Oculto

Oculto, developed and published by Eteru Studio is a small Indie product on Steam. Product includes Unity-Analytics and Cloud reports. The choice of selected names of the developers and the product itself is a bit strange for my taste. "Eteru", installation folder "void mine", product code "Eteru.Mine". Reminds me more of Etherium Mining. But that would be my personal derivation. [h1]What does this product do?[/h1] As the product is based on the Unity Engine, user-data is of course send to Unity without the user's knowledge. Unity is using Google Compute Engine (short GCE) as backend for their services. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3050488848 This happens in two ways [olist][*]with default activated Event-Telemetry [*]with so called crashlytics and Cloudreports[/olist] [h1]Who is running the product?[/h1] Eteru Studio There is not much to find about Eteru Studio. They have a Twitter site and their "homepage" is hosted on Google. Including 2 pictures, and 2 links which refer back to Steam. The page may quickly disappear if the developers should become inactive or want to hide. [h1]Where are the service providers located?[/h1] [olist][*]Eteru Studio -…

Oculto is a game where the negatives simply outweighed the positives for me. I liked the story and it was what kept me playing. I thought the way it was told by finding messages and corpses was well done. I thought some game play elements were great such as if you take to hard of a hit to the head area it can smash your lamp which you can repair by finding repair kits. You can also get your propeller jammed; tear your suit on sharp objects; as well as receive hemorrhages due to explosions. Health kits can fix what repair kits don’t. My only issue is that hemorrhages and oxygen leaks both are time sensitive issues that if not dealt with before their timers run out will kill you. Combine that with the fact that you can’t carry repair or health kits in an inventory meaning that you have to backtrack to find them all the while trying to evade a shadow that one hit kills you and it adds up to something that will either make you enjoy the tension or you will find it annoying. I found it annoying. The lack of a map system also can complicate things as you may have to lure the shadow away from where you want to go and back track to it which can lead to confusion at times whether you have e…

Oculto is an exercise in annoyance. I bought it thinking it would be a walking sim with some puzzle elements or a point-and-click like the studio's previous game. It is not. It is closer to a platformer where floating into a random stick of dynamite starts a countdown that kills you, getting zapped by a stray bolt of electricity starts a countdown that kills you and eventually you also start getting chased by a monster that immediately kills you. Your only choice is to try to avoid all the hazards, which might be slightly less frustrating if you could save your game, but you cannot, so even if you make it almost all the way through the level, one mistake at the end means you have to start it all over again. There's not even checkpoints. Everything is trial-and-error, die and repeat. It's like a game that was made in the 1980s, and I don't mean that in a nostalgic sense. It's tedious, it's cheap and it's a waste of the player's time. Don't make the same mistake I did. Do not buy this game if you want a walking sim or a narrative adventure. This is a jetpack platformer with horror elements, and without even the most rudimentary of save systems. Not fun at all.

This is a pretty good short horror game. It builds tension pretty well and encounters with the monster are thrilling and scary. Some of the levels are quite frustrating though and the levels are only really scary the first couple of times you play them. I bought Oculto on special for $2.20 and I don't regret it. :)

Play it when in a patient or calm headspace. Some gameplay features can be irritating, especially later, but it's a fairly minimal experience where all aspects of the game are needed to allow a chill yet oppressive atmosphere to creep up on you. Playing at night created a feeling of deep focus while always on edge, and (rare for me) I completed it in one sitting - I enjoyed it a lot.

Good little game. Not exceptional, but knows what it's about and delivers on it. It's a bitesized piece of horror gaming, pretty much exactly 2 hours from beginning to end. I generally can't get enough of horror in space and this delivers. This time around you're completely defenseless. It's clear from the start you're alone, and in danger, with nothing but your suit, your boosters, and your own hands to get you through. You make your way around in zero-G environments to progress through the levels, coming across textlogs on your journeys, or setting off explosives to access new areas, or flipping switches to remove barriers. You need to figure out from these textlogs what the password to the door to the next area is in each level. Thankfully it doesn't force you to hunt down every textlog, and with just a bit of puzzling, the passwords can be figured out and are fairly straightforward. And on your way about, there are hazards, whether in form of explosives, steam vents, shards of glass, radiation, or even just high impacts that can damage your suit to make it more difficult to navigate and move around, or it starts a timer to your expiration. You can combat this by fin…