Grave: Preview

Doesn’t’ look that grave

Grave.  Grave is spooky as hell.  Grave is currently available as a very early demo awaiting Steam greenlight for early release.  An atmospheric horror game, Grave will lull you into rest, then throw you for a loop.  The game is developed independently by Broken Window Studios.  This is their first venture into full development, and went the crowdfunding way to get Grave started.

Set near a seemingly abandoned mining town, Grave will challenge you to keep your wits.  With a solid visual style, you will slowly traverse through the desert and mines to explore your surroundings.  Though it starts out bright and hazy, things quickly change for the worse.  While exploring an abandoned house, I found my first set of matches, leaving the mostly empty desert behind as I entered.  As I came back to door of the house, the environment around me had shifted and there were giant half destroyed structures everywhere.  These images quickly dissipated like a mirage.  These visual cues are sometimes the scariest part of Grave.

Explore the abandoned building? Sure, why could go wrong?  I mean what… what could go wrong?

The sound  here is on equal footing with the visuals.  The music and environmental effects have you spinning around often to make sure there isn’t something behind you.  When the first real monster arrives, the horrible shriek had me nearly toss my headphones.  The combination of sound and visual effects make for a very harrowing journey through the dilapidated buildings.

This being a very early demo, there isn’t too much to see and do yet.  You are given a few tools to help fend off the horrors.  A flashlight is probably your most useful tool.  There is no combat in Grave, but light is used to fend off the enemies that appear in the town.  Trying to stay in the light as monsters randomly spawn around you is quite frightening.  The initial visual queue of all the light suddenly shrinking away outside generally has you scrambling for your matches, or flashlight.

Pretty sure that wasn’t here before

As someone who doesn’t generally play horror games.  Though this short demo lacks any real guidance, I found it was pretty easy to figure out what I needed to do.  Not that it made it any easier to get done mind you.  The procedurally generated maps ensure a different play through each time.  I Am almost looking forward to the full release giving me plenty of both subtle and extreme jump scares.

Grave is currently scheduled for release in Q4 of 2015, for PC, Xbox One and PS4.

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For more previews, check out Kingdom Come: Deliverance

 

The Forest, Early Access Review

Welcome to The Forest, a survival horror game from indie developer Endnight Games Ltd. The Forest puts in control of a survivor of a plane crash which lands on a mysterious island. Your first vision as you awaken in the wreck is that of some strange-looking man pulling your son from the wreckage and fading quickly into the distance. Your goal, survive and find your son.

The first few hours of The Forest generally consist of the usual survival game tropes. Find food, make fire and chop down a heck of a lot of trees. You can build various structures and traps, as well as farms with the components you find. Building larger structures like a cabin or tree house can take quite a long time as they require a great deal of resources to pull off.

As you explore the island, you begin to notice strange camps, and markers, and may even encounter some of the locals. A band of odd, cannibalistic mutants. Sometimes these mutants are hostile and attack you, other times they simply gather around your camp and watch you. Either way they are slightly disturbing, and nearly impossible to kill if you choose to try. They also demonstrate the key factor that earns The Forest its Early Access title. They are very buggy.

Check out this gameplay courtesy of TheNeoNerd

The game is interesting in its storyline, survive, find clues, then find your son. Unfortunately the random and consistent bugs and glitches deter from many of these activities. Beyond immortal mutants, it is easy to drop through the earth into an abyss, or get stuck underwater where no water exists.

Built with the Unity engine, the visuals are solid, but not spectacular. Environments are rich and full of detail, but character models are too smooth and shiny, and make them look like they are made of plastic. The fauna on the island is also limited to mostly rabbits and lizards. None pose a threat, and are simply added as easy sources of food for you to consume.

In its current early state The Forest is not as enjoyable as its premise would make it out to be. Though building and exploring can sometimes be fun and rewarding, the constant glitches and lack of a full story leave much for the developers to work on. Recently adding a multiplayer mode, and some bug fixes the developers at EndNight Games LTD. are trying to do just that. I hope to revisit The Forest when it is fully released to see how those improvements have affect the gameplay.

Overall 5.5/10