Observo

My play time is inflated by at least an hour of AFK, but I completed the game. This is survival horror in the vein of the earlier [b]Resident Evil[/b] games and [b]Alone in the Dark: New Nightmare[/b] (late 90's, early 00's), but it's incredibly short. Most short horror games that throwback to this era end up pretty poor for my tastes, suffering from various QoL issues or frustrating design, but this one was competent enough, with decent atmosphere and I kind of enjoyed it. The game uses tank controls. You don't have a nicely marked map like in [b]Resident Evil[/b], but the place is quite small and easy to keep track of, with maps on walls that you can inspect that are always just a few rooms away. I did get a little stuck at one point and consulted a video walkthrough. I'll probably forget this game and I wouldn't say it's essential or anything like that, but it's a good time for a night.

Excellent hidden gem that plays like a silent hill psychological horror game. Honestly surprised it doesn’t have more attention. Combat is decent and not too difficult like most other games. The story is one of the best I’ve seen in the genre.

This game is pretty good... until you meet the first enemy. As other reviewers said, fighting in this game is horrible. And I know poeple say that fighting in survival games should be hard, but in this game. You basically have only one weapon whole game, your trusty iron pipe. But you cant kill anything with it, only way to kill regular enemies (all TWO of them) are to use beartrap. This turn the game from survival horror to tedious boredom... But even with beartraps, you want to savescum all the time. Its because first enemy - this three legged monstrosity (desgin is really good!) attacks by grabbing you (pressing SPACE somehow doesnt work for me). Second enemy (this time designe is really bad) attacks by running at you and knocking you on your ass... Even with full health, two grabs or knockings are usually GAME OVER... Of course there many enemies here, and everything is tight spaces and blind corners so you cant really "pacifist" this game. Other aspects of the game, like music and atmosphere are good. In the end its shame, definitly not worth full price (I got it on sale)...

Can"t really recommend had the first enemy freeze and be unable to be hurt several times leaving me unable to leave the room I was in, and when it finally worked some of the clunkiest combat I've played in a while.

Overall a notable indie title in this genre inspired by the classic formula. The best part of this game is the tone. The game's direction has restraint and gentleness to it. The art style and fidelity are very pretty, the sound design is good. The setting felt based on a real location. Beautiful Mediterranean character models. Game-play loop is solid with well done puzzles. Combat is very clunky at first but you get used to it quickly, it works and it's in scope fro a solo dev. Now the negatives, I think some feedback will help the dev in the future: - Less combat encounters serve this game better, its strength lies more in the adventure side. - The camera based controls were not a wise decision to go along with fixed cameras, tank controls is the optimal choice for that. Although, camera based ctrs allows you to be more flexible during combat as long as the camera doesn't change. If you avoid combat then it's more of an annoyance. If there were less enemies, tank controls would be the best choice. So there's pros and cons. - The creature design didn't fit well with the game's tone and identity. I can recommend it only if you're a fan of the classic formula, tired of the RE clon…

Observo is clearly inspired by Silent Hill but ultimately fails to capture the same atmosphere, however I must commend SpaceZeta (dev) given the attempt made. The music is very reminiscent of early survival horror games, as well as the art direction although in my view it could be somewhat darker. It's a shame there was no voice acting either, I felt the text didn't capture the emotions the character may be experiencing, but I get resource limitations. My main complaint is the combat in this game... the reach you have with the pipe is absurd and initially early in the game your best bet is to run entirely up until the point you get a bear trap which makes the enemies comical, making a tedious process of simply laying the trap, hit the enemy, rinse and repeat which totally detracts from the fear/threat the enemy might present. And the game then proceeds to throw more re-spawned enemies of the same type which just serves nothing but to slow your progression down. I also felt at times the enemy re-spawn placement was deliberately cheap given the fixed camera angles which is enhanced further by your character moving like he is skating on ice. Given the price I can't recommend Ob…