Recent reviews by AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem

At the time of writing, I have over 1,600 hours in MZ. I also had over 3000 hours in VX Ace & 11,000 hours in MV. As of its newest 1.5 update, I think MZ is the best overall version of RPG Maker. Maybe for specific purposes, people may choose to use other RPG Maker versions still, but as of the 1.5 update of MZ, I do think it's just the outright best version of the engine to date. Below are some of my anecdotes on why this is.

The reason I originally switched to MZ is in MV, I started running into some issues with doing more complicated games. There was this particular bug I started to run into with certain projects I was never able to solve, that usually crept up around the game crashing when certain visual effects would load while doing more complex math problems. It'd be a bit hard & technical to explain, but the bug had crept up in enough of my projects that I decided to make the switch to MZ because of it (as MZ has better cache & crash handlers, where MV would shut-down over any problem, MZ tends to glaze over an error & keep playing even if a small hiccup occurs, which I prefer). I'll say at launch, unless you had a very specific problem with MV like I did, I would've recommended staying with MV for the cheaper price tag. While MZ was better, it was only marginally better (I'd say like... 10% better), and mostly similar to MV.

But with the updates, and the 1.5 update especially, I can now pretty easily recommend RPG Maker MZ. I'm going to write these points as if you know what MV is capable of, but if trying to decide as a first time purchaser of RPG Maker which version to buy, just know my overall opinion having thousands of hours in the last three versions of RPG Maker is that at this point, MZ is the best. Any version can make a good game, but if you want the most tools available, then MZ is the one I'd recommend if having more tools means more to you than a cheaper price tag. With all this said, here's what I'd identify as how RPG Maker MZ is superior to MV:

-The ability to be able to choose a tile size (between 16x16 pixels, 24x24 pixels, 32x32 pixels & 48x48 pixels), and it change mapping to reflect it, is a very neat feature which is something I've long hoped RPG Maker would add in-engine (without complicated work arounds to accomplish it).
-The great improvement to playing audio files is appreciated (MV smoothed out its audio playing function for audio files that were over 3 MB big over time with patches, but still had sorta' a delay problem to it. MZ's improved audio player just is simply better than MV's)
-The Plug-In Commands being set to easy-to-use pop-up settings is incredibly useful. In MV, you'd always have to manually input everything, not the end of the world, but meant you'd have to look at the plug-in readme files to read what to put in and change if you were to do any plug-in commands. MZ's new ability to let Plug-In Creators make eventing commands to plug-ins just saves so much time and makes it so much easier.
-Lots of small quality of life improvements that add-up. Being able to speed up playtesting is nice (like, literally foreward wind). The ability to easily turn plug-ins on & off is helpful when you run into a bug & trying to identify what's causing it. Being able to copy & paste tileset settings to a new tileset is VERY helpful for specific contexts.
-The ability to set a move route of an event or a player and preview the route they'll take on the map is a godsend, as in earlier versions it'd just be a lot of back-and-forth between opening & closing the move route window to the map and counting tiles manually, saves time and helps potential overlooks in pathing.
-The increase in maximum database entries (To 9999, from the previous 2000 cap) is helpful for big projects.
-Porting to things other than Windows (like Mobile, Mac, Linux, Consoles (though this last one still requires quite a bit of manual work) is easier than it ever has been, and that's appreciated.
-As noted above, MZ's higher cache for stored loaded objects, better crash handler and tolerance to hiccups is a godsend to me for games that get more technically complex.
-In some ways, it feels a bit of a cop-out to list this as a positive, as this is more a community thing than a thing of the engine itself. But I think the community learned a lot from plug-in creation from MV, & MZ has been much better with users updating their plug-ins to work with later versions of the engine. In fairness, I think part of why they do is because MZ's engine upgrades haven't like, TOTALLY reworked how certain things work which broke some older plug-ins to the newer versions, but still, I think MZ's plug-ins and plug-in support has been much better than MZ's overall, and there's some really cool stuff made by the community out there (also probably helped MZ even further removed from restrictions for engine modification from MV).

There's more I'm sure I'm not thinking of, but where at launch I'd say that MZ was about 10% better than MV, I'd now say that MZ is about 40% better (while a made-up statistic, it pretty accurately reflects my thoughts on the level of improvement from MV, and with the updates over time to MZ). I think MZ will go on to be recognized by most as one of, if not the best iterations of the engine down the line (before the huge switch-up coming up in RPG Maker Unite, which seems to be a radical switch-up of its innter workings with the Unity intergration), I highly suspect MZ will be heralded in the future as the "best" version of "classic styled" RPG Maker. I haven't been running into crashes since I switched off from MV to MZ, I like the interface more, I haven't been running into performance problems (and this version is much better with severe alterations to the core engine than MV was). I can more confidently say now that I believe MZ is basically the best version of RPG Maker to date, and will be my mainstay for the time being.

