Mountains of Madness Reviews

Years away from a finished product. There seems to be some admiration of Lovecraft behind it, but it's not even a demo at this point.

TLDR: Первый блин комом? Берите эту игру как 1) фанат Лавкрафта и особенно его длинных описаний, 2) чтобы поддержать товарища. К сожалению другой обзор назвал эту игру технодемкой и был прав. Вас ожидают однотипные коридоры и комнаты, из которых самый логичный - первый уровень в пещерах. Очень легко заблудиться, компас и [strike]хлебные крошки[/strike] листки помогают с проблемой которой быть не должно. [sploiler]Господи как же я был разочарован в конце. Он такой маленький в таком большом коридоре.[/spoiler] Баги есть, в том числе блокирующие. Для игры без QA отдела ругать не будем. Самое смешное -- оказалось что я прошел игру не использовав одну звезду. А потому что лестница решает. Вот такой сувенир оказался. В результате не понимаю - а в чем были загадки? Также убили описания вещей, которые по идее мы должны были видеть. Всем кому понравилось рекомендую поиграть Call of the Sea.

This is a wonderful telling of the Classic H.P. Lovecraft Novella 'At the Mountains of Madness'. one of, if not, my favourite Lovecraft stories, told with wonderfully rendered environments and actual gameplay (finding and using tools to progress). all problems I had with the game on launch were fixed very quickly by the dev and the game seems to be good working order now. I highly recommend this game if you want a brief, fun, and a bit scary adaptation of one of the greatest classic cosmic horror novellas of all time.

I would recommend this if you like short horror experiences, Lovecraft, and can deal with a few caveats. Pros: - pretty faithful adaptation of the source material - it has decent atmosphere - penguins - it's concise, doesn't overstay its welcome for the amount of content that's in the game Cons: - difficult to tell where you're supposed to be going at any given time, especially in the city of the elder things - bare-bones menus and UI - not very scary, the encounters with various creatures are pretty underwhelming. There is also a glitch where a static floating model of the nautilus crab creature stays in the last place where you died. This glitch has appeared every time I've played the game so I don't think it was a fluke - many small bugs and glitches, though none of them are game-breaking that I encountered - collision is rough, stairs and slopes are not friendly to the player, you'll often find yourself getting stuck on and jumping up what look like easily-scaleable terrain Overall not a bad time if you're looking for a short lovecraftian horror experience. There's room for improvement, and hopefully we can see a sequel or more lovecraft-inspired games from this developer with some of these issues fixed and improved upon.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ Not bad not good ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☑ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☐ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☑ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☑ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10 [h1]Post-game Summary:[/h1] (May contain SPOILERS) [h1]Graphics[/h1] Graphics were decent, nothing shockingly bad or good, although the game's map felt a little lifeless due to the lack of assets, probably could be fixed by adding some sort of effects to make you not see as far, thus hiding the imperfections [h1]Gameplay[/h1] Gameplay was interesting, it was not bad nor was it good, most of the gameplay ended up boiling down to wandering the mountains and caves trying to figure out what to do next because there were no indicators to make it clear. Once past the first mountain and at the camp the gameplay got better, but that was after I had already aimlessly wandered for 20 minutes attempting to find an item that would help me progress. [h1]Audio[/h1] Audio was clunky, and only saved by the ambient music which fit the story and atmosphere well. The voice acting is alright, medicore at best, would have fit the story more it was a New England or more British sounding accent. Footsteps sound effects in the game were the biggest detractor, they sound awful. As well as the footsteps the sounds of the creatures were either too loud or too quiet, and certain audio queues ended incredibly abrupt which sounded off, or played multiple times over if you crossed what I assume is their trigger. [h1]Audience[/h1] Game is good for really anyone who enjoys a good Lovecraft story, although for kids I would say its a bit confusing to grasp, and some of the games content may be considered disturbing. [h1]PC Requirements[/h1] Game did not run into any performance errors throughout the entire play-through. I was consistently reaching 144 fps throughout the entire game with a mid-tier laptop. [h1]Game Size[/h1] Game is ~3 GBs [h1]Difficulty[/h1] Hardest part of the game was trying to figure out how the gameplay worked, or trying to listen to those God awful footsteps. [h1]Grind[/h1] Zero grind, unless you count searching for tools inside long confusing caves grindy. [h1]Story[/h1] Its a Lovecraft story, its good. The game did not butcher the story in any significant way, it was fun to explore and find bits and pieces of the story and experience them myself. A solid retelling of "At The Mountains of Madness" [h1]Game Time[/h1] I took a long time exploring the game or just being away from my keyboard and still got it done in under five hours. If you want to fully complete the story, expect it to take no longer than 5 hours. [h1]Price[/h1] If you enjoy Lovecraft and his works, its worth the full price. If not, then its up to you, it is not a steal, but not a bargain either. [h1]Bugs[/h1] For a game of such little caliber, it was surprisingly bug-less. I got stuck in my loading screen one time, but I simply closed the game and it did not happen again. The compass tool, used by the protagonist, kind of clips outside its metal frame. The subtitles for the narration are also all packed in at once into a large paragraph which takes up the majority of your lower screen. One of the journals entries would not register so I could not read it no matter how much I interacted with it. Other than those simple gameplay bugs, I did not notice anything. [h1]Overall[/h1] I personally give it a 6/10. It was actually fun to play after making it to the ancient city. The game's best aspects were its storytelling through notes and still frames, the music and ambiance of the frozen world, and its surprisingly good looking final antagonist that did not disappoint at all. All the hype that had been building up throughout the game to see it was satisfied as soon as I laid eyes on it. I would recommend if you are a fan of Lovecraft and are looking for something to do for an evening.

