Viviette Game Sample - PC/Indie
18From 2015 to 2018, DYA Games has released one game each year... Super Star Path (2015), Bot Vice (2016), Strikey Sisters (2017) and their latest title, Viviette (2018)... will 2019 be the exception? It's still too early to tell, but as the size and scope of their projects get bigger, they are undertaking more ambitious themes. Viviette is a survival-horror puzzle game made from the ground up in the "GameMaker Studio 2" engine with completely original assets, and can loosely be compared as a microcosm of "Resident Evil" (Puzzles), "Clock Tower" (stalker with button-mashing escape method, hiding), and "Corpse Party" (bad ends, environmental death hazards). It features excellent pixel graphics, loads of ambiance (right down to every tileset featuring its own sounds in a meticulous fashion and every room being unique), and a relatively simple but effective plot about a brother and sister, their "friends", and their thrill-seeking visit to an abandoned mansion for kicks and jump scares where there's a little more than meets the eye.
As Jules Fosset, you awake in a hospital with little memory of why you are there, although you are quickly informed of this much: you are the suspect in a string of murders that occurred on Neuville's Islet, an abandoned island where a once rich and powerful family lived. Playing through his memories, you are also explaining the events that lead up to your stay in the hospital while shaping the narrative to fall under a few different endings (very bad, bad, and acceptable). Your sister's disappearance into the Neuville mansion's depths spearheads your journey as you try to find her.
The game features simple controls and menu management with some tricky puzzles, most which are intuitive but a few that are not, loads of darkness (you can't examine most objects without your lamp), and you will eventually run into a "stalker" who tries to kill you. When this happens, you have to run into certain rooms or create enough distance between you for the enemy to disappear for a little while. There is no combat, so if you are caught by the stalker, you must mash buttons to escape. Turning off your lamp and moving slowly helps you evade capture, though running for too long will cause Jules to become exasperated, which only adds to the immersion. In spite of this, avoiding the stalker is more of a minor annoyance than an actual threat as they are not overly aggressive and breaking free of them is quite easy on all difficulties (which is the main difference between them, though puzzles are a bit more obtuse on hard). After a few encounters, you'll be more scared of the random jump scares than the main enemy.
The game is rather short... if you know what you're doing, you can clear it in under an hour, but I wager it will take the average person at least a few hours initially to explore all the rooms, figure out the puzzles and piece together the game's plot. It also is not fully voiced like their past works, opting instead for a few rich voice clips and ambient sounds, which you'll either love or hate. I've been sitting on recording this game for a while as I honestly prefer the more Arcade-style "Strikey Sisters" and "Bot Vice", but as a departure from their more colorful games, this game is still respectable in its own right and there is no denying the attention to detail of the title. This is a video of the game in action, illustrating various aspects of the game. It is currently going for $10. You can get the game at:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/883070/Viviette/
https://dyagames.itch.io/viviette
https://www.kartridge.com/games/dyagames/viviette
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/viviette-switch/
Enjoy.
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