Recent reviews by Wolfe

The description on this page says this game will be provided with "additional content afer its release." This is, of course, describing an Early Access title, but the game isn't classified as such.

Bequest currently has 20 minutes of "content" before suddenly ending in a "Thanks for supporting!" screen. The 20 minutes consist of walking down looping hallways and up/down stairs until doors open up to the next area, and there are poorly timed, constant jumpscares throughout. That's it. That's the "game."

You can find plenty of free games on Itchio/GameJolt with more quality than this, and almost exactly the same P.T.-clone gameplay. Just to name a few: Continuous. Dead Man's Journey. RE77. Repeat. Mind's Eyes. Hell, just play P.T. if that's what you're looking for - there's no reason to spend five bucks on a subpar, unoriginal ripoff like this one.

If you're just looking for something scary for half an hour of fun, you don't even need to spend money. Google "Notes of Obsession" or "The House Abandon" and thank me later. Just don't waste your money on this garbage.

Bad.

This is a bunch of garbage. A kickstarter game that never followed through on its promises - Only one episode out of a purported six ever released, meanwhile the developer went on to make other games since. Just a cashgrab, and a particularly lazy one at that.

The game itself is just a keyhunt. You don't do anything other than pick up keys to unlock doors to pick up other keys. Sometimes, you find yourself with the "wong key" and end up walking around with multiple keys, which is the most excitement you'll experience playing this. The rest of the time, you'll be reading notes written in the tiniest font known to man and listening to flat, albeit entertaining, voice acting from the cliche alcoholic investigator protag.

That about wraps it up. Don't buy this. Or anything else from this developer or their newer studio "Hush Interactive."

"Joana's Life" is a complete mess of a game. It has so many flaws, I'm having difficulty keeping track of them.

First of all, when you begin the game, you are presented with some keys that you cannot pick up because it would break sequence. You're also presented with a glowing flashlight you also cannot pick up, because it will break sequence. This is the type of game you're playing with Joana's Life - it's a mess.

Towards the end, the game will start teleporting you random places without any transition or explanation. You'll even get to go on a Slender: Eight Pages-esque item hunt! None of it makes any sense, and all semblance of story gets thrown out the window in favor of cheap jumpscares and nonsensical game design.

Thoroughly terrible. Not recommended, and certainly not for $7. That's highway robbery for a game like this.

You begin the game by peeing into a toilet in the middle of a forest.
Then, the bus that dropped you off pops a wheelie as it drives off.
Then, you walk into a ghost town - the same ghost town seen in games like "Devil's Share" and "The Note" - it's a map pack called "HE - Ghost Town MegaPack", available on the Unity Store for $45, and it appears in this game completely unaltered.

The town contains buildings that are pitch black inside and there is no flashlight or source of light.

At one point, you'll come across a monster covered in poop that pops out of a barrel for a "jumpscare."

Yep. That's the game. You can see most of the stuff I just described in the screenshots for the game if you're skeptical, but this is a joke. A distinctly unfunny one.

"Welcome to the Game" is a quirky indie horror title that centers around browsing "the deep web" for hidden codes to unlock a Red Room, all the while dodging malicious hackers out to halt your progress and kidnappers dedicated to invading your home and taking you away - possibly to a Red Room of their own.

Roughly 3/4 of the game is spent in a browser simulation, clicking on various webpages (some of which are taken straight from the actual deep web) in a harrowing search for eight four-digit codes hidden from plain sight. It's not immediately exciting, but the highlight of the game is the silent tension and paranoia that results from trying not to be kidnapped during your search. Hearing a chair scrape the floor in the next room, or seeing a "Location Services" arrow pop up in the corner of your screen as a kidnapper moves in for the kill is enough to propel you out of browsing mode and straight for the light switch so you can pretend nobody's home.

The biggest complaint I've seen about the game is that the ending is "disappointing." If you're expecting an actual torture scene or "actual Red Room" (real lamentations I have read about the game - sigh), remember that this game is on Steam. This platform censors softcore nudity from visual novels and the like - you're not going to be seeing a "conscious patient" version of Surgeon Simulator up there. Personally, I found the ending satisfactory - the game is more about the journey than the destination anyway.

For $2, I think this game is a steal. It may frustrate some - there are quite a few "dead" page links that lead nowhere - and the home invasion/real-life scenario horror aspect may not strike fear in everyone, but for the rest of us "Welcome to the Game" scratches a very specific itch.

"Dead End Road" is one of the more unique horror games I've played recently - it takes retro Pole Position-esque driving gameplay, mixes in some Pony Island surprises and houses the experience in a 14-town map you can freely route your way through on your way to a final confrontation with the demon that haunts you.

