KEEP MOVING

Every step, every cliff could be the last of your journey. Every minute you have to decide whether to care for a soldier or proceed alone. Very soon you will be drained and run out of water and food, but you won't be able to find an oasis in this desert of despair. Fortunately, the surface still keeps some secrets, and you will encounter supply crates which help you to continue your journey towards the unknown. There are more than one way to traverse supply points, but some of them turn out to be essential. Sometimes you will hate the physics and landscape when it comes to steep cliffs and low grip. The soldier will tend to slip, and it can be the end. Your journey can be slow sometimes, but this pacing just adds realism. Overall, the gameplay requires patience and strategic thinking. I wish the game had several save slots so you can start over at different points and try different ways, but it's not there. I like the visuals, inspired by a good old-school shooter aesthetic and pixel graphics, bringing a nostalgic yet unnerving vibe that fits perfectly with the horror theme. The resource management and HUD follow the main style but are a bit unintuitive when it comes to numbers. …

TEDIOUS. Any curiosity this game sparks with its trailer and concept is extinguished within minutes. Why? Because the map is unnecessarily huge, empty, and—of course—the player moves painfully slow, even with the cart. Yes, I’d love to be spooked, and I’d love to see how this game ends. But if that requires walking in a straight line for minutes through a barren, pixelated world while simultaneously micromanaging six different values… is that really what the developer considers engaging or fun? If so, I honestly respect your attention span. But mine—and probably that of most players—isn’t nearly as forgiving.

[h1] A Disappointing, Plodding Experience [/h1] [i] It's me and this soldier. I'm trying to get him across this mountain range via this cart I found. For the twelfth time, he falls out of the cart and is injured because my cart was slightly angled too far forward going downhill in this MOUNTAINOUS terrain. I could carry him, but then I'd have to stop every 30 seconds or so to replenish my stamina. So we plod on, until I finally collapse and fail. [/i] I really wanted to like this game. I like the aesthetic. I like the premise. I like the PS1 retreaux art style. But I absolutely dislike the execution. The almost hour worth of playtime I have is from two attempts, both of which ended differently, but both of which had me bored by the end. The good: As mentioned previously, the art style is lovely. And I like the basic set up of the story. The bad: Just about everything else. The gameplay is slow and plodding, there's way too much downtime between any events, and it just feels like a slog. The basic gameplay loop I saw during my time playing was that you grab some supplies, patch yourself and the solidier up, as well as feed both of you and give water, and then move to the next s…