izigame.me

I want to try and be as concise as possible, which means I'll be basically the opposite of the game. I also want people to keep in mind that I've done 94% of all achievements, so I'm not just talking out of my ass.
The first big issue with the project is actually the genre. I first expected it to be a proper puzzle game with some horror elements, but then after playing the first chapter, I expected it to be more horror-oriented with some light puzzle elements. Instead, what's really here is a story-focused walking simulator. And my first question is: why? They created far more issues for their project doing so, because it puts the spotlight on the very mediocre elements of the game: story, dialogue, voice acting, and world-building; GrimTalin and Darkania should've focused instead on their strengths, which are the visuals and to a lesser extent the puzzles.
Because of the genre choice, instead of their peers being Amnesia and Penumbra, they're competing for your time against games like Visage, What Remains of Edith Finch and The Forgotten City. Those games perfectly weave visual storytelling, beautiful environments and fantastic atmosphere. You want to actively explore the world, you get engaged by the story they're trying to tell. Instead, Last Days of Lazarus just talks at you. These emotionless clay people will look at you and drone on about the mediocre story, and it poisons any of the good environments.
The big problem, and the perfect encapsulation of everything that is wrong with the project, is actually Lazarus himself. Everything in the game hinges on Lazarus as a character, and he SUCKS. His voice actor is awful, making Lazarus a man who sees the dead body of his sister, her head caved in and jaw unhinged, having been decomposing for a week and sounds like his flight got cancelled. His dialogue is almost like he's disassociated, as if he's part of an improv class and doesn't really know what to do.
The story itself is very mediocre. It's almost hilarious how...simplistic it is? I'd say childish, but it's more something that a teenager would cook up. The type of middle school logic where M Night Shyamalan is their favourite director because they think twists make things cool. Not only are most of them almost totally unnecessary, but also generally don't even serve the plot that much and are simply there with the intention to shock. The reason for this is that in a mystery game, the mystery has to be interesting enough to incentivise you to play, and the mystery here...sucks. The main mystery in this is, by the dev's own admission, what is/has happened to Lyudmila, your sister. But you discover everything you need to know halfway through the game. So you're then dragged around the rest of the game, the writer desperately trying to maintain your attention by adding superfluous twists that, at the end, amount to nothing.
In the end, the answer is the same as that of basically every biblical story. If you know the 'bad guy' in every biblical story, you know the bad guy here. It explains every mystery in the game, and not in an interesting way. What's funny is that it adds all this magic and technology to the world - even adding these gold Star Wars droids that come from nowhere and make no sense - but that more interesting bit actually gets sidelined for the awful main plot. The big flaw here is that it doesn't take any advice from proper horror writing. I mean even H P Lovecraft understood the concept that less is more.
The attempt at a story again reminded me of Amnesia, but I still did not understand why it didn't actually use any of the actual gameplay elements of Amnesia. There's no sense of urgency, no imminent threat, there's no world storytelling. It's the surface-level similarities. The ACTUAL content of the story uses the previously established walking-simulator methods. You get audio logs, stilted dialogue, and poorly directed cutscenes. The cutscenes in particular are overabundant and UNSKIPPABLE, meaning you're sitting there sometimes with a cutscene, a minute of gameplay, which is then followed by another cutscene. The only boon is that there's a chapter select, so you don't have to sit through ALL the cutscenes of the game.
I also want to make the point that I loathe the voice acting, which was absolutely not helped by the poor dialogue. I'm not even sure if English is their native language, because my first instinct was to believe it isn't, but Steam lists English as the only language for the game. If this genuinely is an English-only game, I am truly gobsmacked by the writing and choice of VA's. Lazarus and Zovok are undoubtedly the worst, the female voice actors are a little better, Ivana prooobably being the best? Father Abraham wasn't that bad either.
The only positives for me were the visuals of the environments (especially the orphanage), and maaaybe the puzzles? The puzzles are iffy, because some of them involve the devs almost deliberately making objects hard to find, all to hide a collectable. Most of the game can be played by doing very little, which means you focus EVEN MORE on the awful writing and voice acting. On being hard to find, an example is them putting a piece of gold on a vein of gold, but you're expected to know you can pick it up, despite the fact they...have the same texture? Another is in the first chapter where you're supposed to interact with a lamp. This lamp being in an already lit room.
Overall, I see this as not worth the AU$20. If you want to get it on sale, knock yourself out, but I'd suggest trying their free game 'The Unluckiest Man' first, that'd probably give you a clearer view of the style. For me, the 5 hours just felt like I 80% frustration and confusion at what I was looking at, and a waste of the talent who did the visuals. Not including the models though, got Lazarus looks like a golem.