Around - The Game

The real jumpscare was the out of nowhere chatbot interaction in the middle of an otherwise mediocre puzzle game. (Seriously, if your game is about talking to an AI, you need to declare that on the store page. I wouldn't have downloaded it, if I had known that.)

Recommended if you get trapped in a dark room for 20 minutes with nothing but a PC with this installed.

No idea what to do with the demon. I replied to everything it said and it just kept repeating the same stuff, often pulling up like info it searched for online. This AI stuff is a bummer.

Around: The Game is a strange little horror game that I think does a good job making me feel uncomfortable without needing to throw enemies at me every few seconds. I wake up inside a huge decaying mansion where the layout does not seem to make any sense. Doors can lead me back to places I have already been, corridors can change and the deeper I go, the harder it becomes to work out what is real. I am mainly exploring, looking for clues and trying to understand what the mansion wants from me, which gives the whole thing a slow and uneasy feeling. The shifting mansion is easily the best idea here. I like the fact that I cannot completely trust the environment because a familiar room might not behave the same way the next time I visit it. That makes me pay attention to small details and remember where things were instead of simply following a map. The mansion feels like part of the puzzle rather than just a backdrop, and I think that makes the exploration much more interesting. There is something quite effective about walking through a corridor that looks normal and then realising that I have somehow ended up somewhere completely different. The puzzles are also tied closely to the …

Gave cherries to a demon and started talking to an AI, got bored, and quit.

Well. I beat it. good try.