Lone Survivor (2012)

Lone Survivor is heavily inspired by the classic Silent Hill games and a bit by the Twin Peaks. I've got to admit, it is surprisingly scary and atmospheric for a 2D game. Music is absolutely fantastic and the visual style is nice for a lower budget game. Gameplay is mostly okay, though 2D navigation in a 3D world can be annoyingly confusing, so I had to constantly check with the map to figure out where I have just turned. But what ruined the game for me was the save system. You can only save in the starting area and if you die, you lose your progress from that moment. Teleports to the saving spot are scattered all over the world, but they're one-way only, so to continue your progress after saving you have to go back to the place you had teleported from. Naturally, I tried not to use every single teleport I came across just not to have to go the same routes again and again, but, ironically, I ended up spending even more time replaying those areas numerous times because of dying. At one point I had to start over for the sixth or seventh time and I decided that's it for me, so I've dropped the game for good. From what I've read, I was in the middle of the game.

P.S. Just to clarify, it's not really a 1-star review, but there's no option here to review a game without giving it a rating. However, it is kind of fair to give something the lowest score based on the fact that you didn't bother to finish it.

Amazing sound and music design. Great atmosphere. Fun gameplay. Very scary. It reminded me of Silent Hill.

Unfortunately I couldn't finish it. Attempting to navigate a 3D world on a 2D plane was hard for me. It didn't help that the game wouldn't allow me to look at the map at will, I could only see see it at certain points in the game (which is puzzling especially since there is a dedicated map keybinding). Even with a screenshot of the maps on a secondary screen it was still hard to tell where I was at. Ultimately I was spending too much time looking at maps trying to decipher where I was at instead of enjoying the game. I did try a run without looking at maps at all, but I spent too much time constantly backtracking because I had no mental image of where I was. It just turned into me trying every door over and over.

A lack of gamepad support is also strange, especially since there are no way to rebind keys. This makes for a very frustrating control experience. Luckily I was able to setup JoyToKey to map my gamepad to the required keybindings, but not everyone will want to do this.

It would also be nice if there was a way to reload your last save faster. The only option I found was to quit out of the game and relaunch (or die). A "Quit to Title Screen..." addition to the ESC menu would fix this.