PARANOIHELL Reviews

Great game! Plot may be cryptic and mostly up for interpretation, but honestly I find that a great positive when it comes to going back to it an thinking about what not only the text itself says but how the interweaving game design can tell us about the story. The gameplay is a basic but well executed enough loop for it to allow a good degree of depth, and while the mechanics may be average, they do their job very well on bringing some assuredness to the gameplay loop, balancing the despair of the playthrough with the wish to come back and finish the game. For what is shown, I also find the lenght of the game ideal, specially considering multiple playthroughs.

This game will keep you on edge. Simple but very effective. Loved every minute of it

i really like the story and aesthetic of this game. a must play if you like surreal and strange games

Alright, here we go. [h1] The Good: [/h1] Paranoihell carries its atmosphere very well, with a number of scares and imagery to convey the whole city falling apart in a state of madness. I'm unsure of the lore, but there does seem to be a connection to other games by Lum, notably Search Party. Though I can't say for certain of the other. Sound direction is good, keeping a tense atmosphere the whole while, shifting whenever you're spotted by a zombie / corrupt person, or worse. Healing can be sparse, but that only lends to both ones ability to dodge, and the sense of danger that the game carries, with only a few select items such as HP upgrades which will max out your HP. Also, as described, there are a number of changes once you play the game on its hardest setting. Though there may not be anything that changes in regards to the ending[s], it's still a fun challenge to go through. [h1] The Bad: [/h1] There are a number of issues I've got with the game, but I'll leave the personal ones for last. Combat can be simplistic, and in some cases it's easy to get overwhelmed. Especially [spoiler] much later on in the park. [/spoiler] There's also another thing that I'm unsure of is a feature, or not. Whenever I died, a number of things reset in the game. For instance: [list] [*]Cleaning up the trash in the bar. [*] [spoiler] Needing to give Blair the healing gauze again before he's able to talk if you die before getting him the cocoon. [/spoiler] [*]A box that prevents entry into a store [spoiler] on the Madness Difficulty. [/spoiler] [*] [spoiler] There also may be a bug in regards to the Survival ending, where in you're able to place down a bear trap before opening the door - thus having the Stalker run in and die the moment he does so. [/spoiler] Though I'm uncertain if I've encountered anything more. For personal complaints, I'll start off with one that seems to be common in that the game is rather short, but here's hoping that there will be more released as time goes on. Another thing that disappointed me was [spoiler] switching to a certain costume and expecting a different sort of ending in regards to a certain key. [/spoiler]

ლუმის "ტრილოგიის" ბოლო ნაწილი, წინა თამაშებში რაც იყო, ყველაფერი გაერთიანებულია აქ, მოვლენები, თამაშის მსვლელობა, ღია სამყარო და ა.შ. მსვლელობის მხრივ ყველაფერი მსგავსია როგორც წინა თამაშებში, თუმცა ამჯერად რუქას მეტი განშტოება აქვს, მაგამ მეტწილად სწორხაზოვნად მიდიხარ, მოგვიანებით კი ძველი ადგილები ახლებთან იკვეთება. მუსიკალურად ისევ დამთრგუნველი ხმების დიდი არჩევანი გვაქვს, მაგრამ არა მუსიკა. ბოლოსთვის კი მოვლენები, რომლებიც კვლავ გარუკვეველია მეტწილად. არის გარკვეული კვეთა წინა თამაშთან და სავარაუდოდ პრიველთანაც კი. სხვა და სხვა დასასრული, რომლებიც სავარაუდოდ არანაირ კავშირში არ არის ერთმანეთთან. 8/10 ამ თამაშს ჩემგან, თავისი ფასის შესაფერისია და საკამოდ კარგი გასართობი.

I really enjoyed lum's other game Search Party, which Puppet Combo published. PARANOIHELL is another great game from lum, and there's some interesting overlap and intersectionality between the two games within the same universe. I played on the easiest setting and discovered all of the multiple endings, and it's so worth it. You play as Erica the bartender who is trying to get home after her shift, and basically the whole town is hostile and fucked up. Lots of jarring animations and a Clock Tower/early Resident Evil feel to the gameplay. Very gripping and unpredictable! I really recommend it.

I'm not a fan of survial horror because I tend to reload and retry until I've minimized the waste of health and resources, and I did so here as well. It didn't help that you walking speed is really slow (and you've got to keep the botton for sluggish sprint pressed all the time). There are afaik four endings, I found two of them and couldn't be bothered with searching for the other ones because exploration is rather annoying here (you've got to crawl the gauntled basically). Anyway, I liked the vibes, the haunting visuals, the sound design and the story which leaves it to you to come up with an interpretation. And it's managable on normal difficulty. I think you can eat one hit from most enemies and still have enough meds to reach the end.

Paranoihell is a classic style survival horror game where you gradually unlock more and more areas of the map as you find items and keys. The game takes place in the same world and has a near identical gameplay style to Search Party. Although I'm not sure which one was made first since they both came out in 2019 originally. I'm guessing Search Party is the older one because a character lacks introduction in this game. This game has a lot of weird nightmarish elements to its world with eyes and mouths growing out of the walls and the ground here and there with weird ghostly figures floating above, if you played Search Party you'll immediately recognize the style and themes, but here it permeates the game almost from start till finish The two main points that sets it apart from Search Party are the lack of a permanent stalker enemy, and also the different style of level design. In Search Party it was mostly set inside one cramped building like in Resident Evil 1 or Alone in the Dark, while in Paranoihell it's a fairly open city block or two akin to the map in Silent Hill. The game game was really fun and I never got overly lost despite the open level design. Playing it all in a single sitting probably helped with that since every new item I could always connect back to something I'd seen or been told before.

This game wouldn’t be all too scary if it weren’t for the well crafted sound design and unsettling unnatural imagery that’s scattered throughout the game. Giving this a solid recommendation if you’re into survival horror but want something that’s more unsettling than outright scary.

tl;dr PARANOIHELL is a very fun, brief survival horror game with a sl ow start. Had this game in my peripheral for a while during production and I'm glad I liked it. Here are my thoughts put more indepth - ISSUES I HAVE: The beginning is kind of a slog, and I don't mean the very, very beginning. Once the monsters get introduced, I felt like I was being chased around in circles and clubbed to death too many times for it to be more scary than agitating. This is mostly because the combat is clunky and odd - as a tip so this particular issue doesn't even bother you, just exclusively do heavy attacks. If you're good at placing yourself then you'll never need to do anything else. ISSUES I HAD BEFORE I BEAT IT: The big thing here is that I expected the game to be a bit longer on a "Don't know where anything is, just trying to progress" first-time playthrough, and with that in mind I felt like the weird imagery comes in a bit too early. This criticism is now moot considering the fact it only took me about 2 hours to get through it on my first, Standard-difficulty playthrough, and also that I realized that my favorite horror game Lost in Vivo does the exact same shit so I'm just an idiot. That being said... THINGS I LIKED: I really, really like the surreal imagery. Even if when I started out I felt like it came in too early, the weirdly realistic stuff bleeding into this pixelated world was really compelling, and early on was the main thing keeping me going through the game. This is also a game that "clicks", and when it clicked it clicked hard. Once the fights get more fair, the game actually keeps a really good sense of fear going, to the point where I was actually jumping at the sight of enemies I had killed ages ago. I'm interested in seeing how to get the other endings. I swear to God, though, if I have to play on the hardest difficulty to get an ending I'll cry. If you made it this far into the review instead of just scrolling past after reading the tldr, here's a tip: The cleaver and the shovel carried me through my entire 2 hour Standard mode playthrough. Just be careful early on, before you can get those.