I hate to write this review, I really do. The world needs more serious horror titles like this that are story and atmosphere-based as opposed to action games with horror themes.

The problem here is twofold.

1. They forgot to actually create a game around the story. Finding items precious to the orphans? Fine. Putting them on their graves to free them? Awesome. Putting those graves at random in a massive maze with very few identifying marks and no way to mark your progress? Yeah, massive mistake. That's just not fun. Using standard maze navigation tactics accomplish nothing, because you aren't looking for one goal or exit, you're looking for a dozen. The no-inventory rule is fine as well, forcing you to carry one item at a time. But ONLY if you can actually locate your destination.

2. They lack the technical skill to make an engine that supports the kind of game they want to make. It's clunky, and while it looks okay with details cranked up in the settings, the actual physics of it all are horrible. You drop things at random, and have to scramble around to see where they fell among extremely busy textures. You have no interactive options except with 'hot' items. You can't move small objects to get around them, you can't jump, it's all very 1996.

The end result is that it's just no fun. The Huntsman is designed well. I like the idea of the slow, inevitable stalker-like villain. The story is interesting, the acting is good, the way the ghosts interact with your smartphone is clever. None of that can counteract the tedious nature of the game. It defies common sense and logic: if you were really trying to navigate a maze and were somehow incapable of carrying more than one small item at a time, you'd figure out SOME way to mark progress in the maze. Breadcrumbs, whatever. Drawing out a map. SOMETHING. Nobody would just wander around lost, repeatedly. The building is full of potato sacks, but you never grab one to carry these items in. It's all just a way to draw out what amounts to an extremely small game. You could blow through this in two hours if you could carry more than one item.

I wish the devs would have consulted with more experienced designers in the development of the game. Just a handful of other environments, a smaller maze, and an increased limit of carrying such as three items would have made the difference between an atomspheric movie-you-play-through and a game that's effectively a spooky version of taking out the trash.

I traded for this game because I was curious, and wanted to whet my appetite for horror games. Despite numerous negative reviews, I decided to take a chance.

If you like walking simulators, mediocre voice acting, lengthy backstories, and gameplay similar to Slender Man (find items while evading a stalking enemy), then you might enjoy this game. Regardless, I advise you stay away from this one and save both your time and money - unless you manage to obtain this for free.

The aesthetics are decent, but fairly bland - playing on the highest settings gives an average atmosphere, but nothing too fancy. The remake of Slender Man is much nicer to look at, if you care about that kind of thing. The music and sounds leave a lot to be desired - the voice acting is pretty horrendous and takes away from the game significantly. "Only If" is a free to play game that was a quick project, and the voice acting there is much cleaner and smoother than what you will find here. The story initially was provided as minute-long vignettes, but has been shortened to about half a minute (with an option to explore with more depth if you so desire) after the endless amount of complaints regarding the immersion-breaking audio narratives that forced you to stand and wait until each was completed (all the while a supposed "Huntsman" is stalking you).

The controls are straightforward and the learning curve is minimal - you just have to find objects and return them to the respective tombstone while avoiding the Huntsman. During gameplay, your character holds a cellphone in landscape mode, and this really defeats the purpose of jump scares because many of these surprises occur primarily on phone screen - which occupies a very tiny portion of the lower right corner. At times, you may miss a potential scare because your attention is not always fixed onto the small phone screen.

The gameplay is very boring and slow-paced, amplified by a small-ish map and lack of substantial things to do. Honestly, just watch a playthrough on YouTube and save yourself the trouble if you are that interested. Otherwise, I'd strongly advise you spend your time and effort somewhere else.

Do not recommend,

Cheers,
DJSF @DJSF's Rogue Reviews

I really don't want to write a negative review on this game, but after trying to get into it three times, and failing to do so every time, I just want to say something about it. I know my playtime is limited, and probably I should have spent more time in-game, but the truth is there are so much good games waiting to be played out there, that I couldn't force myself to spend more time with this one than I did.

Huntsman: The Orphanage is a story-driven horror game with a large emphasis on exploration (some would call it a "horror-inclined walking simulator", if such a description made sense at all). The idea behind it all is VERY good on paper: arriving by accident at an abanboned orphanage, you have to discover what happened to the children, what horrors lie hidden in the strange, frightening place, and figure out how to "set their souls free". You can do this by finding one special item per child and placing it on their graves. Now that's a good idea behind any horror game, I'd say. The Huntsman referred to in the title doesn"t appear till later in the game, and since I didn't face him, I honestly can't tell anything about him.

