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Hegis' Grasp is a survival horror adventure game, where you will be impersonating a military officer tasked to investigate mysterious happenings and disappearences near the remote village of Hegis. Your platoon, lead by the General, goes in and sets up in the area, but not much after, strange and dangerous villagers start attacking everyone included you, so, cut off from your unit and alone in this dark place, you have to find your way through this madness and survive.

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General Gameplay
The gameplay of Hegis' Grasp is a very basic survival horror experience, with very limited exploration and approximated combat. There is a limited variety of healing items and weapons to find (Toolbox, Machete, Hatchet, Pitchfork, Torch, Tincture, Large Tincture, Adrenaline, Dynamite, Mauser Pistol, Double Barrel Shotgun, Magnum Revolver) and that's it, these are all the items in this entire game, just to say it.

The environment is littered with invisible barriers impeding exploration off the beaten path, the tasks required are always to find keys to unlock certain doors to find other keys to unlock the gate to proceed to the next chapter. One time you are tasked in finding something different, but that also involves finding keys. Basically, you will be doing two things: running around avoiding enemies, since killing them is useless because they resurrect in stronger mutated versions, or shooting the rare non-resurrecting enemy like wolves.

The game features a basic inventory management, a stamina system, and little else. there is no combat mechanics apart from keep staggering enemies until they die only to resurrect a bit later, there is Headshot as far as i can tell, but ammo is rare, the world is not very big and also empty, filled only with bushes and mostly empty ruined strucctures, some notes and items are randomly scattered around just to be taken, it really feels a world just put up hastily and without any attention to detail.

The atmosphere, which is a crucial part of the survival horror experience, is ruined by awful graphics and shaders, lens flares the size of tiny suns, a horrible white outline on distant objects (result of poorly made distance fog), ridiculous animations especially in third person, enemies going straight through walls, and really choppy and clunky cutscenes.


Combat System
Very basic melee 1-type of strike combat, and basic ranged combat point click and shoot. Hit detection is inaccurate at best, there is no weight or feel on melee impacts, and combat altogether is useless as you gain nothing from it and enemies will mostly kill you for nothing in return.

Choppy animations of both player and enemies, running away is far more efficent and less time consuming. There is no form of Stealth Takedowns or anything like that either. Really bad.


Content
This game has 3 chapters so far, as stated by the developers themselves in a post, the average player finishes this in 2-3 hours. Yes this game lasts 2-3 hours, if you take care to "explore", read the letters and such, i can safely assume i could rush through it get keys open everything real fast killing nobody and finish it in 30 minutes.

Balancing
Healing items are very underpowered compared to how much damage enemies do. Mutated enemy forms require tons of hits / ammo to kill, for no reward. Normal enemies are fair enough, just keep staggering them and you are fine until they die. Money ratio until you get to the Vendor is fine, you can buy some stuff you wont even need because after that there is a Boss and i suppose End of Chapter 3. I could not get past the boss because it bugged and even reloading could not fix it.

Challenge
Depends on how you approach it, just run around and nothing will ever touch you, if you choose to pointlessly fight all enemies, well you are in for some pain, but that is useless anyway. The game does not tell you what to do where to go and that is good, but the paths are so straight and so beaten with little places else to explore thanks to all the invisible walls, that you will find everything before or later just running around roads. The challenge rating fot his game is Low.

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Graphics
Absolutely terrible, they ruin the atmosphere completely, with disproportioned lens flares and reflections on metal, badly realized distance fog, pop-in of trees and elements is evident and unjustified for the graphics it delivers, textures and models are mostly low poly and mediocre, the only appreciable things are some texture on melee weapons and the dynamic shadows, which do little to save this disaster.

Sound
Sound design is mediocre aswell, some screams and ambient sounds are decent i give you that, but overall the sounds are really barely sufficent, guns dont pack a punch or echo through the ample forest, melee hits sound like a wet rag on the floor and really dont deliver what is expected, no sounds for going inside bushes or on different terrains.