This game is, quite literally, a surprisingly faithful videogame transposition of the homonymous HP Lovecraft's story, that also happens to be my favorite! Thus, I simply LOVE this game, for obvious reasons! If you are a fan of Lovecraft, I STRONGLY recommend you try this, but be aware that it is a walking simulator with little gameplay. The inventory management system is quite fun, but there are no true puzzles to solve. The game heavily focuses on the excellently crafted atmosphere, and of course on the faithful recreation of the scenes described in the novel. Speaking of this, I particularly appreciated how some elements of the scenery and the story were rendered. It was an immense pleasure for me to explore this game, but I understand that my judgement is heavily biased by the fact that I am a huge fan of the novel. If I were not, I probably would have found this game a bit dull, so it's up to you to decide, depending on your personal tastes. Other than that, I can say that, technically speaking, the game is well done, despite some little hiccups that overall do not ruin the experience. So I can assure you that the quality is definitely there! Cheers guys!

This game has me torn, on one hand it's a decent retelling of Lovecraft's story, on the other as a game it falls woefully short in pretty much every aspect. While at first it looks just like another walking simulator, it's not. Instead the whole focus is on finding your way around the level, getting past obstacles in your way and figuring out, where to go next. The concept is actually quite intriguing, but this game lacks any depth and there is only one solution. For instance, when you get rope, all you can do with it is tie it to a pillar and climb down a pit, you can't throw it. Climbing pick is only used for breaking walls of ice, you cannot actually climb with it. You have compass and can leave notes behind as an indicator, where to go, but you really won't need them until the final area. And you have a journal, which fills in over time, but the journal screen is bugged, because once you get enough entries, they'll be off screen and it's not possible to scroll down, so you won't be able to reread some of them. As a result, you'll spend most of your time walking around in caves or hallways, that all look the same, bored. Especially at the very end, when you'll be forced to go through maze, where every corridor looks the same, so you can get lost really easily and have to leave notes, that say "don't go this way, it's dead end" everywhere. The only really good mechanic is the ladder, you can either use it as a normal ladder or lay it horizontally in order to get past broken bridges. There are also some objects of interest and notes here and there, but there's nowhere near enough of them. It's also very short (according to Steam I played 3 hours, but I left it open for a while, real gameplay time was about 2 hours), but I'm not sure if that's a detriment or benefit at this point. Then the game just straight lies to you about flashlight attracting unwanted attention, all that happened was that after that message popped up and I entered some random room, there was a bit of humming, but nothing came out of that. But if you're familiar with the story, you'll know such mechanic would be out of place anyway. The story as I've mentioned is quite faithful and pretty much all of the key scenes are recreated, so good job. The voice acting is amateurish, but serviceable. If you read the novel however, it's immersion breaking, because it fails to sell that our protagonist has witnessed unspeakable horrors, instead he sounds mildly bored for the most part. The visuals are not the game's strong point either, every area you visit feels empty and devoid of any life. Well, there is one area, that is actually impressive and that's the stone city from the outside. Inside however it's a different story, the murals, which are a big, big part of the story, are some random lines. The sound design is also lacking and it hurts the game even further (loudest noise are your footsteps), because it just underlines the distinct lack of atmosphere on display. The only really memorable part of the game is the finale with Shoggoth. I cannot recommend this game for anyone except the most hardcore fans of Lovecraft and even then it won't be a satisfying experience.