Now, while the concept might be promising indeed, the actual gameplay and especially the game-mechanics used, miss the mark by more than a mile. Using the flashlight of your cellphone to be able to navigate in the darkness is cool at first, and the clues and voices/images of the children appearing on the little screen are unsettling indeed. The problem is that there is no mechanic to store the clues you get (a journal), no inventory to place the different items in (there are twelve children/stories/items and once you pick up a new one, you drop the one you're holding in the spot), no map or other mechanic to help you orientate in the maze with almost identical rooms which the orphanage turns out to be. So most of my in-game time was spent walking around clueless, trying to find out more about the intriguing story but being unable to actually find any pleasure in playing.

It's obvious that the developers took quite some inspiration from games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent or Dear Esther, but while these games got me hooked from the first moment, this one failed doing so, due to the problematic game mechanics. I do appreciate the fact that a game doesn't want to hold your hand and tries to offer a "realistic" experience, but truth to be told: if I were to stumble upon a place like this orphanage, I would run as fast as possible, and not look back for a second. Horror games are still games and not real-world simulations, and some useful game-mechanics are definitely necessary.

Not recommended, unless you have played almost every other horror game out there and are desperately looking for more.

You'll need a pencil and paper to take notes, and use graph paper to get through this one! Seriously! You need to map out a huge hedge maze that you have to find your way through 12 times to find 12 different graves, so be prepared! You have to carry items to graves in the maze and can only carry "one" item at a time! Then you have to go back to the house and get another item, go through the maze again, find a different grave, rinse and repeat! It's so lame!!!

Keep in mind, each item goes on a different grave and you have to find the right grave for each item. It wouldn't be so bad if you could carry all the items at the same time, but having to go back to get each item, then transverse the maze again is torture!!! Even if you brought all the items to the entrance of the maze, it's going to be a long haul!!!

There was one cool part in the game that was freaking creepy! I had an encounter with the Huntsman, but I won't spoil it for you because it was so creepy and really cool IMO. I never finished the game due to sheer boredom and frustration. I warn you, if you buy this game, get the graph paper out before entering that maze! lol

I do not recommend this game, even at the sale price of $2.50 USD! It can be very frustrating and so boring!!!

I'm all for cheap horror games and lazy scares, but I couldn't even get ironic enjoyment out of this one. Mostly because it doesn't even function.

I'm very open to horror games that need a little patience, need a little suspension of disbelief. They almost had something interesting here. While obviously trying to capitalize on the success of Slenderman, the setting's creepy and the core gameplay idea - bring these lost orphans their most treasured item while dodging noisy monster - isn't bad.

But to find out what those items are, you have to sit through long, dramatic monologues delivered by mediocre actors while standing in place. You can't even wander off while it plays.

Then, once you track down the object you need, you have to awkwardly carry it in front of you through a maze. You have to do this eight times in total - there's no inventory, just one item at a time. The pickup/drop button is the same as the interact button, so trying to open a door may cause you to drop the item, which might result in it clipping through something or falling through the world. Then you're screwed.

Okay I have to admit I kind of liked the monster's design. Even if it's pretty overdone. Shame I couldn't even find him when I went looking for him. I could hear him ticking away just fine, but he apparently got stuck in a wall shortly after showing up for the first time and never moved again.

So there's a tiny bit of potential there. The concept, the monster, the way the horror messes with your phone. But it's all buried under a complete failure in game design 101, as well as serious technical mishaps. A shame, really. But the result is a big nope from me.

I'll just say this out front: This isn't a perfect game. I do feel that there are some things that were done right and some things that could use some improvement, but I'm also confident that any perceived negatives will be addresed by Shadowshifters.

The game does a good job of setting up a creepy environment with a creepy backstory. If exploring an old, abandoned orphanage marred by an unexplained, supernatural tragedy doesn't give you a few chills, then you might want to check your pulse and make sure it's still there. The Huntsman himself is a creepy character too, although maybe based a tad too much on common creepypasta tropes in his appearance, but I'm largely quibbling on that one and have probably read too many creepypastas myself. The cellphone flashlight and screen are a nifty addition that makes you wonder why it hasn't been incorporated before in games like this. The flashlight mechanic is obvious, but the use of the screen is a very nice idea that can really enhance the genre. You may also wonder if the character is lugging a car battery in a backpack that's wired up to the thing, too, heheh. It's used to decent effect with some creepiness, although granted, I feel there's more potential in the idea than we currently see.

That being said, I feel like this game could do more with what it has. More mystery would be very welcome. Handing much of the story over in narration isn't so bad, but I feel like feeding the story in smaller chunks via exploration and other means could have been a better hook. One item in particular was pretty difficult to find. The mechanics can sometimes be a bit too simplistic.

