Nightmare of Decay (2022)

You ever play Silent Hill? How about Resident Evil? Well, that means you've played Nightmare of Decay. I don't mean to be snarky, this game just really wears its influences on its sleeve (I'm pretty sure the Cultist babbling is straight up lifted from RE4). It almost feels like a "de-make" of Resident Evil 7.

The game plays in first person, and you'll spend most of your time making your way from room to room, fighting simple enemies, collecting keys, and solving puzzles. For the most part, the game is pretty easy, except for the Cultist enemies that show up occasionally. They are crack shots that will no scope you from across the room and deal insane damage. They don't appear very often, but I learned to fear them.

This game really feels like a first effort at a bigger game, and the ending could hint at some more down the road. I'd like to see this expanded, maybe with a bit more of its own identity, not relying quite so much on nods to more popular survival horror series.

But I found myself enjoying it as strange as it is. I beat it in about 2.5 hours, so it definitely doesn't overstay its welcome. With Halloween coming up, it might be a fun night...mare. Of decay.

Despite the generally positive reviews I saw, I had somewhat low expectations for this game, primarily because it—almost certainly intentionally—looks like ass to provoke that PS1 era look. I say this is intentional because the game is in many ways an obvious tribute to the original Resident Evil games, even including some clear reference shots like the classic zombie shot from Resident Evil (1996). Further, the game is only estimated to take about 2 hours to play, so I wasn't expecting anything in-depth. Lastly, I wasn't sure the first-person would work for me as I really enjoy the 3rd person, fixed camera angle style of those original titles and the ability to nail headshots I expected would feel too much like a different kind of game altogether. However, all these expectations in place, I was overall rather impressed with this indie title, despite its simplicity and brevity.

I would've gone with "Chainsaw Dude," but whatever.

The gameplay is really simplified with some of the most basic of UI. Things feel mildly jank, but are surprisingly very responsive. It evokes the look of a very old game, but the feel is very different as your inputs and load times are actually quite snappy. This means the clunkiness mostly ends at the point of being an aesthetic, whereas the gameplay is fairly smooth and intuitive. The ability to pop off headshots (which is not very hard in this game) does make it feel a little more action-based than the games it takes inspiration from but I found the difficulty was in a good spot, making managing and conserving your resources feel like an important part of the game that involved tough choices, without it being overly punishing and soft-locking you when you run out of ammo. Though that may depend on the person, I often felt like I just skirted by the boss fights (which there are surprisingly quite a few of considering how short the game is) and if I'd just conserved a little less ammo, I might have been screwed. That's a good feeling for my experience as it felt I was always on the edge of failure, but I could definitely see it being really irritating if you simply don't have the ammo for the bosses. Similar to the PS1 Resident Evil games, simply not having enough ammo can make some bosses fairly unwinnable and in this game I found dodging to be near impossible for much time on some of the bosses, meaning some powerful weapons and ammo were needed.

Wait, why are there skeletons?

Overall, the game does pretty well what it's setting out to do. The story is extremely light and is mostly just "you're in a nightmare" so that it can justify the brief adventure through undead horrors and puzzles. All of this is done pretty well and given it's part of the point of the game, I didn't find the obvious references to other games took me out of it much. In addition to Resident Evil (1996), there are some obvious callbacks to Resident Evil 4 with cultists and a couple shooting gallery mini-games that supply excellent rewards. There are also a few blatant Silent Hill 2 cameos, one of which I found pretty problematic, but I expected was included without much thought. Otherwise, the game is quite good at being what it is and I don't see a lot of improvements that would fit within the confines of its formula. I'd find it hard to give such a short basic game 5 stars as it just doesn't give me quite as much as a longer, more involved title might, but this game is about as good as it could be considering the style.

Update: 12/2024

Bumped this up a star, it’s just so fun and creative, many nice touches. It’s just pure survival horror gameplay and I’m a sucker for it. Hoping one day for a sequel - but I can’t find the dev anywhere online. Play it!!!

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This game is RE 1 stripped to its barest elements. It has low-poly models, low-res textures, and clunky combat. But it manages to have lots of atmosphere, some decent tension and scares, and a pretty fun gameplay loop.

The game really ramps up in difficulty near the end - it kinda blindsided me. But it was a good challenge. Compared to something like Them and Us, another RE clone, this game has its own identity and innocent charm.