I recently read Lovecraft's story Mountains of Madness and wondered if there were any games based on the story, which is why I came across this one, which made me very happy. I didn't go in with much expectation. What I was mainly hoping for was an interesting, visual representation of Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness. However, I do have some criticisms of the game. First, about the game in general: the game follows the original story with only a few deviations, which is fine. Various gameplay mechanics are gradually introduced at the beginning, such as ropes to overcome heights and a freely placeable ladder that you can carry around with you. ((Spoilers from here)) My main criticisms of the game are two things: [olist] [*] the environments aren't interesting enough and many assets don't fit well with each other. There were also some weird design decisions. Here are a few examples: [list] [*] The cave at the beginning is unnecessarily large and you don't have much to see besides a few fossils scattered here and there. [*] The base camp consists of wooden huts although in the original story it was a camp of tents. This may not sound particularly relevant but in my opinion it destroys the immersion. [*] I found the ancient city the most disappointing, unfortunately, as it's just a bunch of uninteresting stone structures on an area in the mountains. It all melts into a dull, brown mass. In general, the game also ironically lacks a good representation of the Antarctic, deadly cold. [*] The interestingly described reliefs in the city in the original story are just some meaningless assets. [/list] [*] the way the story is told doesn't really engage me. I can't speak for players who haven't read the original story, of course, but there was almost no build-up of tension. [/olist] I also think the game is unnecessarily "gamey" without needing to be. The storytelling might have worked better if it was more like a simple walking sim with more voiceovers. I would like to point out that I can understand that this is not a AAA game and that you shouldn't expect extremely high quality assets and character voices. Overall, the game unfortunately doesn't offer a comparable atmosphere to the original story at the moment.

First good - its a decently faithful retelling of the tale and is conveyed through both journal entries and decent (if amaetur) voicework. The maps are mostly well throughout and I love the use of the rope and ladder mechanics to traverse otherwise impassable areas. The 'meat' of the game is figuring out how to use these tools to get around the map. Now mid - some of the environments can be kind of samey and could really do with use of more differentiating assets like sculptures and or motifs, there is a breadcrumb mechanic by leaving notes on the ground for yourself - but I feel like that could just as well not exist if the environments were a bit more varied. Now bad - the primary drawback with this one is its lack of sound design. Even a relatively empty walkabout can be highly elevated by good sound design. There a number of areas where there's next to no ambient sound at all and music is minimal so eventually you're left with just the tip-tap of your (rather loud) shoes across cobblestone for a lot of the game. This really hampers the game to the point of distraction to the point I eventually threw on some spooky soundscape track while playing just give it some noise. In general I feel like this game is very close to being good if can get the above issues addressed, but as of now it's going to a tough sell to all but the most dedicated Lovecraft nerds.