10mg: Sealed Estate

I purchased the full 10 Minute Game Collection and am going to play them in the order they appear in my library. That means this is #6 of 10. Know in advance what you are getting. As the collection title suggests, a ten minute game is not a triple A title. It is a short game-jam-esque proof of concept / working prototype / execution of an idea. At least that's what I'm going to infer from first impressions. Sealed Estate is a small self contained narrative driven surreal horror experience. There's probably a genre title that sums that up succinctly, but that's what I'm going with. The basic premise is this; you have crashed your car and you seek help in a nearby mansion. Why oh why do people crash their cars right outside the weird old country mansions? Crash your car in a city people, you are so much closer to help and useful services. Honestly. Naturally, the mansion is not filled with helpful people, but rather with nightmarish creatures seeking your corporeal annihilation. Anywayy, gameplay is a curious mix of Wario Ware style scenes intersecting a top down exploration action puzzle. The mini games if they could be called such, come unexpectedly and will have the player…

So many nice little details packed together into this micro game, that conveys an excellent and cohesive experience.

I have both a lot and very little to say about this game. If this is a first project, then I applaud the developer for putting this together. But, it is still quite an outlier as a 10mg game when compared to the other, more experimental games. Below is my honest analysis about this game. I didn't quite like it as you can tell, but I believe that the dev has potential at making better and more polished games in the future. Storytelling: The game puts a heavy focus on its story, but delivers an unfortunately uninspired setting and plot line for what could have been a more thought-provoking game. The identity of the player character were never explained, and their leading motivation, a simple "I need to get out of here", was frequently told rather than shown, both of which made the story more confusing and unrelatable than it had to be. Atmosphere: The developer did a good job at using visual and positional elements to build atmosphere, but the lack of a unique spriteset and proper sound design undermined that. There may also have been an attempt at environmental storytelling, but repetitive sprites and item-text-dialogues aren't really the way to go. Gameplay: The main (a…

Is this... the best use of text effects I've seen in a videogame? Quite creepy for a copypasta! Good immersion; definitely a good Halloween game.

This has a really striking visual style that I don't think I've ever seen before, and is genuinely unnerving to play. The atmosphere works just right despite how it presents itself, so it's a nice little horror game to play if you want to feel creeped out.

Very weird, creepy, and disturbing. As soon as I got used to what was going on, something new appeared to feel uneasy. Simple yet effective.