Quick Reviews

I have had my eye on this game, and finally bought it during the Steam sale. In one sentence: I really enjoyed playing it, the journey of playing it. The unique game system, the music, the visuals, the little reflections, and eventual but extremely subtle lore/backstory. My review, however, is based for a player who doesn't go into the lore, although I have (admittedly) delved into it, otherwise.

Steam description: WARNING. Stay inside. Lock your doors. Close the blinds. Only let humans in. Eliminate all Visitors. An anxiety horror about paranoia in the End of Times.

My addition to the description: It's an apocalypse, and your home turns into a place of refuge. There are 'Visitors' you have to be wary of: they look like humans, but there are signs to recognize them. Choose who you let in, choose how you test them using your limited energy, and choose who to kill.

I liked the pace of the game, including how little one could do besides talking, filtering, watching news/listening to radio. As well as the way in which upgrades happened. The initial storyline of characters is minimal, and I was a little confused about it, because the initial 'filtering' was based on...almost nothing? I really, however, liked the fact that we could choose our own way of determining who to kick out/kill. The tests themselves can be faulty, and so, we have to choose how to spend our energy, on whom, and what test is most reliable on the specific person. I was a little annoyed by the FEMA randomly taking my people (especially the ones I really liked!) away from my little hostel, but apart from that, it kept me hooked.

The game does a good job of giving us the context. And the introduction of the sub-plots and plots, plus extra context, is gradual, at a good pace. It also depends on player actions, where some plots are reveals while others are locked away, or concealed. Because of this, there is a big choice factor, apart from the things I have already mentioned. This adds a good amount of replayability. The game play through, one run, is quite short. However, with the update (I did a couple of runs), each play through adds some small scenes/insight, which gives us a motivation to play it again. This is in addition to the replayability factors I have already mentioned.

I like how it builds up the terror. It is an all consuming environment. Truth is something that you use as a life/death situation, as a strength and a weakness.

All this being said, I have some strong criticisms.

First, I will counter my replayability aspect. While the things I have mentioned still stand, the endings did not make sense to me. One of my ending was me screwing up by mistake. However, 2 other times, it just ended with me completing all the nights. Which means, it felt extremely immature and sudden. This is why I started my review with I loved the game experience itself, barring the ending. I know there are 10 different endings, which offer us choices to unravel the mystery, I would have liked for it have a coherent ending.

Second, sometimes the story plot is so subtle that you can miss almost all of it. While I appreciate how it involves the player in the choice-making, the rushed out-of-nowhere ending + the subtle aspects of it lose my actual interest in finding out more. I know multiple playthroughs of this will help this part of it...but shouldn't one run also give you more information? Especially for people who don't want to do extra outside work to go into lore? This definitely depends on players and their preferences, and to me, it felt too subtle for us to undo it, especially considering how quick it can end, with no warning whatsoever.

I am definitely looking forward to more updates to the game, and despite my criticisms, I do find it worthwhile to play!

Short description: There is a family massacre -- the parents and one of their two daughters are dead; the only surviving member is Lenora Hope, their other daughter. Everyone suspected Lenora, but the police did not have any evidence to prove it, and so, she continued living in the Hope murder mansion. Enter Kat: a caregiver who has been assigned Lenora Hope after a 6 month probation because of one of her patients' suspicious death. Lenora has not spoken for decades, but she tells Kit that she wants to reveal everything to her.

The story build-up is really good. And I found the horror/creepy aspects of it really good in terms of creating a paranoid atmosphere. In the first half, there were sub-plots with their own mysteries forming, without it feeling too forced, which I appreciated as my curiosity grew. Sager also did a really good job when it came to utilizing the mansion. It was all-consuming, with a dreadful past, whose very literal remains still shaped the place. It being on the cliff's edge lent itself to a very literal danger, as the dangers of the mansion and its occupants itself grew. It was a good winter snowy day read.

However, the book should have ended 80-90 pages earlier. Now, I love plot-twists. And I love them even more when it's aided by a creepy atmosphere. But once the 'main' mysteries are solved and revealed, Sager kept the plot twists coming, to the point that most of them stopped making sense, and it felt like they were just added for the shock factor. Even scenes/story points you didn't think needed an explanation were explained, that too badly. This ruined the overall plot of the book for me.

