Steam’s critically acclaimed indie horror game “Crimson Snow”, where the old lover comes back to visit you…Death | 4Gamers

As the end of the year approaches, in addition to counting down to the New Year, Christmas also has an important position in Western culture similar to that of the Eastern Spring Festival. The “Crimson Snow” (working translation: Scarlet Snow) that will be presented this time is a horror game with a strange letter that suddenly appears at home on Christmas Eve as the background.

As the time gets closer to Christmas, whether or not you are in the habit of celebrating Christmas, you can notice that the festive mood is getting stronger. And whenever there is a holiday and New Year’s Eve, there will always be entertainment related to it, especially Christmas, which is extremely important abroad.

“Crimson Snow” was independently designed by the small workshop Steppe Hare Studio, with Christmas as its theme; describes a horror experience that was meant to be reunited with her girlfriend, but she was dragged into a nightmare by an uninvited guest.

A twisted Christmas, an inevitable horror

The plot of “Crimson Snow” is very simple in the beginning. The protagonist Mark, who was preparing to spend Christmas alone, suddenly receives a call from his girlfriend Joyce. She had returned early from a business trip and wanted to spend the holidays with him.

While the two are talking on the phone, the protagonist will suddenly find a Christmas card popped up in the house, the content of which is a bit questionable, the protagonist will immediately go out in search of his girlfriend to spend the holidays together between the wind and the snow . Unexpectedly, the place that I thought was my girlfriend’s house was not my girlfriend’s house. Our protagonist has just entered a strange house and locked himself up with a strange creature that looked human but not human.

After piecing together some clues, the protagonist discovers that this monster happens to be his ex-girlfriend who was dumped by him many years ago because she went insane, and besides drawing you here, Joyce’s cry for help once again represents love. some monster for you. There is also a conspiracy. The player needs to find a way to survive as soon as possible. At the same time, he must use the phone to help Joyce, and finally find a way to solve the monster and save Christmas.

Carefully organized game design, unexpected scary links

Though an indie design, escape room, and horror game in the early access stage, “Crimson Snow” doesn’t stop at the classic gameplay of simply hiding monsters and collecting items to open the door, but adds a lot of ingenuity to the game, the sense of horror and horror is not inferior to the finished products on the market.

First of all, “Crimson Snow” does not have the common setting of crouching and sneaking, so there is no scene where ghosts appear invisible to ghosts after crouching, but the female ghosts in the game patrol the street that players must to pass .

Therefore, if the player wants to move towards the goal, he must be optimistic about the timing of the female ghost’s action, follow it calmly, calculate the right moment to slip into the goal and make good use of some help provided by the game, such as sound of the heartbeat when the female ghost approaches the player, the background music will also be different, allowing players to make a good strategy.

Such a design not only forces the player to suppress the fear of coming into close contact with the female ghost, listening to her strange whispers and twisted body. The game can also use this to predict the player’s action pattern, and then arrange other scary spots according to this. For example, the player is walking to a safe place, but the female ghost will suddenly turn around to check and scare you unawares.

Or the background music clearly indicates that the ghost is not nearby, but in the dark the ghost’s hand is outstretched to grab the player. Compared to the common Jump scare mode, this design is not only more natural, but also has less sense of repetition, so you won’t be scared until you play it later.

A horror story with a Christmas feel, but the multiple ending system is a bit bland

Although “Crimson Snow” is still in the early access stage, the plot is not sloppy, no matter why the female ghost appears in the story, and the grievances and hatreds with the ex-girlfriend have been explained, although it is not particularly outstanding, But at least there’s a complete succession sequence, players can piece together the cause of the accident from the room layout, scattered letters, and even the lines of the female ghost.

As for the Christmas theme, it is not reduced to a simple background setting, the atmosphere is not lacking from start to finish, in addition to the environment modeling full of Christmas decorations, game puzzles, scary links and objects props are all useful Various Christmas equipment.

The lighting equipment in the protagonist’s hand is also a fireworks stick prepared for the party; At the end of the game, the protagonist will learn that the monster’s weakness is fire and strong light, and he also uses Christmas fireworks to defeat it.

It’s a shame that the main “Crimson Snow” multi-ending gameplay in the promotion didn’t make much of a difference. This work once stated in the game’s introduction that every word and action of the player will affect the story of the game. These words and actions are mainly dialogue choices that will appear when the protagonist and his girlfriend Joyce are on the phone.

The author initially expected that real behavior in the game could change the relationship between the characters, and perhaps even dispel the monster’s resentment towards the protagonist, but the only difference between the different endings is the relationship between the protagonist and the his girlfriend, other than the story, levels and gameplay are exactly the same, which is a pity.

Interesting and thoughtful design, come to a different Christmas experience

Due to the attractive and easy-to-make features of horror games, the market is full of works that use cheap scary links to cover up the lack of gameplay and full of bugs. “Crimson Snow” is still only a small game with a game length of about two hours. The game stability, horror and story have all reached certain standards.

At the same time, although there is only a simplified Chinese translation of this work, the quality is very good, and it can be seen that it is not a machine translation but a real translator. Players who want to add some sense of horror to the festival can buy it for a try or keep paying attention to the next updates. I believe the production team can perform so well in early access and the quality of the final product it will definitely not be bad.