It's a game in which you manage resources, hunt items and take plenty of risks - a paranormal obstacle course that takes plenty of practice and trial-and-error to safely navigate. I would love to explain in more detail, but much of the game's appeal is in jumping straight in and flying by the seat of your pants as you attempt to figure out exactly how it works. I spent a little over 4 hours playing this trying to get a good ending - which is pretty great value for a $3 horror game on Steam.

Overall, I was very impressed with "Dead End Road" for what it is. If you told me I'd have fun playing a horror game about driving a car for 90% of the game, I wouldn't have believed it. A fun, surprising breath of fresh air in a stagnant summer for the horror genre.

(Full Disclosure: The developer is a friend of mine and I provided some voice acting in this game. With that said, I can recommend this game in good conscience because I think it's genuinely fun, challenging and well-designed. It has a lot more content than many of its survive-the-night peers like Wick, Emily Wants To Play and Sophie's Curse, to boot.)

"Night Blights" is a survive-the-night game that combines Five Nights at Freddy's time management with 3D exploration. You play as a child, seeking to protect their family from home invasion by pesky, hungry Blight monsters who would love to eat your family but will settle for eating toys instead - provided you feed them in time. The game features seven levels in the core campaign, plus a survival mode and unlockable extras via a star rating system for each level.

I've played a lot of games in this style, some of which I mentioned in the disclaimer. Night Blights is, by far, the most content-rich of all of them. Each level brings new threats to the fold - on the first night, you'll have just a couple things to keep track of. By the second, you'll have a couple more. By the third, a couple more.

The objectives stack as new areas of the house are unlocked, and it provides a decent challenge curve without growing repetitive. With each new challenge comes a wrench to your previous strategy, and winning subsequent nights requires adjustment.

Like any game, Night Blights is not flawless. The platforming (Yes, there is platforming - one of the many ways this game stands out from its peers) is a little rough, and grabbing objects like toys or stools can feel too slippery. Minor complaints and personal frustrations aside, the game controls magnificently overall for a two-dev game that tries to do as much as Night Blights does.

Couple things before closing out: 1) This is not supposed to be a super-serious horror game. The main attraction for the game is gameplay and fun. 2) If you played the free GameJolt version of this game released last summer - Yes, the Steam version is MUCH different and is definitely worth $5.

Overall, I'd recommend this to anyone who like this style of gameplay. Come one, come all, disenfranchised FNAF fans! In all seriousness, "Night Blights" is much more than its time-management mechanics. At its core, it is a fun, light-hearted B-movie homage that was treated with plenty of care and attention to detail, and features more than enough content to warrant the price tag.

What a nice surprise.

"Dead Secret" is a murder mystery game with horror/sci-fi elements. It's a classic whodunnit with some horror/sci-fi twists along the way, all leading up to five different potential endings.

It's worth noting that Dead Secret does not feature full 3D control. In its stead, you point and click your way through environments, a la "Scratches" and other similar games. The control scheme seems to be the main criticism of the game from what I have gathered, but I had no problem with it. Your character is able to get around just fine, and avoiding danger (Surprise! There are failure states!) is satisfactorily accomplished.

The environments are beautifully done, and the many clues/notes you can collect throughout the game are well-written and properly allow you to piece together what exactly has transpired, of your own accord. There are some "checkpoints" in the game where it will quiz you on your knowledge of the story and ability to piece together clues, but I'd hardly call it hand-holding. In a game like this, it's important not to get confused about the relationships between the characters and their backstories/motives, and Dead Secret does a fine job of making sure you're on top of things without force-feeding you information.

The game runs about 2 hours, so if I had one criticism of the game it would be that the price point is a little high for this amount of gameplay. Still, there are multiple endings and the game does have replay value if you want to unlock all of them.

Dead Secret's biggest strength is arguably the horrorlike ambiance and mysterious atmosphere that fills the locations you visit. Robot Invader, the developers, successfully crafted a fantastically paced, dynamic game that puts you on edge at the appropriate times and executes its scares almost to perfection. In fact, Dead Secret is filled with more dread than many games categorized strictly as horror, and it's pulled through by great storytelling.

All in all, a terrific surprise for 2016 and one I would be glad to experience again in VR once I get one of those fancy thingamadoos. Thumbs up!

I'll make this short and sweet.

Simply put, this is just another lazy cashgrab in a long line of lazy cashgrabs by this developer. The Lost Souls is a "sequel" to White Mirror - except it's practically the same game with a different color palette. Same setting, same "walk-up-to-statue-and-hit-keys-in-a-certain-order" puzzles, same underwater switch flipping, same monster, same, same, SAME.

Game is completable within 20 minutes, assuming it doesn't crash. (It's worth noting, the game didn't crash for me like it apparently did for others) The "puzzles" are literally just typing words backwards in order to open locked doors. Unfulfilling, dull, senseless tripe. I'm sure the same will be said about the next game this developer uploads about 3 months from now, per his schedule.

In summary, terrible.