I was extremely excited for Asylum, a game over a decade in the making. While Scratches, their previous game, wasn’t exactly one of my favorites - I didn’t ever finish it - everything about this title looked pretty great. A big spooky asylum to explore with puzzles and a great, almost resident evil 1 remake art style. And it was that to an extent… but it was much sparser in gameplay than I had hoped.

The entirety of the gameplay loop is exploring a newly accessible area, reading bits of lore, and solving puzzles. But the puzzles are extremely far and few between, usually only having 1 or 2 puzzles per “chapter”. There’s tons and tons of empty space, purely decorative or world building set design. So it just felt like a big missed opportunity - why spend years building this large asylum only to sprinkle a handful of puzzles and leave tons of empty space?

Besides that, the plot is a mixed bag. I liked the characters, but I didn’t find the heart of the story very interesting or original. The ending itself was a giant WTF wet fart, and felt like I had wasted my time investing in the game’s lore.

So ya, graphically and just the overall vibe - good. The writing - mixed bag. The gameplay - biggest issue. I wish they had really made it much more dense, but it feels like they wasted an opportunity and only made it just passable as a puzzle game- it’s borderline a walking sim visual novel.