Performance
Nothing bad to report, this could probably run on a toaster.

Stability
The game may require several tries to start up, it just doesnt work sometimes, only luck can tell when it will and when it won't start. Other than this, no other crashes or stability issues.

AI
Enemies are just programmed to follow you and attack, disengage when you are too distant, and that's it. Other than this there is no AI to speak of.

Quality of Life
Inventory does the job as controls do, but nothing more than barebones sufficent. It's alright.

Bugs / Issues
Countless. enemies going through walls and doors, hits not registering, enemies being in the same position oafter reloading a previous save, enemies spawning inside safe houses after loading a game, instantly killing the player, game breaking bug occurred with a boss fight in chapter 3 when after killing the boss, a rain of money sacks (???) erupted from the boss itself, degrading performance very badly and overflowing the map with thousands of money bags to the point of crashing the game. After that, reloading did not fix the boss which remained stuck even after realoding previous saves, thus breaking the game completely.

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Hegis' Grasp is a poorly made indie survival horror with severe lackings in multiple critical fields. The ridiculously low longevity, mixed with the mediocre (at best) craft it has been made with, make Hegis' Grasp an Early Access title at best with a lot of hard work ahread to just become acceptable.

Not to sound like every other Average Joe and Joette but Hegis' Grasp is one of those games that continues to make me wish there was a "neutral" rating button on Steam. I'm going to give this game a very light recommend. I've plowed through a decent chunk of ground in 2 nonstop hours of the game and I feel informed enough to review it. As a history and altered history buff, I love when survival horror games try to tackle older periods such as these. Unity assets about in this one but there's something oddly endearing about the atmosphere and setting. It reminds me of the colonial themed chapters of Gamecube's massively underrated Eternal Darkness along with the budget but solid 3rd person horror thrills of the also underrated Curse; The Eye of Isis, along with the isolation/wartime style vibes of a movie like Ravenous or even the lonely, downer shootfest that was Betrayer (another solid game well-worth playing)...Hegis' Grasp feels a bit influenced by all of these kinds of games and movies.

You play as journalist Henry Wood who goes to investigate otherworldly rumors in the small countryside villa of Hegis. You and your party stop your carriage at the locked gates of Hegis and it appears as if the place is deserted. Your compadres decide to hold down the fort as you load up gear from a RE-esque inventory box and try to find a way to penetrate the town's extensive outer gates and fencing. Before you even get back to your group you are besieged by villagers gone mad, poisonous tiny spiders (by far the most obnoxious enemy I've encountered in a game as of late), wolves, mutant infected (again stolen from RE 4's playbook) and other hostiles who stop at nothing to mow you down.

Right off the bat the experience is awkward but somehow interesting enough that I played for 2 interrupted hours, which is a rare occurence when taking a chance on a cheap, indie horror title. It's cool you can switch from between 3rd and first as fighting in third person is a penultimate pain in the rearend. I wanted to play in 3rd person initially but found myself getting stuck on half of the scenery, unable to shoot the broadside of 60 story tall and 60 story wide building and I could barely control Henry the Town Idiot's choppy sprint. I settled into first person and found that I stood a fighting chance through the first fairly frequent enemy encounters.

First person isn't smooth but the aiming works well enough that you can take down your foes with relative ease. They're not the brightest bulbs in the box but they do some vicious damage and can smash you fast if they get around you or on your flank. Sometimes the villagers and wolves get stuck in place and you can mop up the opposition with cheap hits. It actually does matter where you aim your weapons as I found head shots to do triple the damage on a lot of the varied beasties and since your melee weapons can break and ammo is scarce, it does pay off gaming that hit box. The combat is rather wonky like another forgotten Gamecube game that I'm reminded of called Geist but once you learn the quirks in the AI and hit detection you can face 'em down pretty good. Otherwise, you can run.

