Seriously, read this post before you consider buying it. I promise you that I'll save you 20$
• 1) This game has mandatory mouse acceleration and a very poor FOV that make exploration painful
  
  
• 2) there are no puzzles in this game. The gameplay loop amounts to wandering around until a previously closed path becomes available. That house you see in the trailer and screenshots? You will spend 90% of your time in that tiny place trying to trip invisible triggers to open previously closed doors at a snails pace. Sprint is even disabled to make the experience even more aggravating.
  
  
• 3) Chase sequences will begin immediately with no warning. Your screen is abruptly cut to black and a zombie is placed directly in front of you in kissing distance. You're expected to 180 while the screen is black and the zombie is stalled and sprint away. This is made incredibly hard due to mouse acceleration and you will always die if you don't know when it's going to happen. If you're caught it's instant death which places you at the previous checkpoint, no matter how far back that may be. My gameplay amounted to dying to the ambush, respawning, and activating the trigger while walking backwards and when my screen cut to black i'd be facing the proper direction to run away. That's not good design.
  
  
• 4) every single 'scary atmosphere trigger' that you activate will immediately place your camera at the epicenter of a 9.0 earthquake. if you want to experience motion sickness, this game is the perfect buy.
  
  
• 5) i cant prove it, but this game feels to a degree very purposely made to be completed in over 2 hours through extended earthquake sequences, cheap deaths with long respawns, and exhaustive dialogues that contain no form of suspense nor incentive for the player to care in the slightest. All to stifle the chances of receiving a refund because you've passed the 2hr threshold and realized you paid 20$ for a tech demo.

At its core this is a 4$ game before sale pricing and my refund will be processed and granted.


Edit note: I never do this but I am getting tired of being pinged by a level 0 account privated account defending this awful game. When i first wrote my review the only comment i received was about the final line regarding my assurance of getting a refund. The account asking was, you guessed it, level 0 and privated. That comment was swiftly deleted after Sklurb called it out. I received my refund, you wont find this game in my inventory. This dev has bots or paid folks or unhinged fans that attack bad reviews and write the same broken english templates to inflate this game's rating. And you know what, since I've been forced to be reminded that i beat the game, here's an additional review.

1) The game's price-tag is outright awful. 20$ for less than an hour's worth of content if you never get stuck walking at a snails pace between rooms looking for invisible triggers is inexcusable.

2) Its vistas are fine, aswell as the lighting. I can't remember which engine it uses but when the camera isn't moving the game feels alright.

3) I purchased this game to stream on discord to friends, one of them had to stop watching because the camera movement was giving them motion sickness

4) The trailer and screenshots show the entirety of the game. There's nothing spared, that's how little there is.

Here's a screencap before i disabled comments and updated my original review above the scroll. https://i.imgur.com/uISMkVC.png

Link to Sklurb's review https://steamcommunity.com/id/sklurb/recommended/1151250/

if you click the screencaps within his post you'll see that the dev's replies are eerily similar to Marcus' spam. Well to be honest, they all read the same. Here's a familiar face before he privated, the ever attentive watchdog of Hallowseed. https://imgur.com/a/0RJyqmI

tl:dr This game has leprosy, i encourage all to stay away.

I bought this game, recommended by a friend, and to be honest, I didn't expect much.
1 - It is a game made by only one developer.
2 - It has negative reviews from some high level players.
3 - It is publishd by 1C.

Okay, despite all these concerns...

I played about 3 hours to finish and it was missing an Achievement, this would be the alternative ending which I preferred not to do, because I would have to accept the devil's deal.

Well, this is clearly a Christian game, in which the developer chose to make the character (Michael), go through a spiritual discovery.
Michael goes from a clueless guy to a powerful exorcist in a very organic and unpretentious way.
Prophecies are revealed, he was the chosen one.
The game ends with a cliffhanger for a sequel, and it also leaves some questions, which will likely never be answered unless the dev decides to make a prequel.
But it has an end, the story has a conclusion, don't worry about it.

