Recent reviews by Valder

Perhaps best game based on Lovecraftian horror.

This game is amazing. Gameplay, music, atmosphere, loyal to story while adding some extra stuff which fits the lore. Its all so good. So much detail.
Gameplay is much more than clicking stuff on the screen and combining items. It is an adventure game mixed with survival mechanics. You have to manage money, time, hunger, exhaustion, what to study and sanity. It can become quite dangerous if you start to study occult, but rewards can be worth it.
It all reminds me of Pathologic 1&2 where you also need to manage the same kind of stuff but in first person. Not just to survive but also to figure out what is going on and what to do with that knowledge.

My first run was not perfect and I was tempted to load earlier save since Walter health spiraled into fever and exhaustion. Felt pretty hopeless since nightmares plagued me. My fingers were crossed every night, hoping that this one would give me peaceful sleep. But to survive and rise from that felt pretty good.

Game does not hold your hand and gives you free hands to do whatever you want. Searching for clues are left for player responsibility, though you can just ignore the mystery. But that does not mean that mystery will ignore you.
Game has a role-playing elements in it. If you want to study occult, mathematics or focus on your studies and exams. Character interaction gives you couple of different choices on how Walter reacts to people. It all boils down on how normal you want Walter to be.

It just felt so good to play a game that is an Lovecraft story but in a game format. This washed down bad taste that Cabinet of Curiosities left.
And it gets all stuff right when compared to other games.
Usually, Lovecraft = more tentacles, trying to add every famous Lovecraft related thing in one game or developers adding their own comments that its racist to discriminate against fish people who capture women in order to mate with them and sacrifice them to their god.

Eternal Darkness might be my favorite Lovecraftian game, though that is not even based on Cthulhu Mythos, but Dreams in the Witch House is the one I enjoyed every second. Looking forward for the next project.

This game was decent enough (small spoilers I guess)

Despite being a first day purchase, I decided to wait some time, so that worst bugs would be fixed. Did not encounter anything game breaking, couple annoying bugs (getting stuck and stalker getting a free hit). Still, it makes you wonder if they should have waited at the end of the October before releasing this. Maybe then it would have been more favorable received. Still, I cut them some slack, since they are actually listening people and are fixing this.

I still think Tormented Fathers was better with that Clock Tower style. Though that game overall was a love letter those games (and rule of rose and haunted grounds).
I still remember heart attacks which I got when I stumbled into stalkers at those stairs. Miss that kind of bigger area, where you are not entirely sure where stalker is wandering. Though I must say that encounter with 3 stalkers at once was quite interesting. But stalkers were in TF more "terrifying".

Voice acting was ok, though some of the voices seemed fade out and soundtrack got louder and louder. BTW, soundtrack is so good, like in previous game. Chase themes especially made me feel quite nervous.

I liked the story and liked the drama it had. Maybe I'm just biased since recent horror games I played (PT clones) are mostly about player character reading papers while trying to figure out what happend to his wife and child (SPOILERS! you killed them and you are living these moments in purgatory lol). Though, things here happen too fast, player has hard time digest it all. Though you can say that was done on purpose.

So yeah, I had good enough time with this, bugs and all. So much so I replay Tormented Fathers.

In short: now that you need to pay for mods in Steam Workshop, I don't recommend this.