Certain Death - Chaoticenter

Final Score: 4/5 Stars

Comment:

I liked the game's atmosphere, as well as the overall art direction chosen for the project. Unfortunately, in terms of sound, some parts leave something to be desired, especially the background music, which is not only loud but also impossible to mute natively, without any in-game options.

There is no full compatibility between keyboard and controller, at least in terms of visual input.

One technical bug I noticed was that the game's pause menu doesn't actually pause the game, as I managed to get killed by a Reaper while it was paused.

I missed some visual cues throughout the game. Or at least some direction given by the story.

The game loop is interesting, making it easily replayable due to speedruns.

But I didn't find it as scary as it could actually be, again, considering the dramatic upbeat music and lack of visual feedback. I feel like some polish here would help a lot, a jumpscare perhaps. Because I felt like death here is treated like nothing.

SOMETIMES (Extremely rare) the spike colliders don't work properly, but this can be easily solved by activating the stop damage trigger earlier. Because sometimes the spikes are already down, but the trigger remains active because the animation hasn't finished.

I didn't understand how the Reaper's system works; I noticed that it initially announces the attack, but besides there being no visual feedback, there's no active Reaper model, just a sound that happens to kill the player. After several attempts, I realized that the Reaper does have a model, but the damage collider or raycast is quite long, so the player will rarely see the Reaper up close.

My favorite enemy ended up being Eye in the last room. I feel that if it had been better explored throughout the gameplay, and the music wasn't so prominent, it would have been a great element of terror.

I had to restart the game because my torch went out and the game didn't explain how to relight it. Therefore, I couldn't return to the throne room to find the final key.

I feel there's a very short interval between the warning of the Reaper's presence and its actual appearance. This removes the surprise factor from the gameplay, which would be the basis of psychological terror. It becomes gameplay similar to Minecraft's "Dweller" mods, where the Dweller appears randomly, there's nothing you can do, and you simply die and lose the loot.

Overall, I liked the game for its simple graphics and basic gameplay. I feel that if the mechanics were better developed, it would be enough to be a streamable game, due to the replayability of always trying for the best time. BTW, I finished in 8:37 with 2 deaths.

Great game, good athmosphere and gameplay.

sppooky ;_;