American Eristics

It has it's issues, but the developer seems pretty dedicated to working on their games and improving them. The story is campy and fun, it's short, cheap price, I'd say give it a shot if you have $6 CAD to spare.

This game plays like a 90s horror slasher movie. Not too bad. The art style gives this some character. The cutscenes were nicely animated. I do wish that there was voice overs. Very solid for under 5 bucks. Gameplay here: https://youtu.be/SjUQo10pQZs

Pros: Good music choices. The sprites are good. The story was easy to follow for most of the game. Cons: The cutscenes are too fast. I had no clue what was going on in the final cutscene. For some reason the second scene is a spoiler for what happens later in the game. The controls are clunky. There are some useless features like the pallet drop, flashlight, and vault. The R key will restart the scene you are in, so do not accidentally press R. I don't think the sprint key works despite being shown in the controls. Instead of sprinting you can dash around with Q.

I would give AE a *soft*-recommend Engaging small scaled narrative horror game. Takes lots of cues from Scream and other slashers. Rarely feels scary, but often is a strong challenge and has a lot of fun with its premise. In my 2ish hours with it, I enjoyed the vast majority of my time. There's a lot of care put into cut-scenes, but the lack of voice acting or particularly unique emote sounds for different characters can make it difficult to tell people apart or understand the context of what's being said. Imperfect in some ways. Some odd collisions and issues in communicating gameplay status to the player hold it back from what it could be. I'd love to see a larger and more complete feeling version/sequel. There's a lot of interesting ideas here and they cohere into a strong core, but the game feels much more like a proof of concept prototype than it does a retail-ready game. If you're a fan of Scream or want some Dead By Daylight fun in singleplayer it's worth the price for a fun evening of play. If spending $5 on 2-3 hours of content seems too steep to you or you're looking for a sleek and buttoned up experience, this might not be the right game for you.

Hard to recommend this. There's a lot of good ideas in here, just not executed particularly well. Maybe on a good sale? My main issues with it is that the cutscenes go by too fast and could due with being player-advanced, and which doors can and cannot be opened is not well telegraphed. For a game inspired by slasher movies and wants to keep you on a pretty narrow road, there needs to be more guidance to the player on where to go/what to do to keep the pace up. I will say that I did not finish this game, but I could definitely see this being up some people's alley. Mine included, if it was just a bit more polished on the player experience side.

Brain: You have no right to be half empty. Potato chip bag: Great words to live by, Brain.