Asylum Review (Stale Veggies)
Play this game if you love a good book.
________________________
Before Completion (6.5 Hours)
_________________________
Enthralling horror experience. The puzzles are fun with an average difficulty. The atmosphere is phenomenal. The point and click style really makes you feel helpless. It’s not scary in a shit your pants scary it’s more a prolonged butt clenching on the end of your seat, like a very scary book. There have been some bugs but the game is so good it feels like they’re nonexistent. This game is perfect for those who love reading a late night horror story or those who sit through a 5 hour long scary video essay. This is the fine dining of horror.
__________________________
After Completing (16 Hours)
(Possible Minor Spoilers)
__________________________
After completing this game, I still recommend it.
I have some criticisms though. The bugs are the number one issue at the moment. I do NOT recommend this game if you are playing this game on MacOS as the frequent crashes make the game unplayable, but the dev is working actively to fix this issue. There are random rendering bugs and infrequent frame drops, however they are negligible.
As for the story, it is incredibly linear following common tropes. I enjoyed the classic lovecraftian story, but it did feel a little bit rushed at the end. I would have liked for certain plot points to have been developed more as the switch from scary asylum to lovecraftian horror felt a little jarring.
I also would have liked more secrets. Through my play through I missed nothing save for a secret achievement and two documents. I really did enjoy reading all of the documents though. Many of the characters felt very developed even though I never met them just through the documents. This story telling method felt was successful at immersing me into the story. I have seen criticisms that the notes felt haphazardly placed. This is a somewhat valid criticism, but the story telling of this game was very book like so it was not an issue to me.
The puzzles some times felt like fetch quests where you would have to go through 20 doors to bring an item from one room to another. Combined with the game sometimes crashing when opening doors, it made me feel like I belonged in an asylum. However, these puzzle gripes are minor as they usually are used seamlessly to progress the story. Sometimes it felt like puzzles would solve themselves.
By far the best part of this game is the atmosphere. One of the parts that I loved most was the tension of moving around new areas. Having to turn around corners always felt tense as if I was expecting something to be there. The textures, models, and lighting are fantastic. They all fit great within the games art direction and complement the writing wonderfully.
The sound design is great. I would have liked there to be random sounds that made you want to turn around like "what was that?!?" but that is splitting hairs. The music always felt eerie. In one of the areas themes, timpanies enter in the song and it made the area feel way less safe.
Despite my criticisms of this game, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the asylum. It was able to scratch the itch that only a good book can. Arguably, some of the quirks of this game add to the charm. Some points it really feels like it was made 30 years ago. As the game continues to get polished up I highly recommend picking this one up and completing it in a weekend with a few cups of hot tea.
________________________
Personal Rating 77/100
________________________
Story: 7.8/10
Sound: 8.8/10
Puzzles: 7/10
Atmosphere 9.5/10
Bugginess: 5/10 (Played on MacOS... so experiences may vary)