AFAR: An Interactive Horror Film

I'm a big fan of Jason Trost's work so this was cool as hell to see (If you haven't seen the FP movies, you need to ASAP). I really dig everything about it. I really dig this kind of art and I wish more people would take a chance and make something original like AFAR. I know these projects probably don't make tons of money, but I sure do appreciate the experience. If you're into indie films, horror, and choose your own adventure style storytelling you'll probably dig this. It's not a traditional video game so know what you're getting into. I know it's unlikely, but I really want to see more stuff like this (especially from JTRO!)

[h1]Afar[/h1] Afar is difficult to review without spoiling anything. I will say that I experienced it for free via family sharing but liked it enough that I purchased it to support it. Keep a pencil and paper handy to keep a map of the choices you can make. It is imperative that you go through all routes to get a look at the big picture. [h2]The Good[/h2] Afar is shot with a mix of green-screen stills in studio, and stationary camera on-location footage, evoking a perspective similar to PS1 Resident Evil: a camera is set up, a character moves form one place to another, then the camera moves to a new scene and angle, not necessarily where a person's sight line may be, making the audience feel like a creature watching Brian themselves or am omniscient being. For being a (close to) one-man production, this is above my expectations. [h2]The Bad[/h2] My chief complaint is accessibility. With no closed captions, I had to reiterate multiple things to my hard-of-hearing partner. I do appreciate the realism of the tone the characters spoke in (unlike some AAA films where actors over-enunciate their lines in a way that nobody would actually speak), but not including accessibility options …

The story concept of this game was really cool and I also really liked the music and the visuals of this game. BUT in my opinion the game would have been much better, if it focused more on the atmospheric horror and showing us what happened to the contestants. Instead we get multiple scenes with the monsters that [b] lack suspense [/b] and have [b] too many flashing lights. [/b] Storywise, I wish we got more backstory of the contestants (and that one contestant's wife we keep talking too) and in general [b] more story detail, [/b] because the game is trying to be "mysterious" but instead it just lacks depth and feels hard to understand. The choices we can make also don't really seem to affect the story in any way. And I understand that this would be hard to execute in a game where a playthrough lasts around 30min, but I still believe that some improvements can be made AND that the game would benefit from being longer, so the story could be explained better.

Enjoyable, though I died 14 minutes in on my first go while trying to be heroic. Without giving any spoilers, , I had flashbacks to waching the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits reruns when I was a kid in the early 80s, further flashbacks to the screwy camera persepctives following the protagonist from the original Resident Evil and Heavy Rain games, and enjoyed the concept of the "found footage" to unveil more story. Looking forward to giving another go. Thanks JTRO - after I got hooked on Waves of Madness via a post you'd made on the Cult of Cthulhu FB group promoting it, I was compelled to try, and gettign for under $4CDN on a steam sale recently was even better! "Over and Goodnight!"

Really cool game - it's quite short, but I do recommend it if you like the Australian landscape and a mystery dressed up in VHS.

Meet Brian - an mullet wearing Australian Dean Winchester-wanna be, who is trying to solve the mystery of Barlang Valley. Investigate. Fire an odd looking EMP gun. Survive. The title says it all - this is an interactive FMV experience and not a game in the classical sense of it. You have to watch couple of short movies and take decisions between them. And ill be honest - the acting (and voice acting) is horrible. The camera effects are headache summoning (and not fun since the second Blair Witch movie 20 years ago). The special effects are...well, you better see for yourself. But the story seems to be good, and the attempt is brave, so yeah, you can give it a try (with discount. Only with discount!) Video: https://youtu.be/LvsFh2oa-2A