling story, well-designed characters, and meticulous attention to detail. The game's ability to blend genres seamlessly and deliver a 'masterpiece' experience garners significant admiration.
This emotion is almost exclusively caused by the strong desire and expectation for future content, particularly Chapter 2. Players are eagerly awaiting the continuation of the captivating story, further character development, and the resolution of unresolved plot points. Many express willingness to support the developers financially for upcoming installments.
Players find the game highly enjoyable due to its fun and engaging gameplay, immersive story, and well-crafted puzzles. The appealing visual style, memorable characters, and atmospheric music also contribute to a positive overall experience. The game's ability to provide entertainment and a good time, even for extended periods, is a key factor.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 98% · Negative 2%. Score: 2 / 100
Positives:
- The game is highly lauded for its well-designed and interesting puzzles, which offer multiple solutions and are often challenging but fair. The horror elements are effectively implemented, creating suspense and an eerie atmosphere without relying heavily on jump scares, making it accessible even for non-horror fans.
- Players consistently praise the game's exquisite and unique art style, which blends pixel art with anime-like elements and detailed illustrations. The visuals are described as beautiful, atmospheric, and a significant highlight, showcasing immense care and passion from the developers.
- The narrative is consistently described as captivating, rich, and emotionally impactful, with a non-linear plot and intriguing mysteries. Players also highlight the well-written, memorable, and endearing characters, particularly the protagonist Lacie, whose journey and interactions resonate deeply.
- The game offers significant replay value due to its numerous choices, multiple endings (including interesting 'bad' endings), and abundant hidden secrets and easter eggs. This encourages thorough exploration and experimentation, rewarding curious players with new discoveries and lore.
- The game excels in creating a deeply immersive and unique atmosphere, often described as cozy-creepy or dreamlike. This ambiance is greatly enhanced by a phenomenal soundtrack that perfectly fits each scene, guiding emotions and intensifying the overall experience.
Negatives:
- Players frequently found puzzles to be overly difficult, unintuitive, and often required external guides to solve. This led to frustration, getting stuck, and a general lack of clear direction on what to do next or how to progress the story.
- The plot was often perceived as confusing, disjointed, and lacking clear connections, especially towards the end. Many felt the endings were anticlimactic, repetitive, or didn't provide satisfying resolution, with some optional content feeling pointless.
- Despite being marketed with horror elements, many players felt the game failed to deliver a consistently scary experience. Horror moments often fell flat or were undermined, leading to a mixed perception of its effectiveness.
- Achieving 100% completion and unlocking all achievements was described as difficult, repetitive, and often impossible without a guide. Specific requirements for achievements were obscure, and some players reported issues with Steam achievements not unlocking.
- The game's save system was a significant source of frustration, with too few save points and no option for direct saving. This led to lost progress, repetitive gameplay for achievement hunting, and issues with exploring alternative endings.
Gameplay:
- The game is primarily a psychological horror adventure with strong puzzle elements, often compared to titles like Undertale or Omori. It blends exploration, decision-making, and light combat/dodging mechanics within an occult-fantasy setting.
- The game offers extensive replayability through numerous branching paths, multiple endings (including 12-13 'dead ends' and one 'true ending'), and alternative solutions to puzzles. This encourages players to explore different choices and actions.
- While a single playthrough to the true ending can be completed in 3-7 hours, achieving 100% completion, including all endings and achievements, can extend playtime to 7-13 hours. Many players found themselves replaying to discover all content.
- The game features a wide range of puzzles, some being straightforward and logical, while others are quite challenging and require significant thought. Optional puzzles often lead to secrets or achievements.
- The current release is Chapter 1, which provides a significant amount of content (4-6 hours for 100% completion). Players are looking forward to future chapters, which are expected to expand on the story and gameplay.
Performance:
- Player feedback on PC performance is inconsistent. While some players report smooth gameplay even on low-spec machines, others experience high temperatures and frame drops, requiring resolution adjustments.
- Players appreciate the game's small installation footprint, noting it takes up very little storage space, which is seen as a positive 'old-fashioned' characteristic.
- Multiple players reported a completely bug-free experience, indicating a high level of polish in the game's stability.
- The game includes a settings menu, but players found it to be lacking in comprehensive options, suggesting it is not fully developed.
Recommendations:
- Players overwhelmingly recommend the game, often giving it perfect or near-perfect scores. Many express strong enjoyment and consider it a must-play, especially given its free-to-play status, with some even suggesting it's worth paying for.
- There is immense anticipation for Chapter 2 and future installments. Players are excited to see the story continue, with many expressing willingness to pay for subsequent chapters and hoping for a swift release.
- The game is highly recommended for fans of RPG Maker horror, psychological horror, story-rich games, and puzzle-adventure genres. It also appeals to players who enjoy titles like Omori, Undertale, and Ib.
- A significant number of players advise playing 'Project Kat,' the prologue, before starting this game. This is often recommended for story continuity, to appreciate developer progress, or because save data can carry over.
- A few players hope future chapters will feature more thrilling chase sequences and lean further into the horror elements, suggesting a desire for increased intensity in the genre aspects.
Miscellaneous:
- Many players are impressed by the game's quality, especially given it's free, and are actively purchasing supporter packs or expressing a desire to pay for future content to help fund the developers.
- Players who enjoyed 'Project Kat' (the prologue) were eagerly awaiting this game and are curious about the narrative connections or references between the two titles, despite some initial perceived disconnects.
- Players are deeply interested in Lacie's character, her backstory, and her future role in the game. There's a strong desire to see her return in Chapter 2, potentially interacting with other characters.
- Players are requesting official translations into languages like Spanish and Italian, with some even offering to assist with translation efforts, indicating a desire for broader accessibility.
- Players are highly impressed that such a high-quality game was created by a small two-person team, often using the Godot engine, highlighting their appreciation for the developers' efforts.
