• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Huntsman: The Orphanage |OT| Try to not to ALT+ F4

fantomena

Member
This is my first OT, so be gentle please, I need critics.

header_292x136.jpg


Developer: ShadowShifters

Publisher: ShadowShifters, TIPFIND PTY LTD ATF PD DISTRIBUTION TRUST

Plattforms: PC

Release: September 13th (PC) at Steam, GOG and Amazon

About the game (big wall of text incoming):

A HYBRID OF HORROR-SURVIVAL AND CREEPYPASTA...

Finally, a game that gives you rich dialogue, complex characters and atmospheric setting at the same time as it takes away violence as your only way out.

"Huntsman: The Orphanage" is an indie 3D first-person horror-mystery game, where your only equipment is your smartphone and your only weapon is your wits.

Explore the old Orphanage buildings and grounds as you investigate the legend of The Huntsman and discover the truth of the children's disappearances, but beware of Huntsman himself - he still stalks the hallways and his embrace is inescapable.

Find the lost orphan, Charley and ensure he survives, so you and your ancestors can continue to exist in this present thread of time and space you know as your reality!

---

AS DARKNESS CONCEALS, SO LIGHT REVEALS...

...and you may not like what you see. The human fear of the dark is innate within us all; we may conquer it to a certain degree, but never fully suppress the chill of unease it harbours.
For millennia our ancestors have gathered around the flickering light of the fire, seeking succour from its warmth and the wisdom of insight offered by the multitude of visions of wild game, predators, allies, enemies and creatures with no name at all writhing within the shapes cast by the dancing flames; light has always been a portal to other dimensions, beyond these earthly realms.

But place your faith in the light at your own peril, for just as darkness covers, so light reveals - and in the portal between those two worlds, lives... The Huntsman.

The Huntsman thrives in the darkness, effortlessly weaving and unravelling space and time through all the centuries, seeking the lost and the lonely, the orphaned and the bereft. Some say he came to be in our particular thread of reality in the 14th century, attracted by the misery wrought by the Black Plague of Europe and clad in the black-leather guise of a Plague Doctor... come face to face with him in the here and now at your own risk – he hunts within the half-light, the world his unsuspecting prey blindly see as safe, only to secret his victims within the realm he most adores – the blackness.


Grimhaven Orphanage, Illinois, USA... the place where you come face to face with your past, your fears, your future - and the legendary Huntsman! Here one fateful night, way back on June 17th 1898, a dozen children disappeared... seemingly without a trace. Yet, traces do remain.

Back in the present day, here you are - visiting the crumbling overgrown edifice of that same orphanage, urged on by your curiosity and the rising swell of cries for hard evidence that The Huntsman may actually exist. Even as you explore the abandoned buildings and investigate the truth behind the tragedy, you risk becoming a victim of The Huntsman yourself - he still stalks the paths and hallways, and his embrace is inescapable.

Clamber over the overgrown hedges one moonlit night, tentatively step inside through the broken front doors, flick on your phone’s torch app so you can see where you're going. Shine it around the aging brick walls... the orphanage has obviously been deserted for many years, yet, something in the air is changing – there is a stirring, you can feel it.

Exploring the crumbling rooms, casting your light over the disused pots and pans in the scullery, looking out from the dirty windows over the back yards, the rambling old memorial hedge maze and its 'hanging tree', the old chapel. In the murky back corner of what must have been the music room rests an old German piano, dusty, crooked, neglected for so long. Listen - can you hear those distant yet clear notes of music - it's altogether complex, plaintive, haunting - an eerie expression of the grief and misery of a young orphan lost in time?

Climb the rickety stairs to the rows of cots lining the low-ceiling dormitories, a pair of iron scissors dangling above each little bed to guard the infants from the changling-maker fairies... a child's toy rolls across the floor to your feet and as you go to pick it up, your phone crackles to life - an image is trying to form on the screen... someone is trying to communicate... faintly through the white noise - is that a child's face... from another time, but perhaps, the very same place?

Could there be a deeper set of motivations, personal discoveries, twists and turns to this journey through the dank, cramped brick-walled rooms of the abandoned Grimhaven Orphanage? Will your discoveries reveal more than you bargained for, as the layers of time and space are peeled back one by one? Are there unknown links between you and the faint sounds of those lost children’s voices, their half-seen faces straining and struggling to communicate to you through the electronically-sensitive medium of your own phone?