Warning, this review will contain spoilers, but I'll spoiler tag them.

I did my playthrough on Hardcore difficulty, I went slow, explored, did nearly everything, took me 23 hours (16 hours on the in-game timer). The reason my review says around 17 hours is because the first session I did completely logged off so I could *cough* play it a bit early.

RE8 is a fantastic game. The biggest compliment I can give it is there's not a section of the game I thought was bad. There's sections I prefer, but I think the whole game is good.

I find it strangely hard to compare the game to other RE games because of how... "fresh" a take some aspects of the game are. It does lack some tonal consistency & trades this off with variety & excellent pacing. The "Village" of the game works as connective tissue to help bring it together though, I don't know if the game would've been as good if you, for example, went linear straight from area to area. The hub Village works to help transition you from the different tones of each area, I actually think without the Village the game would've been a lot worse. It's made me think a lot about game design, since in earnest the developers words of, "Theme Park of Horror" describes RE8 near perfectly.

I do notice each part of the game taps into aaspect of Resident Evil.

The opening prologue hour taps into the sorta "cinematic opening" chapters RE has been doing recently, between RE7, RE:2, RE:3.

Dimitrescu's Castle is an expansion on the "Classic RE Unlocking Survival-Horror" area, like Baker's House in RE7, or RPD Police Station in RE:2, giving a stalker enemy with rooms to solve, puzzles, shambling enemies.

Beneviento's House is an expansion on the Escape Room idea that RE7 had, in Lucas' Birthday Tape section, or the Banned Footage Bedroom DLC piece, except they decided to increase the horror aspect of it.

Moreau's Reservoir is basically an expansive boss fight, something the series has tried a few times to accomplish, but go through an area with the monster harassing you, ultimately ending with its boss fight. I do think his area could've done with a bit more to it, but I think it actually is the most successful attempt at "cinematic horror, monster build-up" the series has done to date.

The Stronghold actually has some of the best battle arenas in the game, & I actually ended up loving it. It felt like taking what they learned from RE4 & RE5's more intense battles, & making a few really well designed combat encounters with tension & crowd control.

Heisenberg's Factory felt like working on labyrinth-esque design & trying to blend tension further into the combat, making trickier to face monsters (a few I noticed pulled from series history, like beserk Chainsaw Majini, a little Garrador-esque for the mini-boss). Then capping it off with an over-the-top dumb but fun battle.

Chris' section feels like an expansion on the side character segments in many RE games, when they tried to go for more action-packed sequences, to make it feel good & empowering, but with new mechanical hooks to play around with in a brief exchange.

And finally, the final boss & sequence just felt like they wanted to make a good final boss fight, & a better than usual RE ending.

I can actually see pretty clearly that RE8 was them further developing a lot of individual elements the series has toyed around with in the last decade, & the biggest compliment I can give RE8 is I feel it's a successful one. I think each area pretty successfully manages to be an improvement of what came before.

And I think the Village helps round it out. I've concluded I really like horror games with "small hub areas", I personally loved it in Silent Hill Downpour, Evil Within 2, & now Resident Evil Village, where there's side areas to do, mysteries to solve, hidden events off the main path to just explore. The Village in RE8 isn't big, but it's very dense, and as I said, I actually think it was the perfect solution to help connect the tonal contrast and help the game feel thematically consistant and connected, as otherwise the huge tonal whiplash between the various areas could've been done a lot more poorly.

I do think the boss fights also end up being stronger than usual for the series, it does feel there's a bit room for improvement, but the series has a rocky, uneven history with boss fights, & I can say Village has more consistently good boss fights than other entries, helped they're all pretty varied to each other.

I really like Ethan's story, I think the reveal how Ethan was essentially a BOW ever since the beginning of RE7, just he and no one else outside of Mia was aware of it, is interesting. It also puts an interesting spin on Mia, who seems to sympathize with BOWs, as she did with Eveline, & seems to still accept Ethan as her husband (& I guess even conceives a child with him) knowing he was essentially a perfected Molded all along.

