HORROR TALES: The Wine Reviews

The Wine feels like a lifeless, dull design, with no real aspirations of its own. At the same time, looking back, some of it also feels way over-engineered; almost decadent on the part of the developer. Like the lore, worldbuilding and even level design, all wrapped around an outdated blueprint indicative of last generations modern horror game. It’s all here. Wonky physics engine. Lugging bricks to counter-balance levers. Move crates to gain leverage. Tear off planks to expose crawl spaces. Meanwhile, reining in your abilities as a player seems like the prime way to raise tension. So any fall from any height seems fatal. Any sprint at any distance feels exhausting. Your lantern overheats, so you need to let it cool. You can search through drawers and cupboards for some reason. I like the lush mediterranean setting. Problem is, the game abandons it pretty early, in favor of the usual suspects of dank basements and dark corridors. Besides, it's so eager to confuse you with dream-like hallucinatory mazes that it sort of detaches itself from the setting anyway. And man, does this game press hard on the jump scares along the way. So often and unceremoniously they begin to feel like non sequiturs, almost comedic. With oddly animated pursuiters spasming and flailing after you -- forcing you to backtrack or dance around until the scary music subsides. It’s all so close to being bad. But instead, it’s just boring, and so mediocre it’s hardly even worth discussing. It’s a hard pass for me.

Went in with absolutely zero knowledge other than the game being tagged along with other Horror games I've enjoyed on Steam in the past, and was kinda surprised at the quality of "The Wine". It's visually a lot more colourful than I expected, it's a nice looking experience, and the game runs flawlessly even at 165hz @1440p on epic settings, nice to see an indie horror game with some optimization, helps with immersion so much. Sound design wise it's decent, but I think some more ambient sounds might help the overall atmosphere, I kinda feel it was lacking in that area, the music is a lad uninspired as well imo. Story wise it's pretty solid it's only really told via notes and newspapers you find no cutscenes or anything, but still the narrative relates directly to current events I'll say without spoiling too much. Gameplay is what you might expect if you play a lot of the genre, some enjoyable puzzles and running from baddies ect, fun but nothing we havn't seen before. It's short but again too be expected with the genre but there are some collectables to find so I did a second run, however I saw the dev stating this game was 5-6 or even 10 hours long and this is just a lie honestly, I read everything I could find and explored thoroughly even got all 100% achievements in about 4 hours. The price and quality of the game is fine for this amount of content that's not my issue, just I didn't like the dev telling people it's much longer a game it's misleading. Overall though I had fun with The Wine, made me jump a few times and was enjoyable, just don't expect anything groundbreaking. 7.8/10

Really cool environments, I appreciate some of the accessibility settings (though some confused me with their inclusion). The game play makes this game unreasonably frustrating, the implementation of the baddie is pretty surface level and could have used more work, his animation is very goofy and the whole game is only startling instead of spooky. Most puzzles are pretty brain dead as well and having to run in circles as you solve them doesn't help that. There's also poor feedback with the invisible sprint meter, leading to long pauses as your character catches their breath. If your favourite part of RE2make was Mr. X then you may enjoy this, a lot of the enivornments are greatly enjoyable, but I was more focused on the goofy walking trench coat man to enjoy or get immersed in it. I don't say this lightly but this would've been better as a walking simulator, or, preferrably, a more focused puzzle game with a darker atmosphere and nearly none of the current gameplay.

Purpose of the game: explore without dying. Excellent graphics and possibility to choose which chapter to start from. For obvious reasons I started from the final chapter (I won't spoil the reason) and then dedicated myself to everything else. The only flaw is that unfortunately it doesn't have a translation into my language (Italian) but all in all I didn't find it a limiting element. Price balanced with the longevity of the game. overall rating 7/10

while the game looks good its very bland and frustrating, the environments are really nice, but its the same puzzle for each chapter and the challenge comes from being chased by a goofy animation in a very enclosed room with very limited stamina

