izigame.me

"Blue Knees is behind, and will find what he has been looking for...for so lo-o-ong, all alo-o-one..."
One of the most impressively unusual openings to a horror game I've ever played: you're a teenage boy in a dishevelled and semi-darkened room, and your father is bashing on the door and crying and asking you what you've done. You find a box on the ground, and in it are two photos: one of a severed arm, and the other a severed leg! Pretty soon you're blubbering too, in befuddlement as much as anything else...
You can also rotate a TV around on a pedestal, and at first I wasn't sure why...before I realised it was the best source of light in the room: all the better to find a way to break through that crude wooden barricade to the side that promises a safer exit from the room, rather than via your distraught and potentially volatile-sounding dad...
A super-interesting mechanic, that crops up not much later: you can take photos with a polaroid camera, not just to create a flash by which you can see more by...but you can also shake the undeveloped picture you now have in your hand, to see what you've (actually) taken a photo of! (Took me a minute or two to work this latter out!!)
So far, so insanely immersive...and this game sure-as-Shinola doesn't hold your hand, at any given point of its progression...
There's definitely some obscure puzzles here. For example: the only hint you get that a particular door might open only after you take a photograph of it...are a few polaroids laying on the floor in front of it. Yeah, I know: didn't exactly clue me in straight away, either (you are rewarded, having said that, by an extremely nifty fresh polaroid in your hand, in which the door is suddenly covered with "CRIME SCENE - DO NOT ENTER" tape)! Get used to it, any-which-way: you're gonna need to think in this slightly oblique way throughout if you're gonna progress far without a Walkthrough (one of the best hints I can give: photograph things...a lot)!!
You'll also have to get used to searching around in places you've already been in the hopes that something has changed. Yep: it's one of those games, but not among the most obscure where that's concerned, 'cause there'll usually be something new that stands out (hopefully like a sore thumb)! But you'll still find yourself lost upon occasion, with nary a hint to what's next; though unlike, say, Visage, where you're trying to work stuff out while trying not to succumb to imminent, deadly madness - 'cause you keep running out of scarce, precious resources like matches! - you (mostly) get to take your time here.
That said: still prepare to all-but brown your trousers on a semi-regular basis, especially as the game progresses. This is a very smart game: not only with the brain-twisters, but with an almost intuitive knowledge of precisely when and how to scare you (suspense, red herrings and jump scares; all cleverly combined to remove most of the predictability that contemporary horror games suffer from)!
And holy frig-me-silly: THAT VIRGIN MARY STATUE...
Highly recommended; but do be prepared to bring a tiny bit of patience along for the ride. (And expect atmosphere and puzzles far more than constant danger...though there's a tiny bit of that, too, especially toward the end!)
Verdict: 9.5/10.
(PS If you enjoyed this review, feel free to check out my two Curator pages: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9284586-ReviewsJustfortheHELLofit/
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/10868048-Truly-Horrible-Horror-Games/?appid=398210
Cheers!)