I'm SO sad to write this, but I am forced to hit not recommended button here. The Story is so great, puzzles are good, voices are good, and characters are really great. But there are four main reasons this game did a crash landing.

1. Saving the game manually is not possible. Autosaves are random, and they are not announced anywhere. 2 times I had to replay a good portion of the game, because autosave was so far off. That is unforgivable.

2. There is no hotspot names or item captions. That leads to furious amount of miss-clicking and because there are huge amount of small hotspots, it makes using the game unfortunately tedious as heck.

3. Animations are really slow and double clicking does nothing - It doesn't change the character speed or take you straight to exits. This was frustrating.

4. Typewriter subtitles are really annoying and voice acting makes them even more frustrating, because you have to double click in every sentence to get the whole text before voice sample.

All these things (well, except the save game issues) I told the developer as a feedback from the demo. Sadly, it seems that they didn't want to do anything to those issues at all. A shame :(

As a Point & Click enthusiast, I've always been amazed by the catalogue of Anate Studio, a single developer who always delivers a strong emotional attachment in his games. After playing The Kite and Repentant, I became a bit of a hardcore fan, as each new game improves upon everything, more particularly, the emotional impact, which is exactly what I look for in adventure games.

If you're familiar with previously released games, know that The Safe Place is a prequel to Repentant, one that is not directly presented as such, allowing newcomers to the series to plentifully enjoy this journey. Those who played Anate Studio's previous game, will easily connect the dots. There isn't much connecting both games, except for the presence of Christina.

Right in the amidst the economic crisis in a country still recovering from the post-soviet era, Alexander tries his best to provide for his family, even though his salary is already delayed for a few months. A side gig comes up, and although it goes against all his principles, family comes first.

When the side gig goes wrong, Alexander finds himself in a fight, involuntary killing his aggressor. It gets worse, as a twelve-year-old girl, Christina, witness it all. She may have promised to remain silent, but at what cost? Ruined and devastated, Alexander falls into a void that slowly consumes his life away, rotting all his hopes and dreams.

It's notorious how the studio has always delivered an emotional whirlpool into every single game, but The Safe Place breaks all barriers and push it to a whole new level. There's so much intensity with themes like as bullying, domestic violence, alcohol abuse, prostitution, despair and redemption. It's a journey with moral questions and lurking dangers.

The narrative has a strong impact, its pace is absolutely perfect, and events are masterfully crafted with care and dedication. It's a strong urban drama, one that left me impressed by the level of quality; Much of its credit is thanks to the fully voiced cast that did their best to transpire emotions through their words.

As Point & Click games go, The Safe Place is a pure traditional one. You control Alexander in different scenarios, interacting with a variety of objects and learning more about the world and his personal life. Included are some very light puzzles and the typical object combining mechanics you often encounter in adventure games.

Without a doubt, The Safe Place is the most elaborated game every produced by Anate Studio, in terms of complexity, lengthiness, and even duration. Definitely the most ambitious as well. Thankfully, the puzzle and object interaction remains with the same medium-level difficulty, delivering an almost casual experience.

Many of the interactions presented make sense, but may require some exploration, or, out of the box thinking. Mechanically, not much as changed in the prime formula, except the addition of a small amount of choices within the narrative. Nothing that perpetually changes its course, but depending on a few choices, there will be different dialogues.

Visually, the game is also one of the best looking games when compared to all the other productions. Beautiful hand drawn locations, embed with a deep melancholy and even depressive theme, greatly emphasizing the poverty and difficulties some characters face.

Each scenario is really well accomplished, with attention to details and care for world building. The developer still uses the same method for cutscenes, where slides of hand-made canvas-like painting fit progressively as the scene occurs. This time, however, it's far more refined and elegant. Some shots really impressed me, by how well directed and elaborated they became.

Incredible visual presentation while maintaining a simple, but very familiar feeling to those living in a post-soviet country. I could go further in detail how I truly love the art, but you can watch it yourself in a Dev Blog by the developer himself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2czfXmvy0ZA

With a play time well above 5 hours, but perhaps under 10 for more users, The Safe Place is a touching Indie masterpiece. A tale of regret, desperation, and uncontrollable fates. Broken pieces that slowly come together as Anatolii Koval builds a fantastic series with interesting characters and a phenomenal background between them.

How this game isn't booming among Adventure fans, I have no clue. But it absolutely deserves much more recognition. A solid Point & Click touching themes we rarely see. An outstanding 10/10 for an adventure that kept me absolutely hooked for 7 hours straight.

An absolute essential and must-have!

I can feel that this game was made with love, but I can't recommend it. Although the voice acting was excellent and the main character was sympathetic, I found the game to be too short, very depressing, and full of unresolved plot lines. It felt more like a prologue with an unpleasantly abrupt ending. The pace of this game was also frustrating to me, although I think the main character's SLOOOOOOW walking speed was a substantial contributor to this issue. My final issue with this game is that you cannot save your progress on demand. Rather, you must wait to get to an autosave point in the story.

It is the first time I've played the game in Ukrainian. Interesting story, it shows the dark side of Soviet Union, and how this evil state negatively affected people's lifes. The main hero faces difficult moral choices.
As for the gameplay, it would be nice to have several endings. And have a hero run by default, not slowly walk when you click some item. Also some scenes could not be skipped, you just have to sit and watch how 3 images change for 30 secs. Would be nice to have it speed-up on click.
In general I would recommend the game to people who love challenging quests along with a good storyline.

Very decent game. I love it. Point and click adventure genre has 1 more good game

Just a word of warning: the game is all gloom and doom in a post-Soviet economic downfall era. There is nothing optimistic to be had here. Having said that, the narrative is interesting enough for this short (5-hour) point-and-click. Bear in mind that while the game can highlight hotspots and has a simple hint system, the objects are not named - neither on screen nor in your backpack, so either click things on things at random or consult a walkthrough (of which I found a single Dutch one, but there are YT videos). The game has an autosave and there are perhaps 12, 15 such spots throughout the 5-hour game, so be sure to have at least 20-30 minutes for a single session or you will have to repeat a section. The game tells you when it autosaves with a big icon.

True life isn’t all fun and games, which is clearly reflected in "The Safe Place". It’s a story of poverty, domestic abuse and crime; of struggling to overcome being a victim of others or simply of circumstance. It’s an unapologetically dark story set in a realistic world and filled with misery. Some of the pain is inflicted by inventory puzzles that even experienced adventure gamers will find needlessly tricky, although at least there’s a hint feature this time around. The main character makes loads of bad decisions along the way, over which you as the player have disappointingly little control, making him very unsympathetic and draining away any feeling of satisfaction from what might otherwise be an emotionally gut-wrenching story. There is much to appreciate here, but it can feel more like work to get to the good parts sometimes. I’d probably appreciate it more as a novel or movie, but as a game it falls a bit short in granting a memorable gaming experience.

https://adventuregamehotspot.com/review/521/the-safe-place

It's too realistic. If you wanna feel the atmosphere of yearly 1990 in Ukraine - welcome.

The Safe Place reminds me of the old Adventure Company games. A real point and click with an interesting story. A few oddball combinations perhaps but it generally moves along. I'm taking my time and enjoying the afternoon.

Beautifully melancholic game with fantastic soundtrack.

10 metal scraps out of 10