Heather Wreath: The Reporter

I am updating the review to reflect the first patch, the devs fixed most of the issues that I had with animation, text reading, and save points, so I don't think you will find it as contentious as in my original review. On a subjective note, even though the game has a lot of interesting ideas with the psychological effects, it does not handle sound effects and certain aesthetic elements as well as it could, that said, for a $5 indie survival horror, I think the game is in a decent state now. Takes about 2 to 3 hours to finish with no hints. Admittedly a big part of the game was backtracking, the main area is abnormally large, very lengthy runs just to check every area, and then try to figure out if you missed anything. Initially I was going to say that the areas were way too big, but at the same time it kinda reminded me of the original Silent Hill a bit, the farm area had some nice long camera angles which I liked, the main issue is that you didn't gate the roads enough, as well as the camera often pointing right at the character, making it hard to see the direction. There are basically only 2 main locations in this game, as well as some psychological locations in between, the fi…

The story revolves around journalist Ed, who wants to write a huge piece about a mysterious carnival and unsolved cases. Even when the locals warn him to stay away, he remains determined. He soon gets more than he asked for. While sticking his nose inside a barn at the location, he is knocked out by a brute in a mask. The game uses old-school "tank" controls, which means the character turns on the spot rather than moving left or right. The rest of the controls are fairly normal, including buttons for interacting with objects in the world, running, and attacking. The run works good, but the animation is a little odd, giving the impression that the character is power walking or running for the first time. You must be careful not to hit the interaction button during cutscenes, as this will skip everything. While this function is usually appreciated, it should be modified to long press. Except for a brief stop at the gas station, the primary locations are a farm and a mine. The farm is dark and foggy, but you can still see quite far. Although you always have a lantern active that glows a few steps in front of you, it is barely functional. The farm has a nice size, but you can on…

The Reporter has a terrific start where you're introduced to an over-the-hill journo desperate to make his big break, hell, desperate to make any break, just looking to put food on the table. The fixed multicam is well-handled, with relatively few blindspots and the atmosphere is appropriately moody. But just as the forces of the uncanny start to coil their tendrils around the neck of our playable curmudgeon - the game gets bogged down with an enormous fetch quest section - something I've seen in a few indie games (eg. Order of the Snake Scale). I'm fine with long walking sections in games (eg. Silent Hill 2), but having to wander back and forth across an overly large play area in search of puzzle items and places to use 'em is ultimately wearying and annoying. Worse still is when there's a constant accompaniment of discordant strings and wails on the soundtrack - I can dig what the developer / musician is aiming for, but I'm afraid that I found the current arrangements and tunes on the soundtrack more annoying than atmospheric. Controls are also... odd. While WASD, tab, spacebar and E with the mouse represents a fairly common keyset, the application of the keys to actions in th…

Played for a bit and I liked it, reminds me a lot of Lake Haven Chrysalis. My biggest complaint is... the game just kind of feels a bit slow. So these are related to that: - Needs increased movement speed - Ability to press "next" for cutscene lines. I can read a line in like 1/8 of the time the line hangs on screen, so then I'm just sitting and waiting for it to continue - A map... I jgot to this big open farm field, and it really starts to crawl because it is SOO spread out, you move quite slow, and the things you can actually interact with are very few and far between. Obviously the best fix would be a level design revamp, or populating it with more puzzles and items and enemies... But increasing movement speed and adding a map would go a longgg way too. Especially if the map has markers to know points of interest, or allows you to put markers yourself so that when you need to backtrack you're not wasting a ton of time just slowly moving through a field... Otherwise, enjoying it a lot. Haven't gotten to the combat yet, but I like the clock puzzle and I like the story and atmosphere and music