Short answer; absolute garbage. Almost so bad that it compels you to see how deep the rabbit hole of poor design goes. The game developer is clearly the Tommy Wiseau of the video gaming industry!

Not nearly as bad as a lot of the other reviews are making it out to be. Yes, it's jank. Yes, it's a Resident Evil clone. But it doesn't feel like a chore to play and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun.

The AI voice acting is my only criticism since it makes the characters feel and sound very soulless.

I enjoy supporting indie projects and I'm choosing to write this review because of that.

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UPDATE | 6/23/2024 - It looks like Selene's Unbearable Night received a massive content update, concluding the game's story and has included actual voice acting alongside it. I only played for a couple minutes, but the character voices are undoubtedly so much better now.

Learned about this game from GMan's video and bought it on the Halloween sale. I found it to be surprisingly decent for a zero budget survival horror game made by one person. Let's be clear, it is NOWHERE as good as games like "Nightmare of Decay", "Alisa", or any of Puppet Combo's games. However, I found it much better made than games like the "Outbreak" or "Ebola" series.

Graphics are pretty standard Unreal Engine 4 indie game fare, and gameplay uses a pretty standard generic RE4-clone style survival horror package familiar from games like Outbreak or Dead Frontier 2. However, the inclusion of dodge and parry mechanics does elevate the combat quite a bit. There are some decent Resident Evil style puzzles.

The opening is a bit slow-paced, and it's a good 20 minutes or so of exploration and simple puzzles before you get into combat (with the game so far being a total length of about an hour and a half).

I didn't recognize any of the character or monster models from other games in this space, so if they're store bought models they're at least not ones that everyone else is using.

Cutscenes are actually decently animated; when you play a lot of these zero budget games you realize how much effort it takes to make even basic cutscenes and how most devs don't bother. Voices are all text-to-speech; this doesn't bother me but it's very subjective. Personally I think pure text with no voice works with "retro" style games or 2D RPGs, but for games with modern graphics I find it more immersion breaking than text-to-speech voices (although of course real voice acting, even at a somewhat amateur level, would be better).

The plot is nothing special but it's at least coherent and (so far) internally consistent, unlike some other indie games.

The game has standard Unity engine ultra-wide support, as well as an invert mouse option, but lacks rebindable keys or an FOV slider. The inclusion of an inverted mouse option shows at least some effort was made, at least.

Overall, it is very much a zero budget indie game made by one person. However, I found it surprisingly solid for a game in that particular space, so I'm giving it a thumbs up, even though it's still very much an amusing oddity rather than a hidden treasure, and probably isn't for people who aren't into weird little indie games.

How the ♥♥♥♥ many hits with a sword ya think it takes to kill a man?. more than 35 apparently, and player takes 4 hits and dies. . ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ridiculous. The game is too long. Nobody wants to fight a"Boss" 80 times. Fix your parameters to a semirealistic level. SLOWWWWW character response in the sword fight. Could be cool but it sucks. HOW LONG IS THE GAME REALLY

I was hoping that this game would improve, but now it seems the developer is moving onto another project. So it's time for a review.

The first part of the game is fun, exploring the house solving puzzles. The story telling with the cut scenes are annoying and too long, but were the game really falls flat is the combat. The combat needs A LOT OF WORK. It's no were near finished.

The stealth part of the game is a joke and too many instant deaths. Seems like if you don't do things at the exact right time, with no indication of what you should do, you will be executed. Too many times your guessing what should I do here?

The needs a lot more polished before it's finished. Alas this will never happen now, as the developer has moved on to their next project, which I will not be wish listing based on this game.

Time to uninstall another abandoned unfinished game.

Overall a very bearable experience. I don't know what Selene was complaining about.

Better than star wars outlaws. 10 bucks all day.

TL;DR: It's a thumbs up for being an actual complete project from a solo dev. It's barely above my imaginary line of "thumbs up". But I really believe it can only go up from here, I'll be following the dev with great interest.

Mind you, I'm pretty much the core audience for this type of game. I play every survival horror and horror themed game I can put my hands on.
That being said, onto the review.


It looks nice.
It plays from start to finish without any game breaking issue.
It's actually fun, wasn't a chore to finish it, I was entertained the entire time.

• Game has very floaty controls, I assume this is though to solve... many 3D indies have the same issue, but it simply doesn't feel right.
  
• Game doesn't have basic graphics or "advanced graphics settings settings
  
• Single overral graphics bar
  
• No FPS lock of any kind (my game was going to 200FPS+ at all times, maybe is forced V-sync on, haven't tested, but there's no V-Sync option)
  
• No support for anything not 16:9 (changing resolution with other aspect rations break the whole game with a zoom that makes it impossible to revert)
  
• No fullscreen/window/borderless selector
  
• Colision issues on corners of environment, especially in chapter 5, I guess (swamp)
  
• Rendering glitches (white parts, blinking textures)
  
• Draw distance is terrible even in max settings (like 15 meters, tops indoors) Outside (swamp) can be like 2 meters to get the full detail of something.

• The game is too easy. Really easy. Easy enought that I barely got hit the whole game, died to a few cheap traps, but never in normal combat.
  
