

Dark Tales from México: Prelude. Just a Dream... with The Sack Man
BitAll Force · 2022 · Lore-Rich, Survival Horror, Psychological Horror, Hand-drawn, Female Protagonist
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About Dark Tales from México: Prelude. Just a Dream... with The Sack Man
Is a saga of 10 short games in a 3D Survival Horror style, based on tales from the real Mexican folklore in which every monster it´s originally a physical sculpture made and painted by hand and then 3D scanned using photogrammetry. This game is the Prelude of the saga.
"JUST A DREAM... WITH THE SACK MAN" (THIS EPISODE)
Dreams and meanings. Meanings and nightmares. What does it mean to die in a nightmare?
Alma is asleep, she believes that what she sees, hears and feels is just a dream, a nightmare in which she must go through a labyrinth and where she must escape from the SACK MAN, a monster from a story that her grandmother told her when she was little and with which she had not dreamed since then. What Alma does not know is that this time, if she does not manage to get out of the labyrinth, she will never be able to wake up again.
Walk with Alma through this labyrinth of progressive assembly (it is different each time you go through it) capable of entering the subconscious to make you face your deepest memories and traumas.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
Players appreciate the game's creative hand-crafted aesthetic and clever incorporation of Mexican folktales into its puzzle design, but are significantly frustrated by technical issues including game-breaking bugs, glitches that prevent progression, clunky controls, and excessive exposition dumps that bog down the storytelling. The price point is also questioned relative to the gameplay experience, and the overall execution feels unpolished despite the interesting artistic vision behind the concept.
While the gameplay itself doesn't feel like it really warrants the pricetag, the game itself is neat and seeing the footage of the effort that they made in hand crafting things (literally) is pretty cool. Did feel a tad unfair at the end, but that could just be me. Some of the puzzles were rather abstract and didn't always feel like they were working correctly, but I managed. I give a very tentative recommendation.7 found this helpful
Drawing clear inspiration from one of the scenes in Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno), Mexican studio BitAll Force, did had a good idea here. Unfortunately, the game is riddled with bugs, visual glitch's and moments where it simply refuses to advance. I've stumbled upon many game breaking problems on my playthrough, forcing me to wonder around with no clue of what to do and therefore this had to be edited out from the video with "fade to black transitions". A final session will see you button mash the controller in what it seems a never ending session, nearly causing me a case of arthritis, and a final glitch, that, although unintentional, made me laugh through the entire end, and beyond it. I cannot, in good conscious, advise this game in this state. I've played the game in English, and that made the game more of a comedy than a serious thing, sadly. You can check my full playthrough on Youtube: https://youtu.be/b8Cmo7nZx4w And if you haven't already, Like and Subscribe7 found this helpful
Far too much exposition dumping right from the start of the story, clunky controls and an overall lack of cohesive storytelling. I appreciated how the folktales were incorporated into some puzzles, as it helped keep their relevance to the story. But the stories all went on for *far* too long and were written (at least in English) with many run-on sentences and a lot of irrelevant talking points. For several pages of lore, I had to skip all the way to the end of the story just to get to the point and find out what I needed to know for the puzzle. There's just way too much info dumping. The controls are, quite frankly, agitating. Why does the candle *immediately* go out if our character runs or jumps? That wouldn't be so irritating if our character didn't walk so painfully slow (and like she has a limp for some reason?) It felt like I was being forced to walk to spread out the run time, unless I wanted to run around in the dark. I didn't face against any legitimate threats during my gameplay either, making this game akin to a walking simulator more than a survival horror. The gameplay was mainly focused on solving relatively simple puzzles (when the instructions were told clearly) a…2 found this helpful
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