The List – We have our own Silent Hill at home. Review / Games

Played on PC

The path to great development is long and thorny. If there are no investors behind you, but you want work on your own project, you have to conquer step by step on pure enthusiasm. DeppreSick Team started out modding Half-Life 2. Her mod Grey received many good reviews. Remorse: The List was the first standalone game for a modest two-person studio. It can be seen that the available resources are not enough to implement all the ideas, but I would like to praise the guys for their efforts.

⇡#welcome home

Adrian after a nightmare comes to his senses in some back room. After exploring a couple of storage areas, he finds a flashlight and a piece of paper with a strange list of three items. It seems to be some kind of nonsense, and he moves on. Finally, I manage to get out onto the streets of the provincial Hungarian town of Hidegpuszta. Light from rare lanterns barely cuts through the darkness of the night. Windows in several one-story houses are lit, but local residents are not visible. Only the dog at his kennel smiles kindly at Adrian.

How and why did the hero end up here? This is what we have to find out. Not far from the warehouse, we come across a creepy pedestal that is missing three items. There is nothing to do, it remains to go in search. No arrows, markers or compass. The only thing that will help you navigate is a city map torn from the nearest bulletin board. But even on it you will not see a hero – you need to independently understand where you are from local attractions. In the spirit of the first parts of Silent Hill.

But Remorse: The List gives you even more freedom to explore. Several roads are open at once, and you decide in what order to explore the streets. At the same time, the city is compact, it is almost impossible to get lost in it, and well-placed light sources will surely lead you to all story locations.

Just as the thick fog of Silent Hill masked the weakness of the hardware of the first PlayStation, so the developers of Remorse hide the poverty of the environment with darkness. Well-lit rooms are better detailed, but still we have a classic indie on Unreal Engine 4 – there are not enough stars from the sky.

Don’t worry, this cutie will be fine.

I would like to praise the layout of the city. Yes, it’s small, but it’s easy to navigate with a map and road signs, and the streets are cleverly connected. There are literally a few cuts missing, thanks to which it would be possible to avoid the tedious running around back and forth in the same places in a number of episodes.

It will not work to walk around the town in a relaxed way – it is not as empty as it seems at first glance: it is inhabited by crippled monsters. Some run after the hero on stumps instead of legs, others crawl like worms, while others generally represent disparate limbs without a body. The sight is both eerie and pitiful. The fantasy of the authors is in a good sophisticated way. A single theme of mutilation connects opponents to a common narrative – a sign of a good horror movie.

Fortunately, there is no need to play hide and seek with the creatures – they can and should fight back. At first, Adrian will be able to fight back with a shovel or a hammer, and soon he will acquire small arms. But we must immediately understand that the battles here are exclusively functional, it is difficult to enjoy them. Close combat is clumsy and comes down to cutting circles around the opponent: they jumped, hit, ran away, and so on until the bitter end.

If you have ever wondered what a Reyman horror might look like, then something like this

It is better to lay the monster with lead whenever possible – not much more interesting, but faster. Of course, there are not so many cartridges, but with careful use of ammunition, there will be enough for everyone. And sometimes it’s easier to run away: the world is divided into separate locations, between which enemies cannot move.

The arsenal is limited by a modest inventory. There are two slots for active weapons and ten more for everything else: spare guns, ammunition, first-aid kits, and plot items. A gun and a machine gun occupy two cells at once. There are no boxes for extra belongings a la Resident Evil, but, on the other hand, discarded things do not disappear. Therefore, the surplus can be dumped at the pedestal – you still have to return to it.

The last obstacle to the mystery of the past is riddles. Basically, this is a simple search for the right item that you want to apply in a specific place. Moreover, even in order to open the lock, you need to open the inventory and select a specific key. There are also more interesting puzzles: pick up a combination or make a story from disparate pieces. No revelations, but in a couple of moments I had to break my head a little.

There is even a platforming episode

I would like to say a few words about the bosses. There are only two of them, but much more fantasy has been invested in them than in the two-headed monster from the multi-million dollar The Callisto Protocol. To defeat one of them, you need to find and burn key items in the furnace, and the battle with the second takes place on a huge board game field. Nothing complicated, but with a memorable twist.

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Remorse: The List feels like coursework. It has functional gameplay. The game looks cheap, but neat. Yes, the authors definitely approached the creation of their offspring with love. After the passage even opens an interactive museum with concepts, unused monster models and a message from the developers. But this lampiness does not cover the general clumsy performance. Remorse: The List still closer to an amateur modification than a full-fledged game.

Advantages:

• atmospheric Hungarian city with a well-thought-out layout;
• in a good way creepy design of monsters;
• some interesting puzzles.

Flaws:

• combat system without any return;
• general clumsy performance.

Rating: 6.0/10

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