• Almost any fight can be solved by running backwards and shooting. Dodging exists but it's mostly useless
  
• Cheap jumpscares everywhere. If you suspect that the game can place an enemy in a corner or behind you, 9/10 times, it's there.
  
• Puzzles: See something? Note it, because you'll be using in the next 10 minutes. It's baby level easy.
  
• Annoying storm siren goes on way too long in multiple parts of the game. Scary in the first 3 minutes, then it's annoying.
  
• While the whole game is really easy, the final boss is laughably bad, I'll leave here my note after beating it, exactly as I've written:
  "Oh man, that was the final boss, lmao. He never stood a chance. Again, zero hits taken. Just hold S, aim and shoot. Killed with a pistol because I had too much ammo for it. ANd got an achievement for defeating it in less than 2 min. lol."

The music is pretty awesome, it's just the way that is used is that is incredibly funny to me.

Situation 1
"Ok, so we have an horror game, and now the main character will be locked in an arena with an enemy with a chainsaw, which track do we use?"
"Discount 80's Metallica, of course!"

Situation 2
"We have a badass demon-like creature pursuing the main character, what music do we use?"
"The clearly cyberpunk inspired one"

I really don't get it, lol.



I have no idea. At some point the game seems to reveal the villains reasoning, and I say "seems to" because Selene literally says so, but I don't really got it.
I'll keep it spoiler free, but I've paid attention and I really can't explain a lot.
Selene is there because? And people that appear that are not villains are there because? and what they do is? and the villain is doing everything to? (ok, I know WHAT he's trying to do, I don't know WHY)
Yeah.

Selene's Unbearable Night. I don't know if this title is supposed to be ironic or not. Overall, the game was fairly manageable until it crashed right before I was about to complete level 4, causing me to lose all my progress since there was no auto-save feature or proper manual save option available. At least, there was an option for me to hop any level without completing any of the previous ones but that meant it was the same as starting a new game so I lost all the ammo and equipment I gained from the other level which is a bummer. Not wanting to risk starting over from level 4 in case it crashes again skip over to to level 5.

Level 5 wasn't too bad up until the chainsaw bossfight which was where the game started to get unbearable, all due I couldn't find a way to evade their attacks, I tried sprinting past them, I try dodging them, and even trying to damage them as much as possible can before they can get near to me, no matter what I do they somewhat always suck me on grab hold (even where I feel like I wasn't that close to them) and instance kill me which was frustrating to endure multiple times. So after maybe 30 tries, I gave up and skipped over to level 5 but lord and behold the same chainsaw boss was back and this time in a compact room, so after 4 tries I knew I wasn't putting much of a dent in them so I skip over to the last level hoping I could gain something of value from this game.

At first, I didn't come into this with high expectations, if it weren't for the boss fight that forced me to skip over to a different level because of how mechanically unfair it felt I would have given this game more praise. It surprises me in the first half with being able to jump scare me 3 times in the first hour. All of the puzzles I encountered are so easy and don't make sense as to why they are puzzles in the first place but I would cut the developer some slack for it as this is one of the few games they made. The graphic and environmental design are surprisingly decent. Yay, the voice acting and dialogues aren't great, the character motivations aren't clear and coincide, the animations are buggy and wocky, and the plot doesn't make logical sense. Like I said, I came here knowing some of the stand-out flaws, I just wanted to play some cheesy horror game with some corny dialogue trope. Hopefully, the developer embraced the dialogue being stupidly funny in their next game, I could do with more of that. Embrace the flaws but make it playable like making the bosses fairer. I don't have an issue with the other ones. I just suffer too much from that chainsaw one.

My only request is for the developer to take these issues I have into account. I would be happy to give their next game a go, to relieve the experience of a non-high profile horror "indie" game that is 'bearable' similar to what I’ve almost gained from here.

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Edited on 28/11/2024 (week after the original review):

Guess what? The developer responded to my problem by fixing the chainsaw bossfight a week after I posted a review where I didn't recommend the game.

Here are the changes the developer kindly fixed proof from the patch link:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2503690/view/4474984202298722583?l=english

But to simplify what they written is they made bossfight slower and easy to evade their attack for people to not feel cheated by the encounter of getting instance kill having long range to do that making them more fairer. The developer also seems to add another fix where if you start a new save on a level (except level 1) you have access to more ammo for your weapons to make it easier to fight enemies where you would normally start with limited resources than before. For that, I acknowledge the developer for listening to the concerns players had with their games and sorting them out. I didn't recommend this game before but now I do as the main issue I have with this game has been resolved.

The enemy AI are still dumb as a brick, and the setting and story are still all over the place, but for the limited experience the developer has, I give it a past as this is still a fun, corny game not to be taken seriously and are still trying their best to duplicate a horror experience we all love and play. The puzzles are solid, the jumpscare gets me everytime and the environment doe a good job of creating an isolated impression. Hopefully, they will continue learning from this experience, and I wish them well to continue on their craftmanship even if it will have some hiccups now and then, as long as they are willing to listen to their audience communicate their audience about it and can see them progressing far in this industry.

A group of women lay waste to a Satanic cult, a drug cartel and the paranormal using nothing but wits, bandages and the power of the 2nd amendment.