Okay, so rating this is a little hard. This is a very low-budget itch.io game by a small team of like 2 people or something. I played one of their other games and it was so dumb, I found it hilarious and saw that this seemed to be their main game and planned to see if I'd have a similar experience. Given the game's low ambitions and the fact it's one of the very few Pinoy-developed games I've found, I'm tempted to not rate it quite so harshly as I might other games, but I still have a hard time really finding any merits to talk about. It wasn't a miserable experience, but there isn't much I can praise about it either.

Nyctophobia has us exploring an abandoned mental asylum, literally because the main character thought that might be a fun way to spend Christmas since she didn't have plans anyway (this is plainly stated in the intro in almost those exact words). You then go there and face jumpscares and solve basic item puzzles that mostly require wandering around very slowly throughout the asylum until you find the thing to click on. Sometimes there's very little indication of what you should be doing, meaning you just have to traverse the whole map clicking on things, which is the only reason this game takes more than maybe 30 minutes. The occasional spooky happenings while you were exploring were to be the main appeal of the game, but while they weren't implemented especially well, they were decent at least I suppose, if reliant on jumpscares.

The story is not very well done. You spend the game reading notes about some past horrible incident but the progression is almost comically rushed. Even aside from the game's premise of the character just going on this ill-planned adventure on a total whim, at times it seemed notes and moments of inner monologue were just rushing things along with little coherence. The relatively predictable twist might have landed better with a more intentioned pacing, though I realize that may be harder to accomplish in a 1-hour game. The ending sequence however had me laughing out loud with its rushed explanation that is phrased like a fifth grader trying to tell a scary story they're clearly making up as they speak.

Okay, so the positives. Uhhh, well the game looks alright considering its budget I suppose. There was also a song that played during a flashback sequence that was kind of lit...unfortunately it wasn't looped and that segment took a long time of wandering around that was easily the most dull part of the game. I guess I've played games that were a more miserable experience, I can say that much. But I can't think of much affirmative reason to recommend Nyctophobia.