Now I repeat but with a different perspective

1- A game made by a solo dev.
You should not wait for a AAA game, except by the beautiful Graphics, Extraordinary sounding, Deep atmosphere and amazing story.

2 - It has negative reviews from some high level players.
I learned to watch the profile of the reviewer before trusting in his "review"
My experience was really good, seriously, way beyond my expectations, and 100% opposite to what several players said here.
No seriously, It was so obvious, that some of them were just craping their reviews, to promote the hate for this developer and this game.

The game is not perfect.
Man, it's far from perfect, but wtf are you waiting from the first game of a solo dev?

Well, I'm done.

The game is good and I'm looking forward to play new games by Jeff Winner.

The concept of this game is amazing, I would have loved to have finished it. Its actually really disappointing as what i could get through had me hooked but the moment the motion blur kicks in it ruins the atmosphere.

But the motion blur is giving me migraines and making it unplayable, add a setting to the game to change it to on or off and I will finish it happily suggest it to but until then a big fat nope.

Light flare is also a big issue.

Amazing game! Jeff Winner developed the entire game on his own and did an incredible job. Cannot wait for more to come. Some big pros for this game are:
-Amazing atmosphere
-Great story
-Jumpscares were not too crazy but definitely there to get blood pumping
-Graphics were amazing!
-Voice acting was on point and the sounds definitely keep you on your toes

Absolute pleasure to play this game and I am ready for the next one.

I play a lot of horror games and you are going to get an honest review from someone who has played the entire game after it's full release. A lot of the reviews here were Early Release and that bolstered up the positive reviews. The entire game takes about 3 hours to complete and after one week of being released only 5-6% of players have reached the achievements at the end so that shows you how many people have actually completed the full retail game.

I had high hopes for the game with all the positive reviews and starting it reminded me of being in the Blair Witch woods. I was immediately sold but that quickly fell apart as the entire area you are running through is just some long trails with nothing threatening in them. This just leads you to the inevitable location of "the house" where most of the game takes place. The house is a 3 story building that relies on pretty much 2 mechanics - triggers and keys with some notes to read. You will plod along the hallways looking for that next trigger which will open a door where you will eventually find a tiny key so you can go to that next door to trigger something else to open another door or another key. Trigger games work well when the environment is tight. Emika Games does a good job with this because their gameplay areas are very small. This one has three stories so you'll be plodding along getting pretty bored with a few simple jump scares or the all too overused "knocking on walls" sound effect. The only fun part about the house was a woman's possessed voice which gave me Evil Dead vibes which was good but short lived. I think if they had added some good music to ratchet up the tension it may have helped the game. What little you get playing in the background just helps add to the boredom of exploring the house. The only other areas you will experience in this 3 hour trek are more of the forest and some tunnels in the basement. The other game mechanic you will experience getting further in the game can be quite annoying. That is when you encounter something that will chase you. Now I love a horror game when you are running for your life looking for someway to hide from the evil but this one does a bad job of it. The event itself is an unexpected trigger. When something comes to get you then you will not see it at all. You'll get a quick sound effect letting you know its coming and you will close your eyes and then open them and there is the baddie. The problem here is that if you are running, and most people are, the baddie is already starting to move once you close your eyes so by the time you open your eyes you will smack right into the baddie and it's insta-death. You will auto reload your last saved position and be more prepared the next time around. The proper way to beat the baddie is rather unconventional. After you have returned from dying and are slowly "walking" to the triggered event you close your eyes and click the "S" key to immediately start to walk backwards. Once your eyes open you'll have enough time to spin around the run back the way you came. You must go back to an area where a cross is on the door and close it and then just wait it out until the baddie gives up and disappears. Be forewarned, closing a door and standing too close to the door can cause a baddies head/hands to come through the closed door and kill you. The only other enjoyable part of the game for me was the voice overs of the main character and the demon. When your character goes full on "exorcist mode" with "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!" voice overs against the demon it brings up about 100 other exorcism movies you've seen in the past so I'm sure you'll have a nice chuckle at them when they are thrown out near the end of the game. Overall though this game just wasn't that scary and was pretty dull in my opinion.