"Horror Tales: The Wine" is a short (about 4 hours) first-person horror adventure with a creepy atmosphere, decent story, several simple puzzles, and a few okay-ish chase scenes. [h2]1. Story & Setting[/h2] You play a father who visits the capital of his country after a devastating pandemic that killed almost all of the population. Your children have been infected too, and your task is to obtain the last bottle of the city's famous red wine, which is said to cure the plague. The city seems devoid of any life. By reading public notices, newspaper articles, and journal entries, you learn more about its fate. The backstory does not shy away from serious topics like the exploitation of immigrants, who worked under terrible conditions in the wine industry that was the country's main source of revenue. The described events get very dark as different parts of society try to save themselves from the pandemic. While the backstory is fairly elaborate, there is barely any plot to the game. You just explore the abandoned city, looking for an exit from whatever set of rooms you're currently stuck in, and occasionally flee from a creature that keeps hunting you. That said, the end of the main character's story included two sinister twists that I absolutely did not see coming, and I appreciated the surprise. Whether you'll enjoy the backstory as much as I did, will probably depend on two things: your appreciation for dark tales, and the strength of your own imagination. Some of the reports are terrifying and heartbreaking, but since most of the information is coming from public notices or newspapers, they are also a bit dry and lack a personal touch - and there are no recurring characters with whose stories you could identify. This might make the story feel a little superficial, but if you have an imaginative mind, you'll be able to see the terrible individual fates behind the reports. [h2]2. Gameplay & Mechanics[/h2] Strangely enough, most of the game felt like a long sequence of very simple escape rooms. Very often you drop into a room with no obvious exit, and then have to look for the way out, which could be obscured in darkness or behind furniture. Sometimes you'll have to solve a small environmental puzzle to e.g. build a bridge. At other times you have to enter a code, the elements of which are usually depicted on scattered notes in the vicinity. Most of the time there is only one way out, but some areas consist of multiple rooms that provide some space for exploration. I really liked the level design, it regularly made me think "Wait, am I stuck here?", before further investigation revealed an exit. The player's path also sometimes cycles back to previously visited areas, which I liked - progression through the game is actually completely linear, but revisiting previous areas made it feel more organic. The game's other two notable mechanics are jump scares and chase scenes. The scares are fairly mild, usually just some unexpected noises - but since they also feel pretty random, they don't contribute much to the atmosphere. They neither scared nor annoyed me, so I'd give them a "meh" rating. The chase scenes are a mixed bag as well. The creature that is hunting you was appropriately scary (for me), and I could pass through most chases in two or three attempts. There were still some annoying elements though, e.g. barriers suddenly appearing without any in-game reason, or the chasing creature apparently teleporting to the corner in front of me. There are two scenes where you have to solve a puzzle while being chased. The developer provided an option to make the creature disappear after a few minutes - two thumbs up for giving players the option to skip something that they may not find enjoyable! Unfortunately though, this feature did not work for me on the second scene. It wasn't too difficult to get through that scene, but unnecessarily tedious, especially since the creature can easily corner or stun-lock you in a way that you have no chance of getting away - and when you die, the entire puzzle gets reset, including objects that you already applied and doors that you already opened. But all that said, I have seen way worse chase scenes in other indie games, and even though I did not particularly like the ones in "The Wine", they weren't overly detrimental to my experience either. On a side note, the game trolled me pretty badly when it came to collectibles. It's pretty easy to spot them, but sometimes I did not find a way to get to them, despite spending more than 2 hours and trying everything I could think of. This included fairly involved procedures of collecting wooden boxes and barrels from all over the map to veeeery carefully try and build a stairway (not easy because for some reason, they blast into pieces as soon as they touch anything) - and then successfully climbing the stairway and finding an invisible barrier on top of the barricade that I was trying to overcome. After finishing the game, it told me that it had now enabled "photo mode", and in that mode, you can smash certain barriers by flying the camera through them. This makes no sense whatsoever and I really wish the game had divulged that information earlier - there was ample opportunity to do so on the loading screens, which instead wasted space with cringeworthy non-jokes like "Don't trust this advice!". In hindsight, it would have been a better choice to simply ignore the collectibles altogether. They don't even add anything to the story - arguably, their "cat appreciation" theme even works against the dark atmosphere that the game is trying to create, and unnecessarily takes the player out of the setting. Collectibles that actually contributed to the backstory would have been a much better choice in my opinion. [h2]3. Graphics & Presentation[/h2] "The Wine" uses the Unreal engine to good effect with its high-resolution textures, beautiful lighting, excellent water surfaces, and smooth framerates. The game looks amazingly good for what seems to have been mostly a one-person project (using assets made by properly credited third parties). The sound effects fit the respective events and are pretty well-done as well. There is almost no music in the game, and I felt that this actually contributed to the atmosphere and enhanced the feeling of being a lonesome survivor exploring abandoned places. There is no voice-acting either (unless you count a character whistling) - while some scenes would have benefited from a good voice-over, I did not really miss it, and I generally prefer reading text with my "inner voice" over mediocre voice-acting. [h2]4. Usability & Accessibility[/h2] "The Wine" provides settings for standard elements like texture quality, AA, gamma, shadow quality, view distance, and also an FPS limiter. The audio volume for effects and music can be set separately. All keys are fully rebindable, and the "run" and "crouch" actions can be switched between "hold" and "toggle" modes. Either mouse axis can be inverted separately. The game deserves extra praise for implementing many accessibility options. You can adjust the text size and style, change the crosshair, remove the camera shake and/or flashing lights, and more. On the other hand, if you want to play in a "cinematic" mode without subtitles and without a UI, you can do that as well. Many triple-A studios could really learn a lesson about proper accessibility options from this single developer. The game saves automatically and fairly frequently. Manual saves are not possible, but I did not miss them outside of one puzzle-and-chase scene. A "chapter select" menu lets you replay specific parts of the game, which is handy for hunting collectibles. I did not run into any bugs, the game generally feels very polished. [h2]5. Conclusion[/h2] While "The Wine" has its flaws, I can recommend it to fans of dark, creepy settings and first-person adventure games with mild puzzles.

