Recent reviews by IHazMagics

Fun concept, completely unrewarding requiring absolutely perfect timing on puzzles that gate progress unless you get it spot on. Even recording and playing back my mouse presses with the beat of the game showed they were miliseconds off, yet did not allow me to progress because it wasn't "on time". Completely unfun.

Link to video review: https://youtu.be/g6q1jtfnQY0

For a script of the review, see below:

Some games attempt to put players in a state of heart-pounding fear, the feeling that a jump scare could be around the next corner. Some build a state of dread through incidental storytelling and contextual moments designed to make your hair stand on end. Home Safety Hotline, arguably achieves the latter, but for how long?

I enjoyed my time and would recommend Home Safety Hotline to someone who's after a horror game cut from the mold of liminal spaces, shady organisations that invite you to see what's in their basement, and the fantastical (though in this case, horrifying) presented through the lens of the Mundane. Thankfully, the only major issues I have with the game are present in its final moments, I'll discuss that in detail

As a forewarning, this review is going to spoil large portions of the game itself so if you haven't played the game or want to go in blind (which I'd strongly recommend) then play the game first.

Home Safety Hotline, developed by indie developer Night Signal Entertainment is an analogue horror game set in the late 90's where you assume the role of a new Home Safety Hotline Responder for the Home Safety Hotline corporation. Each shift you will mostly receive calls from people detailing an issue. This will require the player to pay attention to what they say as sometimes they'll describe symptoms of an issue, without describing the issue itself, a great example of this is the first shift where you'll receive a call from Tim and he describes:

So he's mentioned tall, unruly grass and his kid being sick. Reviewing the handbook this points towards Ticks despite not having mentioned any bugs or pest issues. It's a simple early call, but one designed to get you in an probative frame of mind for the rest of the game.

These events start off as simple house hold problems, Ticks, Black Mold, and Carpenter Ants but ramps up to the fantastical and creepy quickly.

The presentation of the game is reminiscent of Windows 95 with chunky text, old HTML pages, and pop-ups that evoke a familiar feeling of old PCs. Adding to this, the CRT screen overlay in front of the game adds to that grungy, dirty look of older monitors. There are options to change this, but for the full experience, I'd strongly recommend leaving the options as they are.

Interesting to note, the game also has a number of Phobia Toggles for triggering material. Like Arachnophobia or Nyctophobia. However, these only affect in-game photos and not descriptions, audio, and/or video.

Each shift begins at your home screen. You can read emails that have been received, review your handbook and, in the coming days, view videos that appear on your home screen, most of these aren't related to the story, but do help in providing some context for the world we inhabit. When you are ready to begin, you double click on Home Safety Hotline.exe and the subsequent clock-in screen to begin your shift.

Your first call is usually Carol, starting off your shift with information, and as the days progress she will increase the entries in your handbook as the games world slowly begins to reveal itself to you. Her style of communication also changes with each new shift adding to the intrigue of who Carol is, and just who are the corporation behind Home Safety Hotline.

After your call with Carol, you'll start receiving calls from people detailing their issue. The core gameplay loop is paying attention to what they're saying and the handbook will usually provide the answer as long as you're paying attention to the right things. It's strongly advised to read this handbook as much as possible while a customer is on hold as there will be moments where the HSH network goes offline and you won't be able to refer to the handbook for the answer, relying on what you've taken the time to learn.

Once you feel you have deduced what the issue is, you then provide the customer with an information package that will explain to them how they can deal with their issue and at the end of each shift, you are rated on your accuracy of the information package provided. Though these are less incoming calls, and more akin to a voicemail message that you then "Put on hold" while you research the query before providing an answer. I would have loved to have more of a back-and-forth with a caller rather than the very simple call and respond that's present.

You are encouraged to end each shift with a 90% percent or above accuracy rating as you will receive a discount code for a HSH branded item. These items serve no purpose in-game beyond giving more context for the lore of the world and HSH as a company. Continually blending the horrifying with the mundane is HSH's bread and butter and it does that very well.

In aid of achieving an above 90% accuracy, you have your handbook, this is where a bulk of the gameplay lies and a great piece of world-building that speaks matter-of-factly, giving a description of the entity, the danger that entity poses, and a solution to the issue. In some cases, this can be downright creepy. My favourite instance of this, is how cavalier the handbook describes an entry known as a False Artifact

False Artifacts are seemingly human-designed objects that can manifest suddenly inside a home. They are known for making gentle buzzing sounds that can usually only be heard by very young human children, or small animals. Homeowners with False Artifacts often report out of place objects, or missing children or pets.