By far the most annoying feature is the lack of your character's ability to crouch which makes the itsy bitsy spider b*stards that you fight the most rotten yet ridiculously weak enemy in video game history. Get a pack of them on you and yourself in a corner and you'll die fast if you've been through a tough fight. They're simply reprehensible but overall I had a fun time with the combat. Also, the slimy, infected demons will suck your weapon supply dry as I figured out fast that even when you kill them, they get back up again. It doesn't appear you can SH stomp 'em or burn 'em like RE, so these guys are best to avoid or you'll have 2 or 3 of them on your tail for a whole map.

Speaking of combat and tools you get to fight with, Henry can keep 2 weapons on deck and more on backup . You can't dual wield but a simple button tap makes for fast, easy switching in the fight. So far I've found pistols, shotguns, machetes, hand axes, pitchforks and torches. Each weapon has range variances, a meter showing how much damage it can take before breaking and its own pros n' cons to weigh which I found refreshing. While not huge in their impact, they get the job done and are satisfying to use, especially the melee stuff. Mind numbingly irritatingly enough the torch is your best friend. Even with full gamma the nightfall sections are still sometimes PITCH BLACK. It's one of the game's worst offenses in presentation and combat. I found myself often switching quickly to the torch to see/line up with an enemy and then switching to a gun or axe and going bonkers. There are healing items, items to boost your adrenaline for fighting and stamina for running to help you, as well as save stations in the form of books and health stations where you can completely recover. I've died a few times because I can't friggen see, but I seem to be able to handle the challenges so far.

Gameplay revolves around exploring the town, fighting/fleeing to the next location, reading notes and tons of key fetching. The story's a bit generic but the notes are proofread well enough and have some entertainment value that's making me try to seek them out. I highly doubt I'll find everyone because the night sections are so damn disorienting, I constantly feel like I'm missing something, even though I try to explore as well as I can. There's also money to be had but I haven't found a merchant to buy anything off of and I'm just about to head into Chapter 4. Be warned that if you're looking for a brand new gameplay experience in the horror genre, this is not what you're after but those into the survival horror basics will feel at home.

Graphically the game is way out of date and somewhere between a PS1, PS2 or n64 game. Visuals aren't everything but there's environmental clipping aplenty, a decent amount of pop up when you use the beefier graphic settings (I gave these a shot because I have an Alienware), fairly bland textures and so/so characters. The monsters are lo-fi but kinda cool and it works for the setting, though animations leave something to be desired. Where the game makes up for it is with the locales which are cool and well-done. I'm a sucker for period horror. The atmosphere is there and because of the old rustic feeling of the game's major areas, the meat n' tater visuals are par. Sound is rather lousy but "ok enough." The voice acting seems to glitch and play at random; certain notes are delivered with speech and others you read yourself. As far as voice actors go, ouch. It's pretty bad, so I'm actually happy that not all of the notes are blurted out.

It may sound like I'm ragging the game pretty hard but there's still something oddly enjoyable here. The premise, place in time, haggard battles with archaic AI, old time weapon selection, classic survival horror homage and the ability to fight in 1st or 3rd person are what will make me play more of the game after this review. I highly doubt I'll hunt down all of the achievements due to the insane lighting issues (and the game's already frustrated me wildly a few times) but I'm enjoying the throwback feel and ambition here. It's way better than attempts such as say, Back in 1995, the abysmal Husk or Evil Dead's infuriating Hail to the King. There are way worse titles out there but there are many that are A LOT better. I won't return it though, look forward to finishing it and hope the developer continues to make small upgrades to Hegis while developing more titles in the future!

Update: After nearly finishing the game and enjoying several rounds of money grinding in survival mode I've raised the score. This is a fun but flawed throwback horror game. I'm quite enjoying my time with it.

