Deathbloom: Chapter 1 Reviews

Decent indie survival horror game, though surely not deserving 89% positive reviews, it's more like a 6 or 7 out of 10. Some stuff seem to be just asset flips, combat isn't that great and the biggest issue the game has is performance: it's quite bad sometimes with around 20-30 fps. Btw. my gpu is a 1070 Ti and the graphics in this game aren't even good, so yeah. Still, I mostly liked exploring the house (and the rest) and I just love the core survival horror gameplay even though this game starts of as a walking simulator and it will take some time till you get a gun. The atmosphere is also quite nice and I got scared once or twice. I should also mention that I was stuck twice where I had to look up the solution as it wasn't clear at all what to do.

Absolute slapper from Vincent Lade. Very fun horror shooter, reminds me of Cry of Fear and Condemned. Would recommend, it's a solid FPS.

Ok, it could be awesome, but it's just ok. It's too dark, the map is confusing, and the house is way too big for this kind of game. I played for 3.6 hours and 1 hour was just me searching for keys in the dark that aren't highlighted. And when I say dark, I mean pitch black. You have to find your way through the basement with no flashlight and only flickering little red lights on the wall. I don't know who thought that's fun....spoiler, it isn't. And the worst thing is the frame drop at some points where you have to fight. But the rest of the game is intersting enough to recommend it.

I'm all out of whack with Vincent Lade's horror games. I played the middle one first, the last one second and the first one last. My gaming pattern with his stuff is practically modeled after a ps1 survival horror game puzzle. It's convoluted, you might fake yourself out on the solution but you'll come up with an answer somehow. The bottom line is; The Swine was a decent short horror piece and Harthorn was pretty awesome n' unified experience, at least that's how I felt. So, how did Deathbloom Chapter 1 stack-up? It's pretty solid and even more impressive for a first effort into the genre from Lade. After a short prologue of past events in a dreary mansion, our hero arrives at the looming Bachman Manor based on a letter he received in the mail. It's a familiar sort of set-up the dreaded letter device (Silent Hill 2, the somewhat underrated Lethe, etc.); you've got history with someone at this strange place and you've got the sense that things just aren't right and might need some exploring. You traverse your way through the gardens and sneak into the place with all manner of hell breaking loose after that. For whatever reason, after playing so many games set in strange, massive Mansions (or similar monstrous buildings), I'll always have a thing for that finding this item to get to that room and slowly, deliberately going into the darker recesses of whatever evil secret that these edifices hold. It worked in the Resident Evils, I enjoyed it in White Night, etc. etc. etc. Once inside the manor, you more or less end up in the midst of a cult mistaking psychosis for psychotherapy brainwash and you have to search the place top to bottom, solve puzzles and even fight to stay alive. The exploration was satisfying with enough pick-ups to survive scattered around if you take the time to look for them. You'll be fetch questing like Fido, arming yourself with different weapons from firearms to bow n' arrow to hand-to-hand weapons, going up against the Manor's small variety of dedicated s.o.b.s who want to give you a home underneath Bachman's flower garden. For the unity engine the environments look really good while atmospheric sound really gets in your head with a good set of noise-cancellers. It's sound that renders your opponents scary because their animations aren't really up to snuff (especially their deaths), taking some immersion away when you fell your foes to see them ragdoll bounce like rubber or have their heads go full n' funny Jacob's Ladder at the very last moment. Another downside is a few of the areas seem to lag into existence and it got me frustratingly and furiously killed unfairly twice by some mean-arse lil' masked entities. It's not a constant problem the lag, so it wasn't too out of control though be prepared to recover some ground ol' skewl survival horror style if this happens because the game only saves at the beginning of new areas. So keep that in mind. Quick-witted players should be able to set these foes up to feed the death machine but you might need to adjust your settings just a bit to get the lag down in tight spots. The shooting and control on mouse/keyboard worked pretty well. A touch more challenge would have been welcome but you do need to make your shots count in the early going or there is a good chance you could run out of ammo. Later on all bets are off which made the more sinister late game areas a little too easy to plow through, though I actually appreciated the reward of better equipment the further you got to Bachman Manor's ugly, rotten core. I've heard some complaints about the bow n' arrow but I ripped it up with that thing and was able to conserve a fair amount of ammunition to bring out the big guns later on. Despite tacking this on at the end of the paragraph here I wanted to mention the map system; think it's a surprising highlight that helps you figure out where you need to go without feeding you all of the details on how to get there. Your story is told through your character's inner text-based monologue and notes that solidly convey what's going on, especially for an indie title that is the developer's very first work. A few of the areas, especially when you're unarmed in flooded basement maze are very harrowing and show a keen, advanced eye for tension that a lot of devs can't shove out the gate on that first title. Deathbloom's not perfect and I hope that I conveyed the things that might turn off some players. I feel old school survival horror players that have been around the block and prefer a fight instead of hiding in a locker full of gym shorts will have fun with this one. This was definitely a good time and I wanted to play it every night till I finished it, once I finally booted it up. I'll certainly be taking on Chapter 2 in the very near future. A solid first effort all around.

40 minutes in and still nothing happened, couldn't hold my interest for any longer tbh. It's quite unpolished, the story doesn't make any sense, and it's easy losing track of what you're trying to accomplish. Maybe it gets better later, I will not find out, unfortunately.

This indie horror game really impressed me; apparently made by one single guy...it puts so many other devs to shame. It is a really competent Resident Evil clone, doing stuff like exploring a interconnected mansion. You even get to use an assortment of weapons, yet still manages to remain tense throughout the whole game. Just be aware that it has two issues, one is that it only saves at the beginning of an area which could lead to you having to replay a large section if you die, and second is that some animations on the enemies are really wonky, at one point one enemy didn't even use their walking animation and just moved around like a floating ghost, not to mention they often ragdoll comedically and even clip through stuff. Other than that... great atmosphere, great gameplay, I had a blast playing it. I specially loved when I got a bow that could kill anything with 2 headshots and you could retrieve the arrows after, I enjoyed making sure I got perfect headshots to maximize my ammo. You can easily get all achievements in one playthrough, just make sure you get the secret shotgun in the residential area!

