ALTERITY EXPERIENCE
Maybe spoilers? I guess. Don’t read if you don’t wanna risk it!
I wanted to love you baby, I needed to love you but you took my heart and you smashed it. Defending yourself with a security app against alien invaders? mmmm. A well fleshed out house with a secret bunker? mmmmmmmmmmmmMMM. Discovering that your son has some kind of weird, loud, sensual relationship with glowing goo all over his room!? MMMMMMMM! Time/action based triggers required to progress the game…Well now you fucking lost me.
– Real player with 8.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Realistic Adventure Games.
Anton Cornwell lives with his family on their ranch in the agricultural district of northern California. Your neighbors have been reporting strange occurrences around the area for months. One day you awaken to find your crops affected by an unusual goo; the same goo that other farmers have reported tainting their harvest. That evening your family leaves to go to town for a while, so you decide to utilize the time to examine a sample of the weird substance you took and placed in your study earlier in the day. As you’re sitting at your desk examining the goo-covered corn, a blinding light suddenly shines through the French doors. At first you think it’s just your family returning. Just as fast as it appeared, the entity zips away into the night skies and you realize you are no longer alone.
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
Deadly Forest
the game is ok im just wondering why it has a kinda jaws du dum running through it. its free so give it a play. id give this game a ok .
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Realistic Adventure Games.
This game needs serious work! The atmosphere is quite ok, but the graphics are dull and uneventful. So is the time you spend playing - you sometimes see an undefined creature watching you, but it doesn’t really pose a thread.
The only thing you can do: run around and collect stuff. And sometimes the stuff you find can’t even be taken. The only deadly thing about this forest is dead by boredom.
If my own horror-novel becomes this boring, please shoot me…
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
HINGE VR
Hardware for this review: Valve Index, RTX 3080, i9, 64 GB RAM
The developers had a long hard road to go here and that is why there are some really bad reviews here.
As the game was released it really had flaws like lacking of optimization, dropping frames and crashes. Yes, even I was unable to play the game, but I sticked to it and gave them the chance to do better as the devs were always honest about the progress and the state of the game.
That said I just can tell you about HINGE performing on my system.
– Real player with 40.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Realistic Adventure Games.
CONTAINS SPOILERS!
Played on a 2019 gaming laptop with an i7-9750H processor, 16 GB of RAM and a nVidia GeForce RTX 2060 card. Windows 10. 38 hours of playtime. 3 full playthroughs.
The Good:
This is one of the few Lovecraftian VR games ever created, so, it definitely deserves a chance if you’re a Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos fan such as myself.
The game ran perfectly fine on my system. There were a few hiccups here and there when the game had to load a certain big area (Main Hall with Elevators) but it was probably due to my laptop not being a beast of a system. So, no complaints there whatsoever.
– Real player with 37.7 hrs in game
Possession 1881
A fairly good game.
Puzzles were generally easy, although a walk-through was required in one instance.
Game-play was unnecessarily let down by having to repeatedly adjust the screen contrast/brightness levels.
Game ending was poor - Too sudden.
– Real player with 17.5 hrs in game
Worthy addition to the ‘Escape the House’ genre. Game is lovingly crafted by a small development team with pleasing art and sound effects. Environments focus on a Victorian style house, with a past. The game is divided into separate rooms, each with stand alone puzzles to solve in order to exit to the next. There is no backtracking.
There is a high level back-story that is told through notes found throughout the house. You stumble upon several corpses but, for the most part, there are few horror elements.
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
The Hauntings
The Hauntings is a 1-4 player online co-op investigation and exorcism game. Using a wide range of paranormal investigation equipment your group must try and successfully discover the source of the haunting and proceed to remove the threat from the area!
Player Possession: Yup you read that right, you will be able to lose complete control of you character as the ghost uses your body to terrorize your companions.
Player Classes: Play as one of 5 unique playable character classes that have their own special abilities that will either help you discover the entity or play as one of 2 additional classes if you are feeling like the game is getting a bit too easy for you.
Player Progression System: Unlock new and better equipment as you level from 1-100 and once you hit max…do it all over again with the prestige system.
Voice Recognition: Not only will you be able to talk to the ghosts through some of the specialized equipment you can also trigger several random ghost events if you are not careful.
Ghost Exorcism: You don’t just stop at figuring out what the ghost type is, you get the joy of coming back to remove said ghost from the world….just make sure you fully identified the entity during the investigation or you might be in for a bad time.
Co-op Multiplayer: This game supports 1-4 player co-op that connects via Steam. So play with your friends or hop in a random server and meet some new investigators!
Jessika
A detective story in which you must dig through various files on your laptop to identify the reasons for Jessika’s suicide. If you’re willing to look past the interface issues, you’ll find yourself engaged in a relatable life story about racism.
You might believe this is just another game with full motion video that allows you to browse through a person’s life. And you’d be completely correct. FMV is alive and does provide a truly enjoyable experience when combined with strong gameplay; in other words, when you are not simply watching a movie. “Jessika” is a nice example of the genre, with both positive and negative aspects.
