Scary or Adventure?

[Se_7_eN]

Someone please clarify this for me... I'm not expecting Amnesia scary, but some good atmosphere is always appreciated.

[and the Neenk]

It should be scary. For what i know, all the game revolves around a single house.

[Livie]

Both. Once you enter the house you'll find a very scary atmosphere and quite a few shock moments. The puzzles are not always that great/logical (or I'm just too stupid) and the controls are a bit clunky, but if you can see past these flaws you'll get a nice horror adventure.

[Ineffable Anathema]

It is entirely possible for a game to be both, you know...for a great example of this, play Scratches. *shudder* You'll never see ornamental tribal masks in quite the same way again...

[Atermi]

Not scary, bad adventure. Ignore this title with a light heart.

[Onean]

It's not a scary game, it's a horror game. The fright doesn't come from jump moments (though there are those aswell in game), but from atmosphere and subconcious realisation of what is going on. Amnesia was great in that regard because it had both in spades, and this one is more focused on telling you a story than anything else. It provides the background of how the main character ended up at the mill in the form of a pdf that comes with the game (like in the olden days), but if that doesn't interest you, it's of little concern to the in-game story.

The puzzels can be frustrating because of the difficulty of finding the items you need to solve them (think sierra hard), which takes me personally a bit out of the experience. But otherwise you can get the solutions from the clues with a little brainpower. also knowing that an inventory exists helps ;-) (i or middle mouse button)

mechanically, the mouse is very sensitive which is annoying(jarring?) in the beginning (I run the game with sensitivity slider almost all the way down, and haven't found a config file for it) so if you're running a mouse that can't turn the dpi down, you might click something wrong because of minute hand movement.
The video options are good (vsync,ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing,...) thought it could use a depth of field for the outside part. There is no option to take less detailed textures and most of the textures are well done. The optimalisation could be better, but running it on a mid range PC should give no trouble. The shadow effects are really nice, but sometimes act a bit weird in corners which, deliberate or not, adds to the atmosphere. The shadows themselves could be much better honestly.

Despite these things, it's a well made game for a team of 3 people. If you like slow paced
puzzle games that are in the old vein of stopping and thinking about clues and a game that is more about atmosphere and a story. One playtrough is around 3 hours according to the developers and there are 3 different endings. Take from that what you will.

To compare it to something, think first person Gabriel Knight with heavy classic literary gothic influences.

[vilefomori]

I would call it more of a chapter then a story since its so short. And the puzzles felt more like a game of tic tac toe vs. a hamster. But the music was nice, Its like I tell everyone who asks me about this game. Your paying ten bucks for a sound track, and a cool environment to walk around in with a few things to do for around two to three hours as onean said. But if your looking for an actual game.....well..... Id recomment tic tac toe.....against your hamster. You will get alot more gameplay out of that then this :D