I am happy I read it because I actually really liked the first 65%~ of it quite a bit, especially because of the creepy atmosphere, even if some of the things didn't fully make sense (but they weren't completely outlandish so I will give it a pass), but I would have appreciated a sensible ending, even if some partial questions lingered. Also, Kit can be really stupid sometimes to the point it annoyed me. I get the part where the author wants the reader to figure some stuff out, but it could have been done in a way where Kit isn't shown to be annoyingly aloof. My final criticism is that the main set of mystery revelation just happens through a simple and long conversation. I mean, OK, Kit has done work to figure out a part of it, but the rest is just told to her. And some characters who I thought were going to play a larger role just vanished from the storyline, like a TV show where they've to make some nonsensical abrupt reason for a character to go away because they can't afford to continue to pay them anymore. But this is a book, and it does not make sense.

To conclude, honestly I don't know how to conclude this because the negative stuff simply overpowered the good parts of it for me. It had the perfect ingredients of things I like in a book, so I am doubly disappointed. That being said, this book has lots of good reviews, and I can almost see where they are coming from. If you don't mind not having context for all plot-twists and enjoy a great atmosphere building, this might suit you.

I read it in 3 days, and I read the physical book while listening to the audiobook because that was recommended to me. Before going forward, I want to say this is way outside the genres/tropes/even sub-genres that I go for when reading. That said, when gaming, I do like roguelikes quite a bit.

All in all, I have to say that it is fun and engaging enough for the reader to keep on reading. For me personally, I loved how the book weaved in intergalactic capitalist war politics, a game show element with different types of hosts, and the brutality of entertainment. It did all of this without feeling like the author was trying to force it in. And the best part is: Carl is just an ordinary guy. We don't get too much of his backstory, but he learns and reflects on the world, his/its moral compasses, reflects on his personal story, as he sees the new world and its enemies. His relationship with his ex's cat, Princess Donut, is also an interesting part of the plot. It does something productive: it shows how different sentient people, depending on their growth environments, value things; what they seek out, and how they go about it. And in the end, Carl and Princess Donut's goal is the same, even though their approach couldn't be more different.

The pace was good, however it could have been a little faster. This is totally just me, I like fast paced books more. I will say one thing though, the pace it goes, it is best for the readers to acclimate themselves to the world. Any faster, and we would have had to refer back to the pages. The humor, too, isn't my style, so I knew when it was trying to be funny but it didn't get the giggles out of me.

Finally, it did just enough in terms of plot points, and introducing things but leaving them unfinished to make its readers curious. Again, without it feeling rushed or forced.

I can see how it isn't everyone's cup of tea. Honestly, I think the book found its way to me at a perfect moment, because I think I wouldn't have picked it up otherwise. All in all, definitely recommend adding it to your 'want to read' lists.

I rarely ever watch anything outside YouTube, and I don't know why I decided to do this. Don't watch this. In one sentence: feels like it's trying to get the murderers released. I understand that it is a rather controversial thing, they were 16 when they were sentenced for life without the possibility of parole. But this docu-series feels wrong.

For one, they don't interview any of Cassie's [the victim] family members, any. And both the killers' immediate family talks of and for them. Of course they will have sympathy for them.

I should mention that Brian's [one of the two men] parents, especially his dad, did show a lot of compassion -- their struggle to understand and hold the opposite ends [the murder and their son being the murderer] was shown rather well. However, it is drowned in a sea of voices almost advocating for the two men: stressing their ages when they were sentenced, their backstories, Torey's mother's insensitivity, Torey and Brian's own statements [!] about how they're not the same person anymore, factual information about how the US is no longer giving life sentences to minors, blame game, and their friends' rather uncomfortable narration [why were they there? I still don't understand what their purpose was in the doc?].

I do not want to watch a true crime documentary about killers who are still alive and incarcerated on big platforms such as Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Prime, and its main point being arguments to persuade/show why they should be given parole or even released. The amount of times they've mentioned they were 16 in defense of the murders is sickening. They were 16, so was Cassie. They stabbed her 30 times, made a video of their murder plan and process, got rid of the evidence, and had a list of other women they wanted to kill. Their inspiration? Columbine. The judge was absolutely right when he said that he is sure they would kill again if they were let back into society.

Insensitive, shameful, and vile.