027

garb

[b]027 (2024) (PC) by Caleb Ernstzen (Australian)[/b] I believe this is the first game from Caleb. He has also been working on one named ‘Flesh Eaters’ and recently released another game a few months back named ‘Animortis’ which can be found on his itchio page. Both are free and seem to be inspired from Five Nights at Freddies. Originally 027 sold for $29.50 which is insane pricing for what is on offer here. Now it has been made free on steam and has 5 achievements which all unlock. [b]The Story:[/b] You are the protagonist Emma who lost her friend Chris Williams when she was 12. All grown up now, Emma decides to return to her abandoned childhood town and investigate to see if she can find answers to whatever happened to him. To accomplish this, you must survive 5 levels. Let us discuss each one at a time… [b]First Level:[/b] For some reason we start our investigation at a hospital. Why wouldn’t we start at Chris’s house? Maybe we already knew he had an accident and had to go to hospital as a result. I will let it slide for now and give the developer the benefit of the doubt. The objective here is to simply find a hospital file about our friend Chris Williams. Once we do, the no…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jj_vCNevsfY&list=RDRthl_O4_G2o&index=23&pp=8AUBoAcB

Performance is the biggest issue here: multiple reports point to unoptimized visuals, missing occlusion culling, and dynamic lighting left on instead of baked, which results in a choppy, laggy experience even on capable hardware — the kind of basic optimization pass a Unity horror game this size shouldn't be skipping. Beyond the technical rough edges, the overall reception is mixed rather than clearly positive, suggesting the atmosphere and mystery aren't landing consistently for players despite the interesting abandoned-town setting. A proper optimization pass (baked lighting, culling) would go a long way toward letting the horror and investigation elements actually land as intended.

Incredibly impressive for a free game. Atmosphere, especially the sound design is top notch. The game can be very challenging. It's often hard to know what to do, but you need to pay attention to both visual and sound cues and you should be alright. The objective in the top right corner often tells you what to focus on as well. Can be deeply frustrating when you are expected to perform both exploration and puzzle solving tasks at the same time as being chased by an enemy that will kill you. Genuinely creepy and scary at times. People need to be aware it's quite challenging, but that this is a very good game despite a few bugs and inconveniences.

Unoptimized, got stuck in a lot of levels which just made me restart again, sadly had do disable everything to even continue but you can't finish the game anyway and its really poorly made. not recommending trying this game even since you won't even understand what to do, even if you pass the hospital level the next one is going to be more confusing.