Recent reviews by derebelizer

I liked the game story-wise and the levels are very linear, but also very impressively built.
The core of the game's story is very much like the movie "Shutter Island"
I would recommend it, but if your graphics card doesn't have raytracing the game has some issues that only show a lot of blurred textures even for important pickup items sometimes. I had to watch a YT video to see what the document I picked up actually shows as it was a recipe for something I had to create.
So in its current state I can only recommend it if you have a raytracing card. As raytracing is actually an option in the game I currently cannot recommend it. It should work in both cases, albeit with slightly worse graphics of course.

I liked the atmosphere and the gameplay. I reached one of the three endings. A few jumpscares but a really good game performance for a solo developer.
Only thing that's not good are so many invisible walls. Don't do that - simply put something there that doesn't allow the user to go there logically. In your game it would have been easy to use fences instead of invisible walls - that would have prevented this and made it logical.

Creepy game - in contrast to Fears to Fathoms which I could not play because of motion sickness. However, with this game I did not have any motion sickness issues in contrast which I want to thank the developer very much for!
What I first thought to be a red herring was none, so this could be better. It's a small game from a small developer which was very cheap and for me well worth the price.

Still this could have been better:
1. Many places you cannot go to for no visible reason except the developer telling you by using invisible walls. Would have been better to put some logical restraints here
2. Adding signs with people's names at the houses would be good
3. In the later part where you have to hurry instead of not being able to knock at any door it would have been better to simply have something like knocking and then "nobody's there" or similar.
4. I did not see that I could hide below the bed, so there should be some more obvious hint.

At the end I still liked because of the combination of price and small developer.

Extremst lineares Spiel, man muss im Tutorial alles genau so machen wie vorgeschrieben. Problem: er möchte ein Nickerchen machen, wenn ich das aber versuche sagt er, es wäre nicht die richtige Zeit. Also komme ich hier nicht weiter.
So kaufe ich die Vollversion garantiert nicht.

I really wanted to like this game and looked forward to playing the others but after around 10 minutes I got a bit of cold sweat and dizzyness, not because of the game content, but obviously because something didn't quite work for my brain. A simply way to prevent motion sickness would be to have an option to display a white dot and to configure mouse sensitivity and even turn off the VHS effect.
Unfortunately, I can't change my brain so I'll have to give this whole series a pass.

I really liked this game, here is my list of pros and cons:

pro:
- good graphics
- captivating storyline
- very well built manor with lots of rooms with different interior and still fitting perfectly together
- the puzzles are acceptable and not too hard - I don't like games where I have to get my wife to solve the puzzzles! 😂

cons:
- only a single sound effect in the background whereever you are in the house, i.e. it's not very atmospheric when it comes to sound (i muted the music completely) - different background sounds in different areas would have been great!
- you have a map which is helpful to find out where you are, but it doesn't allow you to jump from room to room - that's why the games takes so long. Certain items in the rooms are pointed out on the map, but whether the rooms have already been unlocked is not shown, unfortunately
- translation: regarding the German translation: it's sometimes not consistent, e.g. the storage room has a sign that says "Storage Room" in English, but on the map it's translates as "Lagerung", i.e. "Storage" - then when you get the key in English the key is named "Storage Room Key", but in German it's an "old rusty key" - what the heck?

All in all I still liked the game.

I really liked this game as I like atmospheric games in general. The story unwraps slowly and I was only stuck twice for a short amount of time without knowing where to go next - which means that it is very well done and you don't waste time walking around cluelessly.
Also, the jump scares are not just stuffed in there, but follow the story very well and are logical.
The graphics are amazing and very detailed and the sound effects and music create a perfect atmosphere.

I've been searching for a long time for a game to play in coop mode with friends and as I like building and crafting it is a perfect fit. I normally don't play games like these but this one got me hooked - played for more than 33 hours!
I played ARK for around 5 minutes (until I died). The same with RUST.

Pros:
- good graphics
- no game-breaking bugs discovered yet
- you can play as PvE or PvP and in co-op mode
- except for a few times the framerate is ok
- no permadeath and you can continue playing where you left off when you die (at least in an online game even if playing alone)
- you can build your own power grid spanning the world to power machines etc. and connect power generators anywhere in the grid which is really cool

Cons:
- LAN game does not seem to work, but an online game is possible and works well
- drones say way too much but if you disable the dialog volume in the game settings they are muted
- a few bugs
- there could be more different types of animals in the game

I hope I don't run into any bugs like lost savegames or erupting volcanoes I read about here. But even then and even if I built so much already - it's early access so I except things to break. Would be horrific anyway if I'd had to start from scratch ;)

I did not play in single player mode but in multiplayer mode ("Host Game" -> "Online") which is still only for me and friends that join me but from what I read there's no difference currently between single player mode and multiplayer mode playing alone. The good thing playing alone in multiplayer mode is that friends can join now and then but it only works when you as the host have the game running. So I'm not playing on a specific server where everybody can join. I didn't test that.

I have posted a detailed review at http://www.walkingsimulator.games/caligo.html but here are quickly the pros and cons I see:

Pro
- Many different scenes: from very colourful to dark
- So beautiful sometimes that you can't stop taking pictures
- Dialogs can be skipped
- Theatrical music

con
- Not as immersive as it could be
- No choices except one at the end, no interactivity except picking up drawings
- Completely linear
- No dot in the middle to prevent motion sickness (had minor problems with it)
- Invisible walls in many places, especially in the fantasy part
- Unnerving auto-panning camera
- Sometimes you're moved unexpectedly
- Bug: fell off the electric chair area - had to restart the game as this resulted in an endless fall
- Only around 1-1.5 hours of gameplay

All in all the idea is good but it fails to succeed. It looks great but the subconscious connection just didn't happen for me unlike in similar games like The Stanley Parable or The Beginner's Guide. I played a game - I didn't experience something in my life (which was different in Dear Esther).

I really like this game which might be visible based on the hours I've played it. I have written an extensive review at https://www.walkingsimulator.games/the-painscreek-killings.html but here is a quick overview of the pros and cons:

Pros:
- captivating story with a lot of well-designed and believable characters
- intensive atmosphere (if you are the type of gamer who is able to dive deep into such games)
- deep story with many characters with different motivations
- feels as if you are there in person investigating - no unnatural or illogical actions to be taken
- a lot of secrets
- beautiful weather, you hear birds, the wind in the trees
- semi non-linear gameplay

Cons:
- most of the time you really walk around from place to place (but it's not as annoying as it sounds)
- there is only one music per scene/room/building
- no controller support (though I initially wanted to use XPadder I got used to the keyboard controls quickly)
- low framerate in certain situations (when there is a huge complex to be rendered like at the entrance to the mansion)
- extremely slow load times in several places - it takes sometimes minutes switching between the different areas - but it should be a lot faster using an SSD (which I didn't try)
- no translations into other languages (yet)

I like it more than Everyone's Gone To The Rapture and FireWatch (though the latter was as captivating to me as this game). If you like narrative exploration games you should give it a try.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the game and if there will be another game from EQ studios I'll buy it blindly.