Let's Try: The Remainders (act 1), and Asylum
2It's the Indie Game Wednesday roundup for Wednesday, June 03th, 2021.
- Intro: 00:00
- The Remainder: 07:21
- Asylum: 1:29:47
Full disclosure, I was provided keys for both of these games, which is interesting because I don't generally play horror games! I'm not going to turn away free keys though.
The Remainder is a visual novel set in a world that has magic and seemingly Eldrich horrors. You start the game in media rez, having no idea what's going on, but are extremely aware of the yawning horror orb in the middle of the room. You're obviously perturbed, and things just kind of spiral from there.
I struggled with this game, because I really had a hard time understanding what was going on. The game is extremely word-heavy to the point of getting in the way of itself, and that in conjunction to being tossed into the middle of the situation makes things extremely disorienting. Adding to that is that the game continues to throw new concepts at you at a near-breathless pace, and I just couldn't keep up. I love the style of the game, the characters, and the overall setup, but I think it could do with a bit of a script edit to tighten everything up and adjust the pacing a little.
Asylum is a Myst-style puzzle adventure game that, shockingly, takes place in a (formerly) abandoned asylum. You roll up and are surprised to find that there are, indeed, some people in this wildly unsafe building. Turns out the Asylum is being spun back up, and you beg them to let you wander around for _reasons_ in order to... solve your nightmares, apparently.
This was a demo, so I'm reserving a bit of judgement, but my 2 big hangups with the game were the settings menu being too cute with the names of settings (please game, it's just a settings menu), and the fact that there was very little direction on what to do once I was in the asylum. I eventually figured out my course of action, but there was a lot of wandering involved. It could do with a bit more sign posting to help steer the player, especially at the beginning. I dig the aesthetics that the developer is going for, and I can absolutely see an audience for this kind of game. That audience isn't generally me though.
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