Many of the negative reviews of this game thus far have been mainly focused on the gameplay; however, the gameplay isn’t my problem with My Eyes Deceive.

While it is indeed true that this game is monotonous and drab, that was the point. It was done to enhance the narrative. However, the narrative is the problem. The rest of this review will, of course, contain spoilers.

First, I’d like to start with the bad ending. This was the one I had gotten second, and the one that has what is likely the most known part of this game. I will admit, what the main character says is shocking—how could it not be? But it left a bad taste in my mouth. It simply ends after that. I had played the good ending before the bad, which I will get to, and found it underwhelming. So, when I realized there was nothing beyond the shock, only credits, I was surprised. It’s loud; it’s in your face, but it doesn’t really say anything about this incredibly touchy subject.

Now, the good ending. While it may be a comparatively good ending, it doesn’t leave the player with much hope. I would say it's definitely the better ending narratively out of the two, but it still has that same problem. You get some answers to questions you probably could’ve filled in the gaps on, you walk out the door, see the world for the first time, and then it ends. Nothing followed that. A much more low-key yet similar situation to that of the bad ending. You get the shock of realizing the main character has never seen the sun before, and then it simply ends. Once again, no message could be found at the end. And I know there is a message that comes with the credits themselves, but that isn’t part of the game—only the creator’s words.

Both of these feel like empty resolutions. We went through the horror, and now what? This would be bad on its own, but these empty resolutions are tied to the incredibly heavy subject of SA. When I completed the game, I got the sense that it was simply using the subject as something scary to point at without really giving it much thought—as if it were simply some kind of monster to puppet about. However, these are simply my thoughts, and I mean no ill-will to the creator.

I would like to point out, though, that this game has quite a few similarities to an older game called Presentable Liberty. A similar premise of being trapped in a room without much to keep you company—both even talk about some disease in the outside world, though in My Eyes Decieve’s case, that disease is fake. The single game on the iPad is reminiscent of the games on the Game Boy in Presentable Liberty. My point in bringing this up is the fact that Presentable Liberty was a rather popular YouTuber game for a time, attracting millions of views and gaining coverage from the likes of Markiplier. And, would you know it, My Eyes Deceive gets picked up by Markiplier as well and gets millions of views.

I don’t care if the developer took inspiration from or even attempted to imitate Presentable Liberty. What matters more is the fact that this game seems almost designed to be Tuberbait that would get millions of views when it handles the subject matter it deals with rather poorly, in my opinion. In the end, the gameplay doesn’t say much, nor do the endings. All we get is a scenario that is very real for a multitude of people and has been seemingly engineered to attract views.

I don’t think that My Eyes Deceive is a good game, but that doesn’t matter to me. What I think is worse is that My Eyes Deceive isn’t a good story.

The topic of CSA, especially when tied to such a dark storyline, should always be handled with care. Even the name of the achievement for the bad ending left a horrible taste in my mouth.

As a CSA survivor, the worst thing you could possibly tell a CSA survivor is that it's their fault. The steam achievement for the bad end basically blames the player for trusting. It's a ridiculously fumbled ending that really only plays for shock value and furthermore blames the player, who is acting as the little girl, for ending up stuck in that situation. How the devs thought that was a good idea is honestly beyond me.

As for the good ending, I recognize and understand that it's limited by the scope of the game, but if it's truly a good ending, simply having her open the gate and see some still images of police officers or strangers on the street would have more than sufficed. We would at least know that it's a truly good ending. She escapes, sees a person, fade to white and have a small dialogue.

All in all, this topic was not handled with the care it should have been. The bad ending is pure shock value, and the good ending simply doesn't have any actual resolution in order to be called a good ending. I should have listened to the content warning. At least I wouldn't have seen my trauma mishandled to high heaven.

Game is about 3 minutes of actual something, some 30 minutes of waiting and walking around nowhere (can't even say it revolutionized the walking sim genre as I had so many other examples of games that pad for time in this manner that it didn't even feel new. Who'd imagine I'd miss having to walk in a walking sim). There's no twist, as the plot is obvious 1 minute in, and it's taken nowhere. There's no statement or stance, just "child abuse is real. Were you a victim? Must have been tough. Bye."

If posting a PSA on Twitter isn't artistic enough, perhaps writing a short poem would have been a better way to express this than making a game this boring. If the theme is too important for the game to be gamey, should it be made into a game? If it's important that it's a game, shouldn't it invoke any feeling other than boredom? If you have something you need to say through artistic output, shouldn't it be actually said, instead of just pointed at then credits roll?

I can't understand why this was made, and even if I ignore that, I can't understand why it was made in the way it was made. It's about as deep as a popup ad with the words CHILD ABUSE! and a creepy shadow with long fingers around it.

Overall: Instead of spending 40 minutes here, read the Fritzl case wikipedia page and you'll learn more about the horrors of mankind and truly be affected by nightmare-ish visions. And hopefully the pain that enters your eyes through reading it grows into an empathy to help others and denounce crimes you may witness one day.