7/10

Perfect
Great
Decent
Garbage

I didn't feel the horror in it but I did get caught off guard with some parts of the story and it gave me a decent jump scare.
The audio in survival mode cuts off a bit around the 5th wave so I'm guessing they never noticed it or simply its a work in progress to fix. The combat in this game is nothing to write home about but does have potiential, after seeing how people played the game before, they mainly relied on fire arms and didn't notice the insane range that melee weapons deliver. I feel they will take note of this and will hopefully tone down the amount of range on melee weapons to allow us to rely on ranged weapons for enemies like the soliders, butcher, and more. My story experience was limited to just 3 chapters as the 4th chapter did not load in correctly as of (May 22,2018), but overall it was pretty fun, I'm not entirely sure what the story is about but I'm sure it will be fleshed out in later chapters to come. The game has a lot of potiential with perhaps fixing of lighting to keep it consistant, i.e not having fog disappear in and out of the screen, and perhaps offer choices like a lantern on the hip for some fights that happen in the dark. These are just my thoughts and suggestions of the game but I am glad to have streamed this game and felt the work they put into it. I'll be following the development of the game and will be looking forward to next update. Thank you for reading.

I was really looking forward to this game, and was rather chuffed to find it among my Curator Connect offerings. If only I knew the disappointment that would follow...

The first thing you should know about this product is that it's far from "aesthetically pleasing". The graphics are bog-awful: excess murk aplenty, plants that contrast said murk with their stark whiteness (almost as if they've fallen into a parallel "negative" dimension), and barely-evocative environments as far as the eye can see.

The third-person mode is especially hideous to behold, as the character models and animations are far from spiffy. A fact that promptly led me to playing in first-person, which is a shame, as I was keen for the relative novelty of a contemporary survival horror game in third-person perspective. Still, I guess the devs at least had the good sense/common courtesy to offer us the choice to toggle between the two POVs...small mercies and all that...

Then there's the sound. Variable (though mostly crappy) voice-acting, ridiculous sound effects (galloping deer are a true terror to behold!), and no end of mysterious noises and eerie musical surges that seemed to signify...well, not much of anything, far as I could see. (Was an abandoned tent really supposed to unnerve my gun-toting bad-a*s of a character that much?!)

I was yet to see the worst of it, however, as I hadn't yet encountered any COMBAT. Oh dear. I died twice to a wolf - which refused to fall after multiple machete blows, and wasn't the slightest bit fazed by fire - and got thrown back over five minutes of gameplay each time for my troubles. (Hint to devs: don't make the first combat so hard that it makes the player want to rage-quit!) I did manage to defeat the dastardly doggo on my third attempt, but it still wasn't easy to kill, even with a rifle! They sure do breed 'em tough 'round these parts...

The story is also suitably silly. After seeing a mysterious figure run off, and reading a note he left behind in which he snickeringly anticipates "playing" with his newly-arrived "toy" (i.e. me), I for some strange reason thought that approaching a nearby house with the lights on was a safe bet. The good news, though, was that the inevitable psychos within were much, much easier to defeat than the wolf, even if they still looked kinda silly as they accosted me (but at least they made some effort to look like they were actually attacking; unlike the wolf, who staunchly kept his jaws clamped shut the entire time, but managed to maul me just the same).

Look, there's an absolute slew of other problems I could mention, but there really isn't much point. Nor do I suspect there will be much point to the updates that the devs are still performing in an attempt to save this misguided - if evidently well-intentioned - mess of a game. Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of expecting an Outlast 2.1 or Resident Evil 4.5, as you'll find nothing more than cheap "homage" here. I eventually gave up when not one but two keys I should have been carrying magically glitched their way out of my inventory, presumably rendering the chapter I was on unfinishable. Two-and-a-bit chapters, and roughly that many hours of my time, was quite enough by any stretch.

Move on, people...nothing to see here. Such a shame, too, as there's no denying the potential that was present. Better luck next time, devs.

Verdict: 4/10.

(PS If you enjoyed this review, feel free to check out my two Curator pages: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9284586-ReviewsJustfortheHELLofit/
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/10868048-Truly-Horrible-Horror-Games/?appid=398210
Cheers!)