Speaking of that, I like how RE8's ending does a lot of, "Show, don't tell," answering questions but raising a lot, & they're legitimately interesting questions & answers. I suspect RE8 will leave a lot of questions & uncertainties for the time being, but I think it makes the future of the series more interesting.

RE8's story is kinda' out of focus until the last hour or so, but I think it's held up by an interesting cast of villains. I'm actually sad the RE8 villain cast only get so much screentime, each one of them felt like they had potential to do more, but that's a huge step up from boring villains the series had going for it compared to some of the recent past entries.

I know I loved RE8, but I need a bit more time to digest where I'd place it on my series chart. Most RE games have a consistent tone that kinda degrades in the last third. RE8 doesn't suffer this problem, but in exchange it switches multiple tones during its course. The Village does help connect them, but they're still quite different to each other. Village is held by its core themes, Village setting, & characters, but the actual gameplay experience goes a bit all over the place.

Compared to, say, RE7, which nailed its hillbilly found footage horror aesthetic & focus on the Baker Family, RE8 is a bit more all over the place. This leads to greater variety, & I think RE8 nails what it's going for, but it's very different, & actually makes them hard to compare for me. I think RE8 virtually solves all of RE7's problems, IE it has a good final boss fight, Chris is really interesting in RE8, new much more interesting enemies, with new enemy types introduced through the whole game, with a better back-half, but it's such a different game than RE7 in so many ways I still find it hard to compare the two.

Which I guess is also interesting, since RE8's foundation is so clearly RE7, that the fact it feels so different speaks to them doing a lot with that foundation to make it something entirely new that doesn't feel like a retread at all.

I'm very curious what fans & Capcom ultimately pull from RE8, but my immediate impressions are glowing. I think it makes the series future exciting. I think it's a very good game, a weirdly experimental RE, but a successful one.

One of the things that has stuck with me about Anna as a game is how weird things seem to be always happening within the house, with little to no regard to whether you're there to experience them or not. It creates this weird feeling since so often games make it so that everything occurs around the player, while in Anna's case everything seems to just be happening, regardless of whether you're there or not, what you do, you're trying to escape but the house is not becoming active because you're there, it's just a crazy place of weird ♥♥♥♥ going down.

And there's something kinda' terrifying about that.

I've only played about an hour of this and not finished it at the time of writing, but wanted to write a bit about it. There's a level select screen in the game which implies I'm around half-way through the game, so it's probably not tremendously long, but then again this game is only a dollar, and the hour I've played I've enjoyed.

This game does not rely on jumpscares, has a simple but appealing (to me) style, actually is scary at times through atmosphere, audio, and I think has some neat ideas. This actually is not a defenseless horror game, you do have a gun at the start and shortly also get a baton, and a third and fourth item a bit later for as far as I've played. While you're not defenseless, this isn't an action horror game either as enemies are sparse. It's basically a cryptic horror puzzle game, there's very little dialogue or much in the form of a story from what I've played so far, you seem to be a cop exploring a house and there's environmental signs of a story, but not much else than that. There's very little words at all in the game and nothing like cutscenes either. A lot of the game is going through this creepy house, putting together cryptic abstract clues to progress, and going through little scenarios that have some variety to them. As the game has very few words, you need to essentially pay attention to visual and audio clues. The game is not really hand-holdy at all, which does sometimes lead to confusion in what to do, but I managed to get through all the puzzles in the first half after being a bit observant and experimenting with things.

It's actually pretty solid and I think it's without a doubt worth the price. If you don't mind the simple graphics and some cryptic puzzles, you may even find yourself enjoying it. My only real critiques so far is that there are a few points where there's odd invisible walls, these are rare thankfully but they're a bit immersion breaking and I think they could've come up with a better excuse in many cases why you can't go that way. Also about a third of the way in the game there's a certain mechanic for a section which is a bit sloggish, but this is minor.

The game not really explaining anything to you is both a pro and con, on one side not knowing and uncertainty do play into the horror a bit, but on the other there was one moment I obtained an item and didn't understand how to make it work and was stumped for five minutes walking around only to discover to make it work you need to HOLD the mouse button rather than click it, which wasn't immediately obvious or ever explained. On the opposite end, not knowing how effective combat options are and needing to experiment does lead to a good kinda' uncertainty, or doing things in game having weird results and you having no idea if you're doing the right thing or triggering something bad does play into the horror.

Very solid little game, I recommend it. May update my review a bit once I've finished it.

