ROUGH KUTS: Night of the Living Dead Reviews

Yeah, nah, I admire the idea behind it, and the fact that someone actually went ahead and tried to do something interesting, i.e. to try and turn something linear and static into something dynamic and playable. Unfortunately, how this particular implementation is presented, it's uninteresting, boring and not worth engaging in. While I do appreciate the effort, I do not appreciate the result. So the concept is this: old classic films that went public domain are gamified by adding choices to them. You watch the movie, at some point the movie halts and asks you what to do, and you get to decide how the movie continues. This sounds a lot like modern "choice videos" like e.g. the Netflix items Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Minecraft: Story Mode. Possibly a throwback to the good old days, where a handful of DVDs allowed to do something simliar, e.g. switch camera angles in certain scenes, or just generally jump/pick scenes to create an alternate storyline. What may sound like a neat idea to some, as myself, turns out to be utterly boring and frustrating, at least in this particular implementation. First off, there is the immediately evident conceptual problem: the movie itself doesn't change. It's a linear experience, there's no different outcome, there are no alternate stories to be uncovered. Imagine a movie scene like this: Moment 1 - A person is in a room, there is a noise outside. Moment 2 - The person runs to the window to look and see what made the noise. Moment 3 - The person can't see the source of the noise, so they run outside and look around there. In this kind of game, you get to watch the movie up to Moment 1, then you get the choices to "look out of the window" or "rush outside". - If you choose to "look out of the window", you get to watch Moment 2, automatically followed by Moment 3, because that's how the movie goes. - If you choose to "rush outside", Moment 2 is skipped and the movie continues from Moment 3. Imagine a dialog between two people: Moment 1: - Person A - Hi. - Person B - Hi. Moment 2: - Person A - How are you? - Person B - I'm fine, but (follows a monologue about how that person is). Moment 3 - Person A - Well, let's get going. In this kind of game, after Moment 1 ends and both people have greeted each other, you get the choice to "engage in conversation" or "hurry them along", something along those lines. - If you pick "engage in conversation", you get to see Moment 2, where Person A asks Person B and Person B gets to tell their story, followed by Moment 3, because that's how the movie goes. - If you pick to "hurry them along", Moment 2 gets skipped and the movie continues from Moment 3. Or to summarize, this kind of game is just "selective scene skipping". This becomes tedious and boring after just a few minutes of gameplay already. (I probably spent more time writing this review than I spent actually "playing" the "game".) After the conceptual problem, there are also technical issues: - The movie is available in 720p only. I guess I don't have to explain how annoying it is to play something the size of a stamp on a 4K screen. - The movie playback is jaggy and stutters. It's like the movie speeds up and slows down again every second or two. This is noticeable when I look directly at it, but also when I look of to the side, it's like someone's flicking through a thumb flicker book. I have a pretty buffed out computer, it runs complex contemporary games like Red Dead Redemption 2 in 4K resolution at full details without even breaking a sweat. The simple playing back of a black-and-white 720p video will definitely not be enough to bring it down, so the jaggy playback must be due to poor encoding of the source video. - There is no way to "save" the "game" or to skip ahead at least to the next choice. Imagine you're halfway through a 2 hour movie game, suddenly the dog needs to go for a walk, you need to hit the toilet yourself, and finally it's time to meet someone in real life. The game, and of course the computer and Steam, would have to stay on and running all the time, until you return to finish the remainder of the game. If you close the game and just start it again later, you'd have to "play" the entire first half of the 2 hour movie game again, you can't just continue where you left off. You also can't just pick random choices (remember: irrelevant, as they don't change the outcome of the movie) and skip through the first half of the movie, because there's no way to skip ahead. So this kind of game implementation is not only conceptually tedious and boring, but also practically in the "game" flow. The frustrating thing is - I love, I mean I LOVE, The Night of the Living Dead. The movie, that is. This game has robbed me of any interest in watching the masterpiece again anytime soon, and I've only played it for a quarter of an hour or something. If you love the movie like I do, just do yourself a favour and watch the movie again. There are several of these games, and they're very affordable, so feel free to ignore my advice and see for yourself, just don't say I didn't try to warn you. ;)

i love how they made these films interactive and my decisions actually made a difference, really awesome. 10/10 would definitely recommend.