// SPOILERS //

Postives:
The monsters are cool.
Interesting (but poorly made) last chapter.
Cool team at Oddbranch (for the most part)

Negatives:
- Poor level design, I found myself suffering from "Metroid Syndrome" - where you get confused and have no clue where to go.
- Absolutely atrocious animation, your character running in 3rd person is like watching a bad meme.
- The "horror" is non-existent, it consists of sudden sounds with awkward camera panning.
- Tons of bugs, survival mode stops at round 20 and leaves you stranded without a way to progress.
- Spider enemy type is not fun, simply annoying. Doesn't offer any dynamic besides "what the hell is biting me?" - causing you to waste bullets trying to shoot their small hit-box
- Huge plot holes, why the hell did the main character go to a supposedly haunted village? Why should we care about your buddys who dissapear? There's no development in the characters and the story relies entirely on them.
- Voice acting is admittedly garbage, with only a few exceptions. Totally immersion (if there was any) breaking.
- Cut-scenes are garbage, with the first encounter with the villagers resulting in a awkward axe grab that looks straight out of a poorly made SFM.
- Combat is hollow, shooting feels like literally nothing. And don't even get me started on melee combat...
- The "survival" aspect of the game is non-existent, if you've ever played a videogame in your life, you'll have no problem going through the story without using a health potion. Or running out of ammo, due to the fact that there's so much ammo that you spend the majority of the game walking around with 60 shotgun bullets and a 100 handgun bullets.
- Speaking of weapons, there's hardly any, there's a shotgun, two pistols, machine gun (it's 1896?!?), and like 5 different melee weapons. For a game that desperately needs a change in gunplay and decent variety, this is a huge miss-step.
- The endings (and all of the games) objectives are poorly communicated, and the "final boss" is incredibly weak for being the reason this village has gone mad.
- The bosses featured in this game simply walk around, if you stay away from them, you'll have no problem dumping bullets into their faces until they die without you taking damage.
- Speaking of the bosses, their designs are ridiculous, the first boss you encounter looks like Gibby from iCarly. Not really terrifying like a boss should be, but rather funny and stupid.
- There's two different endings, but you would never know this, as the game relies on a character (who you don't care about, and is portrayed to be crazy) telling you the right path. So you could spend 2 painful hours playing through this game just to complete the "cowards" end and die. Without knowing the correct path.
- Horrible graphics, I get that this isn't a AAA studio-produced game, but the graphics are pitiful, and frankly, an eyesore.
- It's made in Unity.
- Performance is incredibly bad, a GTX 1080 playing this at 4k gets 40 frames a second (similar performance to Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4k - which is leaps and bounds above this game graphically)
- Villagers repeat the same screaming sound effects and repeat thier voice-line "mister" over and over again.
- Lots of walking and back-tracking, I found myself checking my phone while I explored to pass the time.
- Sound is pretty awful - played using KRK Rokit 8's (studio speakers) and there was a lot of over-bassing and harsh highs.
- This game lacks any atmosphere that could have made the experience somewhat decent.
- Hundreds of invisible walls to hide their poor level design.

Overall rating:
1.0/10

TL;DR:
Sorely dissapointing game with unforgiveable bugs, terrible story, bad gunplay, and a lacking "survival" element. You're better off slamming your face into a plate of thumb-tacks than spending your time playing this, you'd have more fun. Don't believe any positive reviews, the game is garbage.

Atmospheric survival horror game.

Very fun indi game for sure. The story is developing nicely and for the most part the game play has very few bugs. I did run into an issue on my playthough where chaper 4 had an issue loading after i died, tried reloading didnt fix it. But on my second playthogh it played flawless. Very neat game and am exctied to see the content to come. 7/10

Hegis Grasp

First impressions of the game take’s me back to the good old spoopy days. This game has a direct and distinguished nod to the games of old, half-life 2, Left for Dead and in some aspects Resident evil. Hegis Grasp tells the tale of a journalist that goes on the hunt for a paranormal story, low and behold it goes wrong.

The narrative of the game is told through notes and books found throughout the game, they are written well and easily readable enabling the player to get what’s going on without having to read a short story or risk death in reading the note.