To mention, the developer reached out to me to give me a Steam Key for the game to play it a day before the official release, I streamed it and enjoyed the experience. This may not matter the most as the game is free anyways, but I thought I should mention this.

Concluse is first-person atmospheric exploration game that's based off of a YouTube video series of the same name that had slowly been releasing over the last year depicting a 'rare' PS1 horror game. The game is a playable form of the first third of the video series (up to the ending of Part 7 of the video series), but includes a lot of new areas and bits that didn't exist within that series ever. If you ever watched the Concluse YouTube video series and enjoyed it, you should definitely give this a play as it's basically just that video series in a playable form, along with all the cryptic elements attached to that.

Now if you've never even heard of Concluse until now, essentially it's a "Forgotten PS1 Horror Game" that came up in the wake of Petscop (another fictional PS1 'lost' horror game that was found video series on YouTube) blowing up in popularity. Unlike most copycats, it did a lot of its own original things, and didn't quit making these videos despite Concluse never really taking off in any huge way in popularity. And now said video series has been turned into an actually playable game. Neat. The game at its heart sounds less interesting than it is, a lot of the game is simply exploring a semi-open world environment looking for key items to use elsewhere to progress with the occasional puzzle or threat. While the gameplay is relatively simple, what makes it work is a well done cohesive atmosphere, a good element of intrigue, and a general strangeness to everything around it. The game is also sprinkled with a few dozen PS1-era esque CG cutscenes, which do add to the experience and don't really overstay their welcome (except maybe the opening, which as you can't skip cutscenes and if you click "New Game", you have to watch again or close to skip).

Some may notice immediately there's some Silent Hill inspiration here, the story concept of a man named Michael going to find his wife after three years since she went missing in a New England town named, "Hell", is more than enough for said comparison. But without spoiling too much, in the later half of Concluse you enter an area that could've easily existed within the original PS1 Silent Hill game. It's not hiding its inspiration, but I admit to kind of loving that with the current state of the SH franchise. Concluse isn't just pulling from Silent Hill however, outside of the noted Petscop influence, there's also elements that can be traced to things like Marble Hornets, and having seen later videos of the Youtube series before this game was announced, other odd elements come into play later wearing their inspiration on their sleeves most of the way through.

There's a few interesting mechanics at play here. One I was really fond of is this payphone system. Throughout Concluse you'll find several quarters, which you can use either on Payphones or other minor optional things. When you put a quarter into a Payphone, you get an option to either call Home, your Mother, or your missing wife Carolyn. You can call whoever, but can develop some background plot threads based on who you decide to spend more time talking to. It's a minor thing, but it did help me become more invested in the story and characters by having some choice who to call (as payphones are one-time use for whatever reason) and discover more about.

To mention: This is the first part of what I assume they plan to make a series of games. If you watch the Concluse YouTube series, this covers the first 7 parts of the video series. The game ends with a cliffhanger and a "Next Time on Concluse" preview video, which honestly I'm excited for as I both really enjoyed this experience and having watched the YouTube series, I think it ended right as things both begin to get stranger and more interesting.

Even if you've seen the video series, there's a lot new here with about half of the content being new areas, puzzles, and elements that weren't in the original video series (though plenty of familiar areas, scenes, and the like as well as it does recreate everything from the videos, just adds to it). And if you've never seen it before, while this experience won't be for everyone and more a specific few niche audiences, it should appeal to those who love some good ole' surreal exploration and don't mind a slower-burn exploratory cryptic experience. There's hardly any action at all, but I think it succeeds by generating an interesting world, atmosphere, and several key moments to keep things engaging.

Also at the time of writing, I think this game has a few hidden secrets in it. I in my play time had found two secrets I was not able to complete due to not finding all the missing pieces before reaching the ending. I plan to go back and see if I can figure out these two optional things and see what secrets they hide, but if you like secret digging I can confirm this game has some of that element hidden inside of it.

Overall, an enjoyable atmospheric cryptic exploration game in the guise of a lost PS1 horror game, which is a game adaption of a YouTube creepypasta-esque thing. Not everyone will like it, but those that find the appeal I think will quite enjoy it. And this first part is free, and rather meaty (it should last someone 2.5-5 hours I imagine), so definitely worth checking out.

By FAR the best chapter of Bendy and the Ink Machine so far. Now before I start reviewing I'll mention Chapters 1-3 were also reworked with this chapter being launched, there's some HUGE new stuff in Chapters 1 & 2 especially, so I recommend playing those before chapter 4. Chapter 3 doesn't have as much new in it, but did streamline the fetch quest a bit to be less tedious, so that's nice.

