One Eye Open

Despite being the other horror author of the comp, the idea of zombies and dead things and creepy crawlies is something I cannot handle because it keeps me up at night with worry, so it was with great trepidation that I started this one.

But I have got to say that this thing blew me away. Tapping into the psychics research craze of the 70's to create a horror just worked really well, and the surrealism of the environment with the combination of dead bodies and demonic creatures just created this completely otherworldly place where shit was going as wrong as it could possibly go. I enjoyed how things changed without you (rarely anything game-necessary), and I felt that the puzzles were awesome:(Spoiler) using a demonic washing machine to eat red goo in your suit, amazingly random and perfectly hinted so that it seemed sensible when it needed to happen.

I haven't finished the game as of yet at 1,000 moves and 6 hours, and I am a bit stuck, but I can feel like I'm so very close, and just needed to take a break.

There have been a few bugs (and apologies, I didn't transcript), one that seemed to leave me trapped in the autopsy room for way more turns than I can tell should have happened, but where I feel like I'm really losing out is witnessing people die - am I supposed to figure out a way to save them during their death scene? or by winning the game, does that fix it so that their deaths never happened? Since I haven't gotten to an ending yet, I can't really tell.

I do want to say that I love the concentrate mechanic, and how it was hinted at in the very beginning. It would have been nice to know that I could concentrate about just a room from the very beginning, but that's just a minor detail. Also, I liked how instead of walking into walls, the parser would tell you directions you could be going instead. That is something I would love to borrow for my future games.

People have mentioned that the notes mechanic was nice how it combined things, and that WAS nice. But I found that if I forgot what a document was called like the one to the door combo, then I had trouble navigating back through my notes to find it, and couldn't find a verb even from the verb list that'd help me.

And finally, an odd compliment, I know, but the "About" section was very well-organized and professional-looking.