It seems that parallel to your search for the truth, you must also save the soul of your own ancestor, the missing orphan Charley - or you may cease to exist yourself. Twists in time and tears in the fabric of space provide glimpses of the terrifying events of that night, and as you piece together the stories behind the disappearances and the rumours of The Huntsman, you learn of shocking connections to the haunted young Charley.

Follow the clues, do as Charley asks you, find him, bring him back, or cease to exist yourself!


Features:

- Looking for a game with interwoven storylines, intriguing and richly-penned characters, and an immersive atmosphere?

- No violence, blood, gore or guns! Your only equipment is your smartphone, your only weapon is your wits!

- Choose your own path, make your own choices - scare yourself as much, or as little, as you please... but only positive action, empathy and character judgement will win the game!

- IGM:"a whole new take on the horror genre... different and more creepy." DAJAY:"Resident Evil 4 for the new generation of gamers - truly innovate(s) a dying genre"TRUE PC GAMING:"picking up the reigns of Amnesia's legacy"

- While this game is non-violent, it is not suitable for young or impressionable people due to the intense nature of its supernatural themes.

Impressions:

Kaboomshark
Indie Game Magazine
Kotaku

Screenshots:

ss_cc8a7875f9bf24746b5d930c72f5e5a1d6ee5b32.600x338.jpg


ss_7e5e5c2a7df0fdc83ff9bdb114f8b1ecda8d11c2.600x338.jpg


ss_6ba6b874965560fd243221b022f83e26aa6bbe9f.600x338.jpg


Videoes:

Trailer
Gameplay
 
I'll have to keep my eye on this since I enjoy scary games, but I hate when a games' flashlight is just a circle in the center of the screen that changes size. It's cool that it's using a phones light app, don't think thats been done before, but thats just not how it would look and it seems silly to me. Holding a flashlight isn't just going to illuminate the back wall of a room if thats where it's pointing.
 

dangeROSS

Member
I too got a key for this game through an Amazon promotion. I'm looking to play some scary games for the upcoming Halloween season, so this should fit that perfectly. I haven't really been following any news or previews about it, but from what I have seen it looks like it could be interesting.
 

dangeROSS

Member
I tried playing this game a bit today. Checking the Steam Forums, supposedly the current build is a beta version. I didn't realize this. I guess the full release happens on Oct. 31.

I don't want to be overly harsh on the game because it is an Indie release and still in beta form. The game is dark. So dark that you can't see at all basically. Your phone's flashlight doesn't really do anything. There does not appear to be any options for adjusting brightness/contrast or anything like that in the game. I assume the brightness/contrast options and other tweaks will come in time.

There is support for the 360 gamepad which was a nice surprise to me. Except the right stick had it's axis reversed and I can't seem to figure out how to correct it. So I just played with a keyboard and mouse. The menu for customizing controls seems confusing and I decided to just stick with the defaults for now.There is currently no save system either. On the Forums it looks like that is coming in the next update.

I also experienced some weirdness when watching the game's credits. It sits at a black screen with music playing for a good while until the credits actually pop up. When they do they are incredibly small and unreadable.

The game needs updates for sure. Right now I'll wait until some of those changes come along before I really start getting into the game. I hope things come together well for this.
 

dangeROSS

Member
I hate to Double-Post, but I thought add some more impressions from the game after I played it again last night. There have been some patches released which helps things a little.

You can now actually see the environment a bit with the light from your phone. It's not great and there are still no options to adjust brightness/gamma or anything. At least not that I could find. But I was at least able to travel about inside the orphanage building. It was too dark for me to really navigate outside.

I have to say it was pretty neat exploring and the game had some neat atmosphere going. You can find pictures of missing orphans and listen to them talk about their time at the orphanage. They lay out the backstory and connections between the kids. Sometimes they give you hints as to where you can find items that you need in order to open a locked gate outside the building.

I also ran into the Huntsman himself, but I guess he was only a window dressing at that point. Supposedly he is active in the game now and will be around and out to get you. Listening to some recordings of the Orphans had the tell-tale sound of the Huntsman which lead to some fun moments of quickly looking around to make sure he wasn't there.

The game will supposedly save your progress now once you quit. Although it's still a bit vague about it all. If you pause and then choose main menu, it will take you back to the main screen and should save things for you. It doesn't really tell you this however. Then you have an option to continue. However while the game saved where my character was in the world, it seems to have erased all the objects I had found and collected in front of the locked gate. Which stinks.

I still hope they release some options for lighting/visibility and fix the objects disappearing once you save and quit. But I think this could be a interesting creepy game. I'll try it out again tonight with the Huntsman running about and see what that's like.
 
Top Bottom