False Artifacts, while not a direct threat to adult humans, can pose a significant risk to small human children and animals. Should a child or pet be left alone with a False Artifact, they are at risk of being encased within. Once encased, no noise made by the prey can be heard. While digestion can take upwards of several years to complete, starvation can be a more pressing concern.

Once a False Artifact has been identified, removal is as simple as physically moving the object out of one's home, HSH Pest Removal Services should be called to come and remove the object. Should a pet or loved one already be encased within, one can utilise a Memory Wisp to speed up the grieving process.

As the shifts and days progress, new videos will find themselves on your homepage before the beginning of a new shift. While all of these won't assist with your calls during the shift, they provide additional insight and context into the world HSH inhabits. In fact, from most of the calls they'll mention that they've already spoken to a doctor or police officer who directs them to HSH. This is a nice additional touch implying and contextually explaining there are some people out there that have some idea what HSH is, and from the descriptions provided by the customers you speak with, it's very clear they want nothing to do with it, usually directing the customer to contact HSH and saying nothing further.

From here on out, there will be spoilers for the events leading up to, including, and after the final day. If you are interested by anything I've said, please consider giving the game a try. Alright.

As you continue your shifts, Carol's speech changes, though she retains her bubbly tone hinting. Her speech adopts a more medieval tone, hinting at how old she is, and just how long HSH has operated. Before you start your Sunday shift, you'll receive an email advising that you are being prepared for a promotion. The warnings received earlier on weren't heeded, and you are now to experience what happens.

Your final shift is Sunday, however Sunday takes a departure from the flow of previous shifts. You don't receive calls from people or customers detailing their issues. You receive calls from mostly faceless beings, speaking in tongues which is transcribed as a riddle. Though the same gameplay loop exists, they'll provide a riddle, and it will correspond with an entry in the handbook. One key difference about this day

Attempted to join a friends server, simply kept connecting with no error message or no explanation as to why it wouldn't connect. Do not recommend.

Imagine Slay the Spire, Hades, and Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter got together and had an incredibly deep, engrossing, charming and tactical baby and you've got Inkbound.

I haven't played much of it so far and only a handful of successful runs, but the tight controls, intuitive progression, and co-op goodness will keep this on my hard drive for a long while yet.

Oh yeah, also good guy dev removed micro-transactions from the game and opened everything up to everyone. So really, it's a quality-made game, with effort, intent, and heart.

A fun game and well worth the low price. Decent amount of variety in strategies used per level. The only downside is that there's only 4 levels (if you include the tutorial) and 3 of those levels are prolonged by optional objectives that besides earning an achievement for them, don't provide anything else.

One thing that is immediately obvious is this game needs a survival mode and it's strange that there isn't one.

I'd recommend it for the price (about $10 AUD). Really hoping we get more levels and a survival mode. As the game, even with the additional challenges, is very bare-bones.

I got bad cheese, and round guard and watched the game play itself with literally no threat of me losing. 10/10 would cheese again.

Very consistent technical issues that prevent loading the game, loading into games, viewing the collection. It's a shame because this game has bee live for a few years now and you'd think that WotC would have fixed the numerous bugs and technical issues that prevent the game from running at all.

I do not recommend this greedy attempt at separating you from your money, particularly when WotC doesn't have the respect for it's fans to make a complete and not entirely broken mess of a money hole.

I've put as much time into this review as AGS puts into meaningful patches, bug fixes, and balances.

edit: and now with the most recent patch both the gear slots and the game are deleting items from players. That full set of mint PvP gear that you spent time, money, and resources rerolling? It's gone now. I wouldn't trust AGS to organise a ♥♥♥♥ in a brothel, how could anyone trust them to program a functioning game.

Really hard to recommend something that every time I've tried to find a group, literally no one is playing this game. It's super rare that a game is dead on arrival, but....

When you do get a game, it's basically the same Zombie Survival game that CoD has established, except this time there are little quests in between.

After trying games for days and using the developers discord, no one is playing this game. The discord is dead, the game is dead on arrival.

The developers responded below and while I respect their opinion, imagine believing that a healthy game means you have to trawl Discord groups to find people that actually want to play this game, and that ALL of those people in this discord are playing other games.

So to answer you devs, this IS the Sker Ritual Experience, which is, a game that absolutely no one wants to play.

If you want to spend some time building up a save file to have the game delete it, have no way to recover it, and have to start again but not after the tutorial. Going back to the tutorial as if you've never played it before.

Hold off until they patch this otherwise you might be pissing hours down the drain.