Recent reviews by hrh

The developer's harassment of a fan creator overshadows the game itself. An enthusiastic fandom is the lifeblood of an indie game like this and Kit9 would apparently rather stomp that out than communicate or nurture it.

The dollars to entertainment value ratio on this game is absolutely stunning. Of course there's plenty to do with the base game itself, but there's truly endless potential for personal challenges when you factor in all the different characters, weapons, modes, etc.

I'm a big fan of horror, but I have PTSD which makes it very hard for me to play horror games on my own. I generally resort to having my wife play the games I'm interested in and watch so I don't get too stressed. One game I managed to play on my own was Layers of Fear, and I didn't even realize this game was made by the same team until after the trailer hooked me. The story, gameplay concept, atmosphere, and environmental design are all incredible, and I was mostly thrilled with the whole experience. I'm solidly a Bloober fan now.

But—as someone who loves games that others deride as "walking simulators," I don't understand why developers of such games try to appeal to those people with simple combat/stealth/etc segments that won't satisfy them and just frustrate people like me. I don't think it would have been too much to ask for there to be something like an optional invincible mode that kicks in after you fail a section a couple times. At the very least I shouldn't have to replay 5 minutes of the game or watch a non-skippable cut scene again just to get through a failed segment. I promise you, the strength of the game otherwise means I would still get the full experience in terms of suspense. If anything, the stress and frustration needing to play through certain scenes over and over totally took me out of the experience. Please consider adding something like SOMA's "Safe" mode to future versions of the game for people like me who want an engrossing interactive narrative but can barely make it through extended stealth scenes.

As you can see from my time played, I tried really hard to give this game a fair shake. I'm willing to invest a lot into VNs even when they don't seem great at first because some of the best ones start out slow, then eventually culminate in incredible ways. Based on the reviews, I expected this game to turn it all around with the true ending. It didn't. The word count is also nothing to brag about—it could have been edited to be a third of its length and been more effective. The characters lean heavily on a couple traits each, which could be fine if you weren't reading their rambling thoughts for hours on end. I really wanted to like the Letter, but ultimately I wish I had paid more attention to critical reviews.

I saw this game in a video and wasn't expecting much, but ran to buy it after only seeing an overview of the gameplay. The puzzles are inventive and require a lot of playing around to figure out the most effective moves and best order of operations. There are so many possibilities it can be intimidating to break into, but exploring the scene and your options itself is really fun, and when you finally bring it all together it's so satisfying! I actually disagree with this game not having replay value because while it's not simple to pass the levels, it takes even more time and effort to reach the higher ranks and get high scores. Even if you just want to pass at the simplest level, this game is completely worth it at full price.

I gave this game a fair shot and played through the entire thing, looking for the great story that others seem to be seeing, but I was let down completely. I might just be too far out of the right demographic for it, but in the end it feels like a waste of time. The puzzles had no purpose, and any real sense of unease was short lived. The whole thing feels very much like the freeware it originally was, with a plot and characters an edgy middle schooler might come up with. I felt no connection to any of it.