This game is a great example of how fantastic presentation can be utterly ruined by a lack of functioning game mechanics.

The controls are unresponsive with what seems to be a brief delay between aiming the camera and when you can actually take a shot.
Enemy weak-points are impossible to detect and you have to wait for the camera to start glitching out until you even do any damage.

You can’t tell how much damage you do, because there is no HP bar or visual indicator on the enemy. Some bosses are so resilient I wasn’t even sure I was damaging them at all.

Enemies are fast and can sometimes go out of bounds. There is no radar or arrow to help you figure out which direction they’ll be attacking from next.

Despite being polite enough to let you get back on your feet, they’ll still stunlock you very easily. When you die you have to walk in a straight line towards the light in order to be revived – only to be immediately stunlocked again.

No move to roll out of the way, no iframes, nothing.

Levels are also ridiculously dark, sometimes pitch-black even. With no brightness option you must rely on your camera to light the way.
The default one is so weak it’s almost useless, so I had to use the other camera and constantly spam the flash. Just tedious.

While creative, some scenarios are rather poorly thought out. There’s an enemy that can pop out of nowhere and kill you in one hit. Another section has you evade dancing ghosts within a time limit and once you’re stamina is depleted damage can’t be avoided. One level demands taking photos of body parts that are only visible through the camera, something that’s not clearly communicated.

Objectives in general can be very cryptic. That’s probably due to the iffy translation, but I eventually had to consult a walkthrough to guide me through it. And I’m probably not alone here.

The fact that only roughly 10% of players even beat this short game really speaks for itself. Heck, only 20% managed to beat the first boss - in a game where you can beat them in any order you want!!

I really wanted to like Dreadout. The atmosphere is great and I love the monster designs, but all three games are barely functional.

I’m aware they where made by a small indie studio from Indonesia, but considering Fatal Frame has been a thing since 2001 and has like half-dozen sequels there really isn’t a justifiable reason why Dreadout is lacking in so many areas.

You can tell the devs are very passionate about their games, but quite frankly, they’re just not fun to play.