I really enjoy indie horror games so I was excited to actually play this one. With mostly Positive reviews I was
excepting a pretty enjoyable experience. Unfortunately I was wrong. I do need to point out that I did in fact finish the game.

The Good:
-Way you save in the house with the piano is really fun and creative.
-The outside environments are really nice and create a great atmosphere, I appreciate its overcast and not just night time.

The Bad:
-Littered with jumpscares. I point this out because I feel jump scares are the laziest way to make a game scary.
-Camera is pulled towards "the scary stuff" whenever there is a jumpscare. Feels very, "this is the part where you are supposed to be scared"
-Game has a weird Depth of field / Motion blur that you can't turn off. Took some time to get used to but made the game look really bad in some areas and made me a little sick.
-Navigating can be confusing and a lot of the times I felt like "What am I supposed to be doing"
-Keys aren't labeled and it turns into just trying every door until one opens. Game would benefit from a map and a simple inventory system.
-Enemy encounters consist of the camera going black and the monster spawning in front of you. Feels extremely unfun and are very trial and error.
Didn't even realize this was the case the first time and just thought I was dying for no reason because you can walk into the monster while the camera is black.
-Whenever there is screen shake it is sickening and disorienting.
-Game gives me no reason to care for the characters and would have benefit from an actual opening cutscene.

Overall a fun idea for a game but terrible execution holds it back tremendously.

I stream and play a lot of horrorgames and this game has definitely potential to become a really good horrorgame. It already has some good jumpscares, the graphics look great. It didn't bother me that the house was kinda empty, but what was a huge "EH" moment, was that you need a key to unlock another key, to get another key. It's a lot of keys, maybe this could be solved another way. But this was really only the one thing that was a bit of a vibe-killer. Don't know, just a bit.
There is also a little glitch at the beginning, when the game started and you find yourself in the forest for the first time, all I had was a black screen, I had to restart the game. Also the campire scene was blackscreen, is it supposed to be like this?

What I also really liked is that it feels like The Conjuring and you have a good atmosphere. Can't wait to play the finished game.

Horror Story: Hallowseed is a game way too preoccupied with its own technicals to bother you with a well-thought out challenge or experience. It’s more about the punishment. Problem is, there’s no game to really substantiate it.

You’re walking around an abandoned house at a snail’s pace, collecting unmarked keys and shaking hands with a million doorknobs over and over. To break it up, you’re granted a hilarious split second of reaction time as a demon appears and starts chasing you.

Powering through one set of egregious game overs usually means there’s another even more egregious set down the line. Every step trying to squeeze the last drop of patience from you. Every step a step back, forcing you to rethread and relive previous corridors and scripted moments. The latter usually involves your character standing around in a fearful, catatonic state as the camera shakes violently. So much so I suspect I might have gotten whiplash from just looking at the screen.

I never had the stamina to finish Hallowseed, but boy am I done with it.

Thumbs down.

Somewhat promising, although currently it's held back by a lack of options and some really dark areas, making navigating through them rather awkward. Nevertheless, it provides some spooky moments in visually appealing environments.
I'm interested to see where the story leads in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLJehn6g2eE

The game is really good so far, the graphics are nice and I absolutely love the creepy atmosphere and the sounds.
I like the small details like when you can use an ouija board and play piano to save the game (though I think it should save right after you click on it, and then let you decide if you want to keep playing the piano, or if you want to leave)
I spent 1 hour playing and when it ended, I wanted to play some more.
Jeff did a great job on this game and I can't wait to play the full version of it. <3