This just... Doesn't work for me. It didn't scare me, it didn't compel me, it made me feel pretty much nothing. I could already gather what the game was going to be about from the first day and from there it just felt like a slog. It doesn't handle any of the topics it uses in a way that's respectful, and ends up feeling like every other story that tries to cheaply use CSA to get a response from the viewer. I'm sure the intentions were genuine, but it just comes off as exploitative; not even in a way that's particularly new or fresh either.

The game itself plays like Wertpol's Presentable Liberty, but it has much less of the charm that made Presentable Liberty what it was. It follows the same general routine format, tries to use waiting to build tension, attempts an unexpected and tragic ending, even has an almost direct copy of one of the Presentable Liberty minigames. It's shorter but somehow feels more drawn out as well as, at times, completely boring, and there's much less richness in the environment and characters. Presentable Liberty has less "things" to do, but it has more fleshed out ideas. Time passing in that game feels intentional, makes you feel isolated and forces you to grow attached to the sparse interaction you receive. In this one, it never felt isolating or lonely. I just wanted to get to the next part. The nightmare sections also added nothing to the story or experience and felt like unnecessarily long detours.

I recommend (the also free) Presentable Liberty if you want a game that has a similar but more effectively used slow progression, and Lisa: The Painful for a game that handles themes of child abuse (♥♥♥♥♥♥ or otherwise) better. There's definitely potential here and I hope the dev keeps making games, because I do believe in their ability to make something compelling. I just didn't care for this one.

>Be me
>Find free game
>Look inside
>oh no

This game was OK. Personally the game just felt like empty shock value the game ending just left me saying what the hell did I just play. Now don't get me wrong I love disturbing media but this just felt like empty shock value to be disturbing. It doesn’t really say anything about this incredibly touchy subject if your making a game like this at least be careful on how you present it because the subject of this game is very serious and should be taken seriously.

I know this game attempts to handle a serious topic but I think it does so in a vapid, unplayable way.

It tells a disgusting story about a man doing horrible, vile things to his daughter and attempts to turn it into content while somehow also being as pedantic as possible about how "if you went through something like this, you're soooo sooo strong!"

As a player, I did not feel like it gave any clear message besides recounting events that are likely based on a real life traumatic story. There's no meaning to take away, no morals, no growth of character, nothing but the suffering of the little girl and the player along with her, regardless of the choice you choose to make.

If you're looking for a game with repetitive tasks set in a single low poly area with random jump scares, you could do much, much better. There are hundreds of games out there like this and almost none of them are exploitative like this.

maybe i just dont like a lot of "horror games" but the twist was just for like a 5 minute shock value, which is BASICALLY just CSA, and thats it, didn't really enjoy it. this incredibly overused graphic style kinda makes me mad too. the writing is very shallow, straightforward and honestly just kinda bad. if a game is about something this important, i feel like it should either be made a bit better or not be made into a game at all. you get what you paid for. nothing. if you're really interested just go and research about the fritzl case, or maybe just watch a speedrun, there's like 30 minutes of being bored and trying to find out what to do. maybe even play presentable liberty.

(Spoilers discussed, but do not recommend playing anyway. So read first.)

It's just disgusting shock value. I can't figure out the goal nor the target audience here, at least not good ones. The subject matter isn't handled well at all. Real life situations are way more complicated than simply "trust and lose, don't and win." It almost feels victim blame-y. "Why didn't you just leave? Why didn't you disobey?" That's a horrible thing to imply. It's never that easy.

Even the good ending is empty. There's no real lesson. She's out, and she's burning her eyes by staring at the sun, because why not? Maybe something more researched would do, even if it was just dialogue over a blank screen. The dad totally disappearing and leaving the whole house open was unrealistic, but past that, then what? I would've loved to learn ACTUAL awareness about how this works. How would the police handle this? How would a stranger handle this? How would she, a young girl who's been lied to her entire life, handle a world she thinks is full of monsters? How would the dad react (assuming he comes back from his sudden, unexplained disappearance)? Something that makes you think about the real consequences and complications of these situations, and maybe makes you wonder how you would react and help someone in this situation. If only we got that.

If it is true that this game is inspired by a true case, then I double up on my "it's disgusting" comment. Someone out there now has to live with their horrible experience immortalized in a video game for iPad babies to react to.

I'm disappointed. I was told that I had a very good game to look forward to. Instead, it was all shallow shock value with no lessons behind it. I think the developers have a lot of potential (people complain about the game-play loop, but it fits this type of game. If anything, being unable to lower the distortion effects for accessibility is my only complaint there), but maybe hire some critical thinkers/sensitivity readers to check the narrative before handling a topic as heavy as this one.

Game crashed at a spooky maze, there are no saves and it took 30 minutes to get there. I will not be replaying.