Review pixelcrypt 2/5 · Dec 7, 2025
Decent puzzles but crappy store-bought art
The Initiate is a first person escape room puzzle game that takes place in one large suburban house. You play as a recruit that lost their memory and have to complete a series of puzzles to earn your freedom - and choose if you want to join the shadowy society that set it up. The gameplay is decent enough, but …
The Initiate is a first person escape room puzzle game that takes place in one large suburban house. You play as a recruit that lost their memory and have to complete a series of puzzles to earn your freedom - and choose if you want to join the shadowy society that set it up. The gameplay is decent enough, but it commits a number of cardinal sins that make this one pretty hard to recommend.
Number one and the most glaring - I am fairly confident the entire game is one large store asset. There is just too many generic house decorations, repeated books and paintings and vases to be truly built specifically for this game. The layout of the house and the way it is decorated just screams generic Unity asset.
Which leads into a gameplay issue - pixel hunting. You have to find a ton of small items that are easy to miss, so you spend a ton of time sifting through these generic assets (that you begin to recognize from other rooms). It pads out the game length and just makes for a cloyingly frustrating experience.
The parts that ARE designed by the developers specifically are all solid. The puzzle logic is good and rarely frustrating. I just wish they had hand-crafted everything within the map (or at least the bulk of it). The voice over the loud speakers is well-acted and I liked the setup for the game. Hopefully the sequel will improve on everything mentioned here.