I didn't finish the game, so take this review with a grain of salt.

Is this outright bad? No, there's some good points (the soviet perspective and iconography is nice, atmosphere is ok) but overall I think the bad ones overwheight the positive ones. This is one of those neo-classical point and click adventures from the small revival movement of the 00's that tried to capture the feeling of the classic adventures. This is a first person "slide show" with 360º photos in the vein of Myst III or Scratches (which I really enjoyed) and thats cool, the issue here lies more in visuals, setting and some mechanics.

The setting is an underground soviet bunker, that's nice but... man it's all grey, brown and dark, very repetitive and it feels all the same with absolutely no charm to it. I understand that's what bunkers are but, I'm sorry... it's all very unappealing. And then there's the gameplay, extremely centered on pixelhunting with some objects being highlighted by the cursor when you hover over it but then inconsistently some essential ones are pickable without highlighting. The consequence is you'll be clicking on every single thing and loose a huge ammount of time and patience.

I might sound too negative here, but like I said it's not all downright bad, there's some enjoyment here, especially if you're into the subject matter. This is one of those games where there should be a mid option between thumbs up or down.

just not good

Took me 6 years to be arsed to beat it, i wish i hadn't...

Bad game.

My rating 0/10, not recommended.

I wouldn't recommend this game unless you really like puzzle game because the story is lame, ending is trash I wouldn't even call it a horror game some puzzles are ok others really annoying

Bunker Fever.

Story:

You play as an unnamed man. You wake up in a Soviet Bunker, not really sure how you even got there, alarms are blaring and you've seemingly been left alone there, but as you explore the bunker while trying to find a way out you learn about it's disturbing secrets and weirdly you might not be the only person there.

The story of 1953 - KGB unleashed is rather disappointing. It starts off pretty strong with an intriguing set up and some of the notes deliver some creepy backstory for the bunker, but very quickly the game just sort of fizzles out and it's way before you reach the ending moments. Also there's a really good chunk of notes to find and a good amount of them are incredibly wordy, so much so that it might take you longer to read the notes than to finish the game.

Graphics:

Visually the bunker looks incredibly creepy. It feels rundown and when you reach each room it definitely feels like something messed up happened here and each room feels visually distinct from one another which really helps build a good location for you to explore.

However there's a major issue with the design of the game and that is how everything from items, where you can go etc blends into the environment which makes hunting for items turn into a massive pixel hunt. I had to look up a guide not for the puzzles, but for the item locations since I had no idea where to look for them.

Audio:

For the most part the audio design is very minor. I'll begin with the voice acting, which is surprisingly decent. The main character chimes in to talk about his current situation and while sometimes his tone is a bit calmer than he should be, but overall it's decent.

The other sound effects however are pretty bad. I did enjoy the ambience which helped with the creepy atmosphere of the game, but sadly there's quite a lot of items you interact with that are just plainly annoying and emit some ringing noises that will make your ears bleed.

Gameplay:

1953 - KGB Unleashed is a point and click adventure game where you collect items and use them to solve puzzles so you can escape the bunker. I love me a good point and click adventure game and I was always intrigued by this one in particular, however the game isn't a good adventure game.

Puzzles here are just not good. They range from absurdly easy to a bit more complex and annoying to deal with, however the before mentioned pixel hunt is where the true difficulty of the game is found. Most of the time you'll be looking for the items instead of actually doing them as it does not make it clear what you can actually interact with.

I also mentioned the story notes which are incredibly wordy, well usually they will have the solution to certain puzzles in the notes so if you just randomly decide not to read a particular note, that might costs you because you just passed a solution and you didn't even know it.

The way you move around is also very annoying. you have to click and drag and click on a very specific spot to go to where you want to. Similar to a game like MYST, but in that game at least you can guide yourself with arrows and not just click around on spots until you actually start moving.

Verdict:

1953 - KGB Unleashed is incredibly mediocre. It has a great set up and a really good atmosphere, but it's a very obnoxious adventure game to play and nothing about it's story or puzzles makes the experience worth putting up with. If you really want to check it out, then do it on a massive discount only.

Final Rating:
5/10

Pros:
+ Atmosphere is really good
+ Some of the lore is pretty decent and quite disturbing
+ Pretty good voice acting

Cons:
- Puzzles are absolutely awful
- Some of the puzzle solutions are hidden among very wordy notes
- Every item blends into the background which makes the entire game a pixel hunt
- Movement is incredibly annoying

If you liked this review please consider joining https://steamcommunity.com/groups/completingthebacklog and https://steamcommunity.com/groups/ImperialReviews

What to say…
It had potential… if it wasn’t so dark.
I don’t mean dark as in macabre, I mean dark as in things are hidden in the darkest spots on the screen.
Half of the puzzles have zero direction, and one of them looks like it was changed halfway through production but left how it was.
I do love the idea, but I wasn’t a fan of the ‘Voice’ being quieter than the ambient sounds while talking to you. No option of subtitles hammered that one in.
I’m conflicted about recommending it as it became very tedious at times and seemed to try a little hard at other times.

I understand this is an older game and have also put that into consideration.

Soviet Mist. Point and click pixel hunting. There are plenty of free/cheap puzzle games on steam that are more worthy of your time.

stupid moon logic waffling around. wandering through three rooms for over an hour because you can't find the exit and then having to read in the walkthrough that you have to enter a certain frequency on the radio to make a secret door open in a (closed) closet is just not fun!

Pros:

• Top-notch music
  
• Awesome graphics
  
• Immersive and creepy atmosphere
  
• Story (mostly) well-done
  
• Reading old and mysterious documents

Cons:

• Mechanics could be more user-friendly
  
• Slightly boring ending

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A creepy atmospheric game that fits right in with the time period in history I'm currently studying. I've always loved escape room games, and I loved the first-person POV, great graphics, and realism of this one except for two things:

1. You aren't free to move around, just turn, and in dark rooms it's really easy to miss a clue.
   
2. There's no hints to what you might need in the first place, and the items are either really small or hard to find, so I was basically reduced to clicking all over the screen right off the bat. Cue the excessive, accidental switching between scenes when I hit a corner that I didn't know was meant for that purpose.

Unfortunately, this does take away from the game, despite the mystery/escape element and the dark atmosphere.

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Final Edit (spoilers below):

Finished the game with the help of a walkthrough, which obviously isn't the most ideal way to play. But with the tedious point-and-click out of the way, I really enjoyed unraveling the mystery behind what happened in the bunker where MC was trapped. Some of the rooms were creepier than others, which tingled my horror-lover nerves, and the experience of reading the old documents on the facility's experiments was quite interesting (full disclosure, I'm a sucker for old papers and books).

However, the ending was just a tad anticlimactic. I was hoping to learn Chernogoryev had escaped, and MC's life history after his own escape was very ordinary. It would've been nice if he had gone on to infiltrate and investigate other research operations, or if anyone else with special abilities had turned up elsewhere. If nothing else, I would've liked a plot twist after hearing about MC's future: that he was actually dead in the present day and communicating from beyond the grave, with the same mechanism used in the research facility, and that we had actually gone through some of his memories that he chose to share.