Graphically this game is solid, only encountered a couple glitches but the devs have mentioned these are removed, personally some features in the game don’t need to be included. The use of first person view is not required and I believe the game would be stronger in third person mode only, the sprinting in first person is incredibly clunky, it feels as is your in fact slower in FP then TP. I also found the controls for third person much simpler to use. Hit boxes for the enemies are off and in some cases a shotgun to the head doesn’t seem to stun them. This being said the environment and mediation is a positive. The sound effects and trigger points do alert the player then S**t is about to go down.

Atmosphere is great in the game. constant feeling of something is about to happen keeps the player on their toes, however once you know what’s getting you, there is a sense of 'MEH' and just run away. additional enemies’ types would be nice be it them leaping at you ort short bursts of running?

As an indie game I do like Hegis Grasp the context, visual and mechanical aspects of the game are solid and the game is good to play. I managed to complete the game in 3.1 hours. The game does have replay ability with the addition of survival mode.

Overall, I would recommend someone to play it. I would however wait until some of the bugs are fixed and then give it a go. I do believe the game isn’t finished and am excited to see the new content.

I had a good feeling about this game at first. It had a spooky atmosphere, I could tell that the devs certainly were inspired by game like Silent Hill and Resident Evil 4, since there are many similarities to them in the style and story.

Let's start with the basics:

Gameplay: It's pretty solid except for some big major flaws. It's an FPS/TPS game without crouching or jumping which are essentials in those types of games. In the end I had to stop playing it because I literally got stuck because I couldn't stop. Another flaw is that there are save points in many places so sometimes you have to replay a part over and over again before you advance. There are checkpoints at times, but usually they're just at the start of a chapter.
There aren't that many guns and they aren't very effective except for the shotgun, but ammo is so rare around at the beginning that you have to rely on meléeing the enemies all the time and it's not a bad thing since it's not that hard to kill them. A few good headshots and down they go... but within here lies a bit of a problem.

Enemies: Mostly it's crazed villagers that attack when they see you. There are also these plant monsters or something that look similar to the morphers from Dead Space. Not that it's a bad thing, they have their own very unique look to them and they were terrifying at first, but... a big but. When you kill a villager or any monster, they respawn back as a different version of the plant or whatever monster. And they just... keep... coming. After killing anything, about 30 seconds later, they will turn into the respawned monster and they keep doing that after every death, pretty much making only occasionally killable enemies, since they come back.
While they are all quite easy to kill, so are you. A few hits from the villagers, you're dead. Two hits from the plant-monsters, you're dead. It can get frustrating because having to use the melée weapons all the time, it's hard to hit them in the head and plant monsters have tons of health, so basically this semi-shooter action game because a run-away-from-everything game, unless it's a boss fight.

Sounds: Oh my goods the sounds. The sound design in the game is AWFUL. The monsters scream WAY too loud at the get-go and the design is all over the place. Even if the monster is right in front of you, in the headphones it sounded like they were coming from behind so it kept confusing me, thinking there was a monster behind me.
And the voice acting. What can I tell? They're amateurs at best. And it sounded like one of them had to record their lines on their own computer with a really low-quality microphone.
The music is nothing special to expect either. Pretty everything is royalty-free music.

Graphics: It's easy to tell that most of the graphics are preset items, but you can also see that they've done some work on them because most things look unique and help out on the atmosphere, but the constant rain in the game can make it run slow and the frame rate drops in many places, especially when you're streaming it.

Sadly, as I said in the beginning, it started interesting and strong, but with all the flaws of it, I can't recommend this game. It turns into a weird, yet somewhat interesting FPS-adventure with a curious backstory to it, but the sound flaws, the bad acting, the rare save points and battle system takes the fun away from the game.

I'm glad to have experienced the game, but I would not play it again unless they really fix the most fundamental issues with it. It shows they have a passion for this game and they are making more content for it, I only hope they fix the things I've mentioned. If they don't, I'll never play this game again.