I seen this movie in Commercials when I was a kiddo besides that I haven't seen this movie at all. This game/movie is good and a little jump scared

Nicely done, Rough Kuts! :3 For those of you gamers who appreciate classical horror movies, then this interactive FMV is simply made for you. For the makers and all the people that involved in making it, I can only say thank you for preserving the classics for us to enjoy, as well as generations to come. (^_^)d

horrible as a game for many reason but i adore this film and George Romero <3

I recommend Rough Kuts if you have an interest and like FMV games and also horror. You need to understand though these are simple FMV games and they are cheap and aren't ask a lot. So if you expect anything like mini games an puzzles im sorry you wont find any. If you enjoy buying FMV games though these are good especially for the price and amount of content available and the amount more to come. If you know what your getting into and haven't set your bar way to high in the sky these are worth it imo. Im also an FMV junkie lol,

PUBLIC DOMAIN res nullius, res communes, res publicae, res universitati * no copyright notification on release material * copyright renewal lapsed (up to 1978 release) * 95 years or older (USA) or 70 years after death (which ever is shorter) great idea for public domain films. while they are free in many forms, this is another good option. i have played through all the dlc currently. 10 dlc + base game = 11 films. is it "horror" well, definition of horror extends greatly to many things while some would be more considered "scifi" than horror, its more of the consensus that each film is categorized as horror film. why so many 1959 & roger corman? thats just how it is. thats public domain... thats some of what we have. films are all 720p stock, not "movie media files" they are packed in a format for the interactive gameplay to read being 720p, the films quality are good or very good. not much more than a CEF / electron browser playing the video with css, json & javascript handling the interactions.

I think you better just watch the movies online, they are public domain anyway. In my opinion that should be free since there is nothing of value added to the movies. You lose a lot of options paying for this, you can't skip, can't rewind, can't even pause and the choices only skip parts of the movies. I like the idea, it isn't bad but you gotta add something to the table to justify the price even if it's cheap and it doesn't help that the execution is that bad.

[b]edit:[/b] I never posted on the forum (might've been one of the announcements, definitely not the forum, must be the same), but the developer banned me from the community hub after the review for being 'toxic'. that's one way of handling valid criticism, much easier than releasing a decent product or fixing issues, regardless of price. this would be bad even if somebody paid you to play it. [b]rough kuts[/b] is a series of old horror movies now in the public domain, turned into interactive experiences. [b]night of the living dead[/b] serves as the 'base game' for the black & white stuff, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1734470/]the thirsty dead[/url] is the same for color movies, with a bunch more sold separately as dlc for both. living dead also has a demo if you want to give it a shot. I've only seen remakes of some of these and haven't heard of the rest, but I'm sure such classics (or 'classics') deliver lovely cheese in spades. still, I was doubtful about the execution and expected something low-effort, especially seeing how quickly the 'developer' churns them out. and as usual, I was right, but [b]even I wasn't prepared for something this lazy[/b]. the game always starts in a resizable window and [b]the only setting is going full screen[/b], but only from the main menu, as alt+enter doesn't work, have to press esc to go back to windowed mode. [b]no volume settings, nor subtitles[/b], the steam overlay doesn't work either. and here's the real kicker: [b]you can't pause the fucking movie[/b], not even switching tasks works, it just keeps going until a choice comes up. there's a hidden button in the bottom right corner that lets you go back to the main menu, but it only works if a choice is on the screen. amazing... but wait, there's more: [b]saving only happens when you die, so if you quit elsewhere, 'progress' is lost[/b]. loading a save will replay the last scene and let you do something else, which is nice, but can't skip straight to the choice, why could you? from what I've read, the other movies save every 10 minutes, which is still far from ideal. ever heard of scene selection? the credits only include the writers, director and the main actors, and there's a characters section, but it's just pictures from the movie and their first name, and once started, it can't be interrupted. I had to go to windowed mode and close it because [b]alt+f4 doesn't work[/b] either. as a bonus, the [b]librivox[/b] recording of the short story [i]the isle of the undead[/i] is available for listening, but of course [b]without a control panel[/b]. it's in 5 parts, each 15-20+ minutes long, and [b]all you can do is start or stop[/b], no pause or anything. I recommend going to the librivox website, downloading the same thing for free and listening to it however you want to have some actual control over it. as good as the idea is, [b]it's a low-effort cash grab with barely any functionality[/b] even for something as simple as an interactive movie. since these titles are in the public domain, you're better off watching them for free where they're available and donating to the providers or librivox. anything's better than supporting this lazy-ass project. what an absolute joke...

The "Rough Kuts" series are public domain movies with spliced scenes with choice in between to give them a visual novel/CYOA game style. This one is Night of the Living Dead. Now, while it’s a fun and really cheap way to get & discover the movies, the “gameplay” is very limited. Unlike a visual novel, for example, you cannot change the movie’s narrative, since it got a precise beginning, middle and end. Yes, they are some “game over” added but it only ends the story prematurely with the main character’s death. Thus, I recommend only is you wish to get the movies for cheap with light gameplay and not if you’re looking for a deep narrative, CYOA game.