Chapter 3 I liked, but frankly had some big issues with said fetch-questing and tedium of going back and forth. Chapter 4 however reaches a new mark for Bendy ; taking place in Bendy Land, a sorta' underground theme park, you now go between a few surprising and varied scenarios, including a couple boss fights, some theme park attractions, and some surprising signs of our character slowly losing his mind.

I don't want to spoil too much, but this chapter is frankly better design, better paced, more surprising and engaging than the previous episodes, with more going on in the gameplay department and locations to keep things interesting. The previous episodes got a big boost in sound design and lighting with this update, and this shines through in Chapter 4 to create an actually tense at times atmosphere. There's some great art design on some of the new horrors of the chapter (reminding me a bit of scrapped concepts of Epic Mickey)... If you liked Bendy at all in the past, or had issues with the actual gameplay of Bendy, this is the best that Bendy and the Ink Machine has been by a large margin and is worth playing if you're a horror fan.

I will be honest, the improvements and reworks to Chapters 1 & 2 plus Chapter 4 as a new high mark has made Bendy from something I thought was 'alright' and 'decently enjoyable if not rough', into something I'm not actively excited for the next episode for. That's how good this episode and the improvements are. Definitely recommended.

This game really surprised me, and I'm a bit saddened it hasn't been getting much attention at the time of writing. It's a first-person horror game with a PS1-style aesthetic to it which does some very unusual but interesting things.

You play as a postman in the 1950s who's just been hired to deliver mail to the residents of a recently built small town known as Little Vale. As you deliver mail to the residents of the town, you begin to find there's something seriously off about this place, and the strange nightmares that are plaguing you might be trying to show you something.

The game is cast over the series of a few days, and I think a big part of why it works is it just does so many unusual things... So there's some obvious Silent Hill inspiration, and I don't think any horror fan will think anything other than a game with a weird cult-like town with a big church in a game called Helltown has anything other than a cult within it, but the game definitely plays with these expectations and has far stranger things going on within it than I really expected, and goes in some really extreme and unusual directions that actually both managed to unnerve me and surprise me. The game has a lot of quirkiness to it in how it's designed which threw me off my game on several occasions, I don't really want to spoil any of it as I think it's best experienced blind but it's got some weird-edge going on and does several interesting and varied mechanical things you really might not see coming.

In the end it's just the quirkiness of this game which made me come to kind of love it. The aesthetics are pleasingly polygonal and low-quality enough to make you not always certain what you're looking at, but had some nice art direction. The town of Little Vale is interesting enough to explore itself and all these little secrets to find. The story is predictable enough, but not what happens strictly especially in gameplay which caught me off-guard on several occasions. The game has four different endings, I got all four and frankly all four were worth getting with some surprises on each of their pathways, though each ending requires you to do some hidden things in the game to obtain.

I will say there might be some frustration to be had with a couple scenarios within the game itself. one bit in particular is more trial and error than not, but this honestly ends up being nothing a minor quibble due to a few things the game does end up doing with this. It didn't ruin or damper my experience that much. There's some things I think could've been done better or things that could've been expanded on, but what here was still engaging in its own right.

This is a hard one to talk about without spoiling some of the neater stuff this game is doing beneath the surface, but just know if the idea of being a postman in a small explorable creepy community that goes deeper and stranger than you may expect interests you, I'd recommend this highly. I feel this one will stick with me, and I'm happy to have played it. I feel it might grow a cult audience (fittingly enough) if it manages to get any traction, and I dearly hope it does.

So this is the developer Stanislaw Truchowski's second game, his first one being a free game from 2016 known as Mind's Eye. To be honest, I really did not like Mind's Eye that much, I thought every sequence in that game had a flaw and it took so many missteps that it just wasn't enjoyable. Mind's Eye had so many problems with it that I could sit down writing an essay on it, but there was a few kind of interesting things tucked away in it especially for the guy's first game though. So when I started up his second game release and first commercial one, A Girls Fabric Face, I didn't have my hopes up that high.

However, to my surprise this game was a real little gem, a HUGE improvement over Mind's Eye, and more so A Girls Fabric Face did some interesting things I haven't seen very often in the horror scene.