I am a little shocked by how good this game looks, with no performance issues on my end, better than most indies that use this engine. I would say the puzzle-platformer part works very well, the level design is the best part of the experience, but there are some issues with how it handles the horror elements - not to say that game lacks the atmosphere, that part is totally fine, I just think some of the encounters reduces the tension, just being chased by a 3D model with good visibility. To be fair, the psychological elements and other jump scares were enjoyable in small segments, but once you are stuck with an enemy it looks kinda silly. I only got about 3.5 hours of gameplay playing casually, you would have to get all of the optional trinkets to get more than that. I will say it's one of the prettiest indie games that I played, not sure how much of it was custom-made, but props to the developer regardless - I am sure you put plenty of work into the level design as it is. Now the lore and the world-building of this game is not that immersive, it's mostly obtained through simple text documents with little to no character development. Well, let me correct myself, there are some parts with visual storytelling that complement the mood, for example, I really liked that apartment with skeletons just because you see the effects of the pandemic, but it's not the same as giving me a good reason to care about who I am or who they are - I am not even sure the game has a theme, the horror part feels like it was forced into the game about escapism. I will say that I kinda liked the ending just because it was unexpected, even if I didn't have much to care about before that. I guess it would help if you met some other crazy individuals that would provide more context, otherwise, I can only care so much about some notes you left for me. Again, I am not saying the game lacks atmosphere, it has a good mood to it, but if we talking about world-building, you have to approach it from multiple directions, and it has to be deeper than spamming text documents. For the most part, the gameplay consists of mechanical puzzle games like moving objects and memorizing pictures to open the doors, it actually reminded me of Half-Life because of how you navigate the convoluted levels, granted this game has no combat. When you run into one of the 2 evil characters, you just have to run away, there is no way to defend yourself. I liked the way the environment was designed to make you constantly look for secret paths, it was actually fun just moving around the game. The only parts I didn't enjoy were the doors with multiple symbols, my memory is just not good enough to do it without screenshots - especially when a monster is chasing me. [h1] Pros: [/h1] [b] Level Design [/b] - not to be confused with the visuals, I think you did a really good job just navigating the player through the various themes, going from open areas into small areas and crawling into all kinds of places. You know, constantly looking for hidden doors and the ways to escape the room, I thought the puzzle-driven pathing was just very interesting. It's cool that you added some optional items, but as you know, if you look too hard in this game, you will find places you were not meant to go. [b] Eye Candy [/b] - just a very pretty game, all 4 levels looked great for what it is, I was taking screenshots constantly. You obviously had to reuse many assets, but it was not too bad. I thought you did a decent job with the atmosphere or the SFX in general. No performance issues on my end. [b] Puzzles [/b] - I will briefly touch on this because there were not many actual puzzles in this game. But I like some of the creative moments with the counterweight puzzles, was it a HL reference? In general most of the puzzles were intuitive and fan to solve, aside maybe from the door locks. [h1] Feedback: [/h1] [u] Horror Elements & Narrative [/u] - with the monster segments, you sometimes see the dude for like 5 to 10 minutes during the puzzles, and at that point, it's just a walking 3D model, you know what I mean. When you do those psychological jump scares that don't give you a chance to understand the threat, I think it works better. For example, I like the part where he shoots you, both of them, or even just the atmosphere-building moments when you see him around. As for the world-building, maybe you should incorporate more characters into your games, if you can. If you just reading the notes on the walls, it only goes so far. [u] Checkpoints [/u] - at first I thought they were fine, as long as you follow the path the game wants you to take that is. But then the player starts looking for cat photos, and he gets stuck without the ability to reset, so instead of using a checkpoint that you get on death, you have to reload and go back 20 minutes. So you know, either fix the walls or at least make sure you don't have to replay the annoying parts with the monster. [b] Overall Thoughts: 7/10 [/b] I do think it's a really good game to just walk around and find your way through the environment, and some of the horror parts were okay too. Obviously, it's a pretty game and in a way, it was enough to win me over, but if we talking about world-building and having some interesting lore, you have to do more than that. I didn't care for the narrative that much, but the ending was alright, I kinda liked it. [code]For more niche indie games and hidden-gems: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]