This game is a very mixed bag, but overall I can't recommend it. I bought it with the impression that it would be similar to Resident Evil. It is, but has a lot of glaring issues that made it a horrible slog to get through. I stopped playing after the first boss fight because I was not having fun and couldn't take it anymore. First of all, the game seems to suffer from over-designed levels and under-designed gameplay. The levels are very expansive, with lots of rooms and a lot of details. In the manor itself, there are plenty of rooms and the layout of the house (mostly) makes sense. It feels like a real house, not like it was designed for a horror game to take place in it, which is great. But there is almost nothing in any of these rooms - no puzzles, no consumables, almost no ammo, no traps, and a few enemies. Most rooms only have one or two things in them, and there is no reason to ever go back once you've picked up/read/killed those one or two things. Some rooms have nothing in them at all. There are a lot of weird graphical glitches too. Odd lighting effects bouncing off the walls are very disorienting. Some areas get culled at inappropriate times, causing rooms or walls to disappear right in front of you. Some environments are just hallways with a repeating texture slapped onto them. A certain tunnel the player has to crawl through is probably the worst example, with a repeating brick texture pasted onto every wall, with some bricks even facing different directions than others. Then there's the gameplay. A lot of it is just running through dark corridors trying to figure out where the hell you are. The map is always incomplete and only certain things will be updated on it. For example, if you find a keypad-locked door, the map will add "keypad" at its location. However, if you find a key-locked door or one that only opens on one side, you better remember that, because the map doesn't record it. Nor does it record what rooms or areas you've been to. Some doors or level transitions are even missing from the map. And there is no indication of what keys are for what doors, so you better figure it out, even if that means checking every cabinet in a mansion for the one that the "Cabinet Key" is for. Of course there is combat too, which is also clunky and repetitive. All enemies just move towards you in a straight line. They can pathfind around corners and up stairs, but all they do is come right at you and attack when within range. Your job is to hold S and shoot them in the face until they die. The enemies make no attempt to dodge, and have no special abilities or unique attacks to speak of. Most of your time will be spent wandering around trying to complete the objective given to you. Every area I played feels too long. You stumble around in the confusing map, kill a few randomly-placed enemies, read some notes, and then find/do the thing you were supposed to find/do and move on to the next area. This is the formula and it gets old fast. Some areas are definitely worse than others though: [spoiler]The basement sucked. Especially the red corridor. It felt completely pointless when I realized there were no enemies there.[/spoiler] Overall this game just lacks a lot of polish and care into the gameplay. The environments and UI were the best parts. The story seemed mildly interesting, but not enough to make me want to trudge through the lackluster gameplay. I think this developer could do much better given more time and care into making the game actually fun to play. Anyways, that's about it. Below is a list of good/bad things that are small but worth mentioning. + Weapons I've seen so far look good, and have nice, crisp animations and satisfying sounds. + Story interested me so far. - Subtitles for everything, no voice acting. - Discount Call of Duty hitmarker on hit. - Enemies don't react to damage at all unless it kills them. You can shoot a zombie 4 times in the face with a bow, just taking the same arrow out of their head and shooting it back in again, until they die. - Horrible enemy animations. When killed, enemies just ragdoll and fall on the floor. - Zombies are weirdly big? They don't even look like they mutated or something to get bigger. They just seem like they were imported into the game at the wrong scale. - Sound design is weird. I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out what was ambiance/music and what was actual SFX. Hard to tell which direction sounds are coming from. - No options menu. No key rebinding. No changing sensitivity or brightness. The developer was apparently working on one two years before I posted this review, but never finished it. - No gamepad support, but plugging in a gamepad does break the keyboard/mouse controls. - The basement.

Best way I can describe Deathbloom is like a poorly executed I, Spy walking sim. The navigation in this game is terrible, added with the fact your character moves like an absolute slug, poor lighting and frame drops, you're often wondering around aimlessly looking for a key item in and amongst the same looking environments and reused models to just progress into the next part of the mansion to complete another fetch quest... The enemies in this game are just trivial, honestly I don't know why the dev bothered adding them, unless you've got your keyboard mapped to your feet they present absolutely no threat, majority are just bought straight from the Unity asset store and are just generic looking zombie models. Honestly, there was so many points through my play-time where I was on the cusp of hitting the refund button, and if like me you have limited time to play then Deathbloom isn't worth your time and effort. Don't fall into the same trap I did looking at other reviews making comparisons with Resident Evil, because other than a mansion backdrop you will be disappointed.

I loved both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of Deathbloom. Absolutely worth a play through (or multiple) and worth the price. I got about 5.5 hours out of Chapter 1 and about 4 hours out of Chapter 2. Pros: Engaging story Eerie environments Binaural audio Amazing soundtrack High intense/suspense moments Beautiful areas to explore Good quantity of checkpoints Cons: Controller support poor Subtitle text needs to have the ability to be larger No manual save feature https://www.seravium.com https://twitch.tv/seravium

Just finished this game on stream, both myself and my chat really enjoyed it. Great work Vincent! I got some feedback here: Heavy lag in certain rooms, but it disappeared later. Might have been because i advanced or because I restarted the game. I lost all my weapons except the bow at one point right before boss fight. I had to resort to using my bow to kill him while looting my arrows and running away at the same time, still managed though! Graphics are solid and so is the sound design. Great ambience! STOKED for the next chapter in Deathbloom: Chapter 2