Sigh… I had a lot of hope for this one, keeping a close eye for a good sale. I had played the demo, and while I knew it was very goofy looking (just look at the main character design), I thought it would either be 1) a solid retro style survival horror with fun mechanics or 2) a so-bad-it’s-good kitschy b-movie type game that would be good for a laugh.

Unfortunately, it’s neither.

Before I get into the myriad of frustrating bugs, the underlying gameplay loop is just awful. It’s technically a classic survival horror game, but boiled down so much until there’s nothing left. You are just running through a brightly lit monotonous lab setting, shooting goofy looking zombies with broken gunplay mechanics. The level design is completely linear, yet you are constantly asked to backtrack for fetch quests with zero shortcuts opening up. The only thing breaking this routine up are very occasional awfully designed puzzles. Nowhere in this routine is any charm, fun, challenge, etc.- just pure monotony,

Now the bugs. On controller, you’re told the right shoulder button reloads, but in reality it’s the left shoulder. But wait, thats also the grenade button? Yep, they’re not mixed around, they’re the same. So grenades are useless unless you never want to reload again.

The aiming is totally broken. Never does the gun actually shoot right in the center of your aim, it’s seemingly random. Either up high or below, depending on the time of day.

Want to open the menu and check the objective? Be prepared to get caught trying to get back to the game. I counted 6 times where the inputs would just break and I spent 5 minutes button mashing to return to the game and out of the UI.

The map is also very broken. For some reason, panning with the d-pad doesn’t go up/down/left/right, but instead NW/NE/SW/SE. You can’t rotate the 3d map, but things will be overlapping so you can’t really get a sense of the layout.

I could go on, but what’s the point. This was by far the worst survival horror game I played this year, and there are many many incredible ones. Conscript, Among Ashes, Crow Country, Connection, SH2R, The Fear Business, Fear the Spotlight… the only reason I managed to get to the end of this was by accidentally leaving it on while walking the dog and ending up at the 2.1 hour mark. I wish there was something redeeming about it, but it really feels like the dev didn’t play their own game.

I pray it’s just their first game, and an exercise in learning, but it feels insulting to charge $15 for this. And I am truly the most gracious player when it comes to jankiness. I could have gotten over all the mechanical issues if the game rewarded me with fun puzzles, exciting combat, interesting exploration, atmosphere - literally anything. But this is kinda just a black hole of a game.