Really great game. Even though the name of the game makes you think it's a horror game, this is just one of it's genres. Because it's basically a mix of horror, puzzle, platformer and adventure, and horror being the smallest part imo. -great graphics, levels have high variety -same as the gameplay bc of the genremix -progressing through the game is just extremly fun, solving the rather easy but satisfying puzzles and enjoying the beautiful surroundings -enemies can be a bit annoying sometimes, especially near the end where you have to solve puzzles while an enemy is chasing you, BUT you can also disable enemies in the options menu if you don't like them -story is all right, sadly no voice over at all, all story is told through notes you find or some text of the start of a level -game length about 3 hours -you have to enable photo mode in the menu before starting the game to be able to find most of the secrets

Played it fully on the deck, game runs wonderfully on it. 60FPS only turned down shadows to low. The game is really good but short, aesthetics are on point for a mediterranean village with some fantasy on top, the story is really good, and kinda matches old times on some spanish villages that were fully dependant on wine making, won't spoil more of the story though. The game has some easter eggs some spaniards will probably get. Totally recommend giving it a try, it's not that scary in case you have problems with scary games, its more like an interactive art piece with story telling through notes and some gameplay puzzles, the game also has accesibility options in case you struggle with some stuff (The chase during the puzzles can be shortened or stopped on some of them so you have your time after a short chase to explore at your own pace and resolve the puzzle, font size, and some other settings).

Decent physiological horror game with great atmosphere-building moments, unpredictable jump scares, platforming segments, and beautiful looking vistas. Gameplay consist of unlocking gates by matching symbols found in the level, platforming to find a way to the next area and avoiding a monster that lurks around. The lore of the world is mostly obtained through simple text documents scattered throughout the level. The game does an excellent job in making you feel that something could happen at any moment especially with the stalker observing you from afar. Photo-mode is a welcomed feature and hopefully more developers add this to there games even if it has only a handful of options to modify screenshots. There are several collectibles hidden including some only attainable by using the free roam in photo-mode which in my opinion was not necessary. One main negative is having the same single creature chase you as this losses the feeling of dread after several encounters. The game is rather short and can be completed within 3-5 hours depending on your play style. [b] HORROR TALES [/b] was created by one person which is an impressive achievement and I can not wait for the other two games to be released. [7/10] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2562607445 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2563051760 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2563051317