It's kind of a paranormal investigation horror game, you play as a girl coming to a worn-down house, you carry a camera with you as you go and set-up a few other cameras and a place to rest as well. Your goal is to find paranormal happenings and capture it, though your camera has a charge of how much it can record at once and you have a battery life on the camera, but a mechanic I actually ended up liking while I hate this sort of thing in most horror games as the environments are small enough and there's several 'charge stations' you set-up around the place which has unlimited charges to get you back to 100% battery life rather than finding finite batteries. Due to their stationary nature, this mechanic mostly lead to you going to certain parts of the house more often (which as the house wasn't that big, wasn't really tedious and more so created opportunities for things to happen on your small trek to it rather than a hassle), which ended up being an okay addition rather than an annoyance.

The game's biggest strength comes through its subtlety, keeping a few interesting mechanics balanced, and some atmospheric imagery and exploration. It has some surprisingly well done subtle scares, there are a few minor jump scares but they happen to be the good kind I feel with some good build-up or having an affect on the world rather than being hollow or empty, plus with the paranormal recording function of the game it adds a little meat to them sort of like the 'passerby ghost' scenes in Fatal Frame you can capture. You might notice in the screenshots on the store page there's "Paranormal Findings" percentage, and there's more than 100% to capture as I found but basically getting your percentage up unlocks certain drawers and cabinets in the house with some additional stuff to uncover. Kind of a neat way to handle it, and it leads to not punishing the player for being bad at capturing stuff but giving some extra incentive to do so to unlock some small things.

Most of the game you're in full control and explore as some increasingly surreal and unusual things begin to happen as you solve some light puzzles. Once you've done with your objectives you can go rest, and when you rest you control the green stationary nightlight cameras you set up, and switch between them looking for paranormal happenings and clues to what to do or what's changed overnight. It allows some good chances to get more paranormal happenings and leads to some intuitive hinting systems. I don't want to spoil too much, but this game does work due to some well-executed scenes and the house itself being interesting to explore. The game also has four different endings to obtain based on some things you can do in game, so that's neat.

I did have a few quibbles with it. So the game isn't that long, but it actually does not have a save system, so you have to play it in one go. This isn't too much of a problem as it should only take an hour or two to get through the game your first time, but I did run into one bug where I got stuck by my character accidentally standing up in a crawl space and getting stuck in the ceiling leading me to starting all over, but in the end knowing what to do it didn't take too long to get caught up to where I was and I found some interesting differences between runs by restarting it then. My only other kind of complaint is while the story isn't all that bad, I feel some elements of it aren't implemented well, and I feel like the very end of the game isn't as interesting as the rest of it, but it's brief so whatever.

I do think this sort of set-up could be very interesting in a more open-ended format. In the end despite some slight differences you can do and the game not being a linear path, what you need to do to progress is rather linear, and though I enjoyed the game I feel it could've been better suited for some open exploration and allowing the player to do several different things at their own pace like a few moments in the game rather than most of it being in the end a rather linear affair.

Still, I was pleasantly surprised by the title and some parts of it have stuck with me a few days later, and I'm now interested to see what this developer does in the future, so consider me a fan of this one. It's definitely worth a try if you like some atmospheric paranormal investigation stuff.

I decided to write this review a bit early for those on the fence here on the day of release, but I plan to write a more proper review later once I've finished the game. So I've played this game for 9 & a half hours at this point, and barely just finished Chapter 4 (of 15+ chapters). First hour and a half was taking it slow and exploring around in the first two chapters, the next six & a half hours was Chapter 3 and doing EVERYTHING you could in the open world level, 30-45 minutes was committed to me doing the special shooting gallery minigames added to the Save Area once you reach Chapter 4 and getting all the rewards, and then the last 45-60 minutes was going through Chapter 4.

I should mention I'm playing on Nightmare difficulty, and playing with almost all my HUD off. Only things I kept on were my reticle, item pick-up info, and some stuff for later like partner health gauge. The game started off REALLY challenging on Nightmare, I was getting my ass handed to me during all of Chapter 2 and the start of Chapter 3, but I really got a handle of it. I managed to kill every single enemy in Chapter 3, mostly with stealth. Learned a few techniques. I explored every inch of Chapter 3, there is a LOT hidden in it. The side-quests are the obvious ones, but they've literally littered the town with so many interesting things off the beaten path. I'll get back to this.