– Real player with 13.0 hrs in game
Don’t expect much. It’s not a mystery to solve.The game just unfolds itself in very expected ways. So this is not much of a puzzle or a mystery game. The game is not quite about what it claims to be about. I expected some psychological stuff. Nah. Also expected some mystery solving. Nah. Boy have I got baited into buying this game or what haha. Somewhat spoiler. Jessika don’t have any nudes on her computer for good reason. It’s the only bit that made most sense about this game in fact. So sorry you won’t be digging into the panty drawer of a hot german blonde instead you will be reading a very boring diary of a boring chick. Which is a bit realistic in a way haha. Anyway. Appreciate the effort buy the game this is a nice genre I believe it is a promising game style.
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Telling Lies
It pains me to write a negative review for this game. I loved Her Story for it’s story and Viva Seifert’s incredible performance, even though the game play (you are a cop working with the world’s worst video archiving software) was maddening.
Telling Lies has much of the same strengths and weaknesses. The cast is terrific and the writing gives them a lot of meaty, emotional moments to work with. The plot is diverting, with multiple characters and scenarios popping up that you’ll want to spend time disentangling everything.
– Real player with 42.0 hrs in game
Telling the truth about Telling lies
I have a problem and I’m not alone. The whole game industry has the same problem: how to tell stories with games? A good story has its own laws. Ask any writer other than your 8-year-old little sister. The story has a build, thought out ups and downs, twists and turns, beginnings and endings. The game follows different rules. The player has to be an active doer, not just a listener, reader or a watcher. The players’ choices and actions will have to have an impact on the game, otherwise the experience is flat. Unfortunately these two collide. Where a good story demands a pre-defined route to work, a good game wants freedom and choices. It’s like marrying a feminist to a chauvinist. It simply does not work or at least has not worked so far and it’s not from the lack of trying. Sam Barlow’s Telling lies is another effort to marry the unwanting partners.
– Real player with 19.3 hrs in game
3AM
Really good game I threw my mouse a load of times jumping!! If you enjoy horror and working things out this is the game for you… check it out!!!
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
If you like running around in a building doing puzzles go for it, if not its really bad
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Haven Moon
The short of it:
Haven Moon is a relaxing diversion into a visually pleasing world. It’s almost criminally short, however, and at times its puzzles can be a little obtuse and arbitrary. I give it a thumbs-up because it matches the description in the store, kept me entertained for a time, and is quite an impressive game when you take into account that it was the product of a sole contributor.
The long of it:
The environment and buildings have obvious nods to Myst and Jules Verne. In particular, the influence of Myst is incredibly strong. Gameplay elements such as powering things up before you can solve their puzzles, traveling between small, isolated environments using fanciful means, and deciding on an ending once you’ve collected everything all make appearances. For those who enjoy a world that itself is a puzzle, rather than a world that happens to have puzzles in it, by and large this fits the bill. The locations have matching music that subtly adds to the mood of each space, and I believe a lot of people would want their interior decorator to take inspiration from the places you visit while playing.
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game
The harsh summary:
This is a piece of beautiful graphical art with a few puzzles thrown in and uses something akin to and as believable as a government cover story for depth.
The in depth description:
I very much enjoyed the game. If it was priced more to its playtime and story and not to its beauty, I would give it a serious thumbs up. I feel like it is a stunningly beautiful person (in my case a woman) who lacks any personality worth mentioning. Great to look at but will not keep your attention beyond a few hours. It is very Mystesque but lacks Myst’s depth, story immersion, and length. Actual casual, non-rushed, and lazy play time is 5 hours (possibly less for others). My time played says 14 hours, however I spent more than half of my time on projects in the house or watching Netflix, but did not exit the game, I just left it on the ESC menu. While the story concept is fairly good, but it lacks any real depth. The story part of this game is in written notes, and there are not very many to read. As with all Adventure/Puzzle games replay ability is minimal at best so such a short playtime is very disappointing. When I read the Dev’s comment “It is neither too long nor too short”, I thought to myself “well then I should be able to get at least a good couple of days out of it. Not just a few hours. To sum up, the game itself is good but I cannot recommend at its current price due to lack of content. I would rather pay more for something more developed and not just a beautiful painting.
– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game
The Painscreek Killings
Summary
Fantastic adventure game with only minor flaws. Play time for me was around 15 hours or so plus another couple of hours for finding the last few items that I had missed originally.
You are playing a journalist who investigates a series of murders that happened a few years back and were never solved. The majority of the game consists of searching through various locations for letters, notes and other clues that allow you to piece together the events that led to the murders and identify the killer. The game is fairly non-linear, most locations are available right from the start although there are quite a few rooms and a handful of areas that you first have to unlock (literally, i.e. you need to find a key/code).
– Real player with 17.7 hrs in game
Walking simulator that quickly evolves from liesurely exploration of an abandoned gated community into a full-blown murder mystery adventure game.
Every place has its secrets. Every suspect is hiding something. Look through drawers, cupboards, the homes and belongings of the persons you are investigating to lead you closer to truth.
You play as an investigative reporter with one simple objective: Solve a cold case file by determining who killed wealthy socialite philanthropist Vivian Roberts and provide a front page photo. Can you find the murder weapon? Can you learn the whole truth about what happened in the now vacant Painscreek?
– Real player with 15.9 hrs in game