However, I'm giving this game a solid recommendation based not only on atmosphere and some inspired mechanics, but also on Shadowshifters (the folks who made the game in case you didn't notice). They have been very active on the Steam forum for the game and have been very receptive and open to the community. I've reported a few bugs that were fixed within days. You are going to be very hard pressed to find that kind of open ear or dedication in any game company, big or small. Don't forget that this game only came out of early release status about a month and a half prior to writing this, so rough edges are still being smoothed and they're still expanding on the game and fleshing out further details. Some people have complained of low-quality textures and some rough sound effects. I thought so too when I first got this game, but before I even got through it I would fire it up and notice that I must've grabbed a patch, because they were steadily getting fixed. Better textures, better sound, bugfixes, adjustments to mechanics, and more have been pouring in for some time now and it doens't look like they'll stop while there are things left to do. The surprising rate at which they've been fixing bits and pieces (and hinted at some further expansion of the game overall) along with enthusiastic community interaction gives me great hope for Shadowshifters and the games they can make in the future. As such, I solidly recommend The Huntsman. It's good for some crawling skin and there's a great deal of further promise in the game and in the company who made it.

Snag this game, turn out the lights, and have some fun. You might find yourself stopping any noisy, ticking clocks nearby when you're through for the night.

Huntsman: The Orphanage is one of those very rare games that has an interesting idea for a game, and it works pretty well. It is one of those games that whilst you can watch people play it, the only way to really get the full experience of the game is to play it yourself.

I also like how they take the sound of a ticking clock and make it something that you will learn to fear. I have lost count the amount of times I thought I heard it in game and breathed a sigh of relief when I realised it was the clock on my wall that I heard, Which to me shows how atmospheric the game is if they can make me get scared by my own clock. The stories that each of the characters have to tell also add to the games atmosphere. I honestly believe that these stories wouldn't look out of place in a movie as it is just so well told by each of the people that they got to play the characters in the game.

And they have gotten a Ripley's Believe It or Not master to create the maze that the Huntsman calls home. And you will get lost in it, I have many times, I usually end up visiting the same grave 3 or 4 times as I look for the Orphan I am trying to free. Not to mention nearly jumping out of my skin as I turned a corner and there was the Huntsman making his way towards me in the maze.

The Huntsman himself is a creature I have learned to love and fear. He is based on a Huntsman spider: Only he is a lot bigger and his prey is you.This is a rare gem of a game, with so many games out there going for the jump scare tactic. It is a nice refreshing change to play something that goes for atmospheric horror and really gives me the creeps whenever I play it. And for that, I thank ShadowShifters for giving me this game to play and look forward to whatever they decide to do next.

The main problem with this game is that its just plain boring. Very little happens and when it does you feel cheated. The main selling points were the story and the use of your phone but neither of these seem compelling or used in a great way. What seem like random voices and videos on your phone feel so out of place and uninteresting. You can see what the developers where trying to do but the idea was executed extremely poorly which is a huge shame. Cannot recommend.

As far as indie horror games go, this one could be worse. You walk the ill-lit halls and environs of the unfortunately-named Grimhaven Orphanage with naught but your cellphone flashlight and your graspin' hand to guide you. The graphics are pretty sharp and the atmosphere is nice and lonely... until the ghost messages start up. Every time you get near an important item or location, some kid will pop onto your phone and whisper spooky clues to you. They're little FMV clips of (I assume) the developer's friends that carry absolutely no weight and blow the solitary feel of the game all to hell.

But even ignoring the clips, exploring the grounds gets tedious fast. Huntsman purports to be a "non-linear" game, which basically means they made huge, wide open fields of brush to get lost in, and put about a billion little useless siderooms in the orphanage. You have to find 12 mcguffins around the place but without knowing what they are (the kids are pretty damn vague sometimes) they can be hard to pick out of the piles of copy/pasted detritus infesting the rooms. You can also only carry one at a time, so if you put one down, you better take note of where you left it. I had no idea what to DO with them either, at least until I read up on the goal on the game's store page.

The titular Huntsman is actually pretty cool looking, and his introduction was appropriately creepy, but I never actually saw him again after that. Of course, I just wandered around with a toy frog in hand for about 10 minutes and gave up, so I might not have given him the chance. Honestly, you shouldn't either.

It's rare to find a horror game that has no blood & violence but the prob with this game is that I don't like it. (I'm going to post my thoughts on why I don't like it).

Cons:

1. It does a terrible job at making you nervous since the game's antagonist moves way too slow & does a lame life sapping technique if you look at him (Doesn't that sound familiar?)

2. Your main character moves slow and your always tapping Shift all the time just trying to run (The running in that game feels like fast walking)

3. The lack of names on the graves makes it annoying & time wasting

4. The lack of exploration sucks too because the orphanage is too small in my opinion which has a short basement, 2 short floors & that annoying hedge maze which takes forever to figure out

5. Finding Treasure and setting them on a certain grave kinda reminds me of a matching game except a more boring version of it

Pros:

1. Really good voice acting on each of the characters

2. The story is decent

Overall I personally think this game is terrible but some people might like a creepypasta based game with no blood or violence but don't bother wasting $15 on this game (I'm sorry about the negative review but I just didn't feel it).