There is so much I want to say, but I don't really know where to start. Firstly, as a horror enthusiast, this is a REALLY neat horror game. On paper and at first it seems pretty basic, but it slowly reveals it has a lot more up its sleeve. I want to say so much, but I also feel I shouldn't to keep most of it a surprise for others who decide to dig into it. All I'll say is if you don't explore Chapter 3 you're doing yourself a huge disservice, there's literally so many fun, interesting, and unique scenarios to find, and not even just in the side-quests. There's also 5 hidden levels of sorts which are worth finding and experiencing in my opinion among everything, and some do some neat things and touches in the game, like there's this ghost woman who if you do her side-quest will begin to haunt you through the whole game, but will not haunt you if you don't do the side-quest..

To be honest I wasn't really sure what to think of it all at first. Chapter 1 & 2 for a example while I was playing I wasn't quite sure what I thought of it, though in retrospective there was a lot of really cool moments, one of my favorites being when you look down a dark corridor with your flashlight and a giant strange black and white fuzzy eye is staring back at you, then blinks and disappears. The game has so many creative touches if you look around and interact with things. And I began to love it more and more as I played Chapter 3, at the start still uncertain but as I began to get into the groove of it I began to love it.

You can tell the team behind this are very passionate for horror and horror games and had a lot of fun making this, it's full of so many small touches everywhere, it's got so much love for other horror stuff. Chapter 2 is in many ways almost like some pseudo walking sim horror game like Layers of Fear is what it reminded me most of, then Chapter 3 experiments with all sorts of things all over the map, and Chapter 4 has some fun with a unique take on defenseless first-person horror, but with reasoning that makes more sense than usual. But things are paced well to not only keep you on your toes but keep things interesting, and feed well into each other so far.

Chapter 3 I think some people will have a gut reaction to dislike the open world chapter it is on principle and initial impressions, and to be honest I wasn't sure what to think at first myself, but it is incredibly unique and begins to become very immersive, interesting, and fun to explore as you go through it. It's NOT an empty open world by any means, literally every area is intentionally designed with no randomized features, and it's better for it. It's basically a giant horror amusement part with surprises tucked away into every corner, if you'll look for them, and a lot of twists and turns as you dig deeper into the overworld and a lot of interesting, fun, and tense scenarios packs into every area of the map almost.

Despite the fact I've played this game for nearly 10 hours now, I'm still fairly early in. There's a lot more I want to say but kind of also just want to discuss, and then plan to play a lot more tomorrow. I'm finding now that I'm done playing for now I can't stop thinking about this game. I feel like this game is a very different beast than the first game, I'm not sure everyone who loved the first game will love this one even and some people who didn't really like the first game may end up loving this (it still is tellable it's The Evil Within and made by the same team, but they have made some very bold decisions and tried some very different things design wise which kind of makes The Evil Within all at once reminds of several things, and yet feel rather unique on its own, kind of like the original game but in a completely different way).I can already tell this game is going to go on at the very least to become a cult classic with some sectors of horror fans, it's surprisingly unique in many ways and if you let it, it can really begin growing on you.

Here's some pretty extensive thoughts of A Hat in Time after playing it for 8-9 hours & completing about half of the game (my percentage on my main file is about 50% done right now, & I've completed 21/40 levels the game has so far.

A Hat in Time's story follows a nameless girl (aka Hat Kid) who is an alien who's ship runs on hourglasses that store time, having the ability to rewind & freeze time. Due to some silly shenanigans involving the mafia on a planet she's passing, her ship crashes and her 40 hourglasses spread across the planet. She goes off to collect them all, meeting a colorful cast of characters along the way. The game's story isn't going to win any awards, but I've been surprised how much I've enjoyed it thus far. The characters are voice acted, & so far the voice acting is pretty good (there's also a badge you can equip which makes them to 'mumble' speak if you wish... more on badges in a bit).A few of the characters I've already come to love, plenty have time to let you come to know them & find them likable or not. I also appreciate the game's villain angle, everything is kind of a gray area in the game. The good guys aren't wholly good, the bad guys aren't wholly bad. Hat Kid actually doesn't seem to care about good vs evil, there's a do-gooder who has a morale high-ground of sorts & can't understand why Hat Kid doesn't want to use her hourglases for good, but Hat Kid just wants her hourglasses back. The bosses you face aren't strictly because they're the bad guys, just they're in your way to collect your hourglasses back. Motives for the bosses so far often have to do with wanting the hourglasses to go back in time & undo a mistake in their past, something they'll do anything to change rather than because they're evil, which I find an interesting dynamic. I don't know obviously if the story holds up all the way through yet, but I like it for what it is so far.

