Dark Tales from México: Prelude. Just a Dream... with The Sack Man Reviews

Far too much exposition dumping right from the start of the story, clunky controls and an overall lack of cohesive storytelling. I appreciated how the folktales were incorporated into some puzzles, as it helped keep their relevance to the story. But the stories all went on for *far* too long and were written (at least in English) with many run-on sentences and a lot of irrelevant talking points. For several pages of lore, I had to skip all the way to the end of the story just to get to the point and find out what I needed to know for the puzzle. There's just way too much info dumping. The controls are, quite frankly, agitating. Why does the candle *immediately* go out if our character runs or jumps? That wouldn't be so irritating if our character didn't walk so painfully slow (and like she has a limp for some reason?) It felt like I was being forced to walk to spread out the run time, unless I wanted to run around in the dark. I didn't face against any legitimate threats during my gameplay either, making this game akin to a walking simulator more than a survival horror. The gameplay was mainly focused on solving relatively simple puzzles (when the instructions were told clearly) and wandering the halls of the labyrinth to turn all the lights on. Overall, the game just felt... off. I think it has potential, if it gets a little more polish and proof-reading, but as the game currently is I can't say I'd recommend this game.

While the gameplay itself doesn't feel like it really warrants the pricetag, the game itself is neat and seeing the footage of the effort that they made in hand crafting things (literally) is pretty cool. Did feel a tad unfair at the end, but that could just be me. Some of the puzzles were rather abstract and didn't always feel like they were working correctly, but I managed. I give a very tentative recommendation.