Game has a hub world, which is Hat Kid's ship. The ship loses power & needs the hourglasses to restore it. Get more hourglasses, & more of the ship unlocks as well as access to a new world becomes available to play. The hub world is fun to explore & gets more added to it over time, including patrons who decide to board & do small things for you (ranging from allowing you to switch music in stages to selling you something or just loitering with flavor text). Out of the many collectibles in the game are souvenirs you can find (split into pieces though), which you bring back to your ship & you organize on one of a few pedestals (you have to manually stack them though). If you complete a souvenir, you unlock a new bonus level in one of the stages you can then access, which includes a harder than usual level with collectible pictures that give you a picturebook story (no text, all pictures though) of the backgrounds of the characters who live there.

Speaking of collectibles, the collectibles here are well done, which works well for a collectathon. Every one is linked to something, there's no 'useless' collectible. Green orbs you get everywhere is your main currency, which you can use at a shopkeeper to buy new badges, to buy some new missions in levels, & some other misc things. There's different types of yarn you can collect, which gives you different hats. The hats all give you different powers, & you can change them on the fly with the d-pad or choose one from a menu of hats that slows down times. The hats abilities range from letting you speed forward, doing a statue-esque ground pound, an aura which makes certain transparent objects appear, & more. You also can collect customizable looks for your hats, as well as different colors for your main character.

There's also badges, which are kind of your power-ups in the game. You buy them from the store mostly, but some you get from other means. At the start of the game you can only equip one badge, but there's two upgrade slots you can buy from the shop to equip three badges total. Badges do everything from giving you a grappling hook to decreasing hat ability charge time to a map showing you where nearby souvenirs are, among many other things. You can change them on the fly in the middle of the level whenever you like, & they're fun to mess around with & think what's best for a situation. And then of course, the main goal of the game is to collect back your 40 hourglasses.

I feel the game's controls are going to have some mixed reactions, but I actually REALLY like them. They're a bit floatier than some platformers, & some may have different preferences here to me, but once you begin to get a handle on them you can do some crazy stuff. They can do a great job at making you kind of feel like you're parkouring, as you can run up walls for a short time, wall jump, slide to go faster, dash in the air, do a double jump, & you can begin combo-ing these things like jump, double jump while in the air, dash in the air ahead, hit a wall, wall jump off the wall, dash in the air again & do a double jump off that dash. It also can combo well into the other abilities you begin to get, like the running ability can run up walls a bit higher (as faster), or the grappling hook can chain very well into things. One ability I was not expecting at all is kind of a homing attack similar to Sonic, where if you're close enough to an enemy in the air you can press the attack button to dash towards them in the air as a homing strike. It's not all very complex, but well handled in my opinion, I personally really like the movement & almost parkour element the game has sometimes.

All of this wouldn't matter if the game wasn't fun, which at least I think it's insanely fun. The missions are very creative with a lot of twists & turns. I don't want to speak too much in-depth here, but there's a LOT of variety of what you're doing. The game shows all sorts of inspirations everywhere in its worlds & missions, & has its own set of unique twists on each one. The game is the sort of game where one level is a murder mystery on a train & you're collecting suspects while avoiding being caught, to a previously fine island level being loaded with lava and having to maneuver in a whole new way due to the change, to a sort of Luigi's Mansion/Resident Evil/Amnesia hybrid horror level, to a level where you rush to go from press meet to press meet trying to become a diva & get your reputation up by publicity stunts, or going behind the scenes of a studio in a segment that almost has tinges of something like Portal. There's a lot that happens, & then in what happens there's a lot of twists within the twists, & a lot of cleverly timed and amusing jokes & surprises.The game never loses its identity through this, but you end up going through a large variety of scenarios, & different kinds of stages (the main kind of stages are kind of open-world playgrounds that Collectathoners may know, something akin to Mario 64/Sunshine esque style, but there's some very different other types of levels, including these challenge levels that heavily remind me of Mario Sunshine, more linear affairs or sub-areas in the levels with their own flavor & level design).

I've fought two bosses so far. The bosses in this game are surprisingly not that easy, they take like 20-30 hits before they die & have multiple phases. The second boss I fought I REALLY liked, so much so I won't spoil it.

Music is fantastic, it has some stand-out tracks but all of it I've heard so far is quite good. There's also several variations of most themes which kick in during different gameplay moments, which does amp up & do what's intended.

I need to see if this game falls apart in the second half of the game, & I won't claim everyone will love it as much as I have so far, but this I think is going to be a top five Collectathon title for me. It has made me smile on multiple occasions, I've had a lot of fun with its mechanics, surprises, level design, missions, characters, and collecting.