Ten Bells Reviews

Simple but great game. Decent replayability

This is an awesome little game that for its genre really puts a lot of time and detail into their work. Honestly cannot wait to see what they make next

Not too often do I genuinely get scared from a horror experience, but holy that was a good experience. Biggest non-issue I can give to the game is its short runtime on a first playthrough [for reference, you can beat it in under two hours], but with there being more to see, and enjoying myself the whole time I was playing, I can't do anything more than just recommend it. Whether on sale or not, it's a good experience to try out.

I love this style of mini indie horror game. It takes a formula that works great for atmosphere and engagement a la Shinkansen 0 or Exit 8 and sets it in a beautifully styled British pub from the past. They tell a great little story not just using objects but environmental storytelling as well. Solid game!

Imagine spot the difference, in a pub, with a bit of horror and you have this game. There are some fun scares that result from you paying close attention to things and then something happens breaking the tension. The game is pretty short though and some of the differences are way too minor to spot easily. Worth it on sale.

A very strong a fun experience, tainted a bit by the difficulty level and the knock-on effects of that. This is an anomaly-spotting game - a very compelling concept but not exactly original in that sense, and sticking strongly to the formula of existing games like Exit 8: turn back if you spot an anomaly, keep going if you don't. However compared to other games in this genre this one somewhat ironically sets itself apart by bringing in more traditional horror settings rather than going for the more modern surreal liminal space vibe - this game sets itself in a very classic haunted british pub beset by classical ghosts and other spooky activities. A real solid point in this game's favour is that rather than the anomalies being a non-cohesive set of weird events, each one ties strongly into the setting's story and directly adds to the worldbuilding of the scenario. The big point against this game's favour is that the base game is far too easy. About half of the game's anomalies are unmissable (not in a hyperbolic sense, I mean literally unmissable in that they involve a major audio or visual cue that is unavoidably triggered), and a pretty large majority of the other anomalies are pretty easily seen with a fairly basic spot check. I successfully reached the game's ending on my second run. And this had negative effects on the game beyond that. It meant there was less chance to see the game's variety of anomalies and get interesting trickles of the game's story ahead of the ending which explains them all in detail. And because over half the anomalies were big audio or visual jumpscares, there wasn't enough tension built ahead of the scares to make them effective as they could be. As a free DLC (big plus!!) a "nightmare" mode was added, introducing a large number of new anomalies with many of them being very hard to spot. I enjoyed trying this mode to an extent - the much higher proportion of subtler freakiness did a much better job of building tension and scaring me even when something was only off a little bit, nevermind causing a much bigger reaction when the really big scares occurred. However it's a bit of an overcorrection on difficulty, in that many of the anomalies are far too unreasonably difficult to ever see. Ultimately it's a bit frustrating and not a fully sustainable choice. tl;dr it's a very fun game, but i really wish there was a distribution of anomalies halfway between the base game and the nightmare mode, that managed to add in more of the subtle (but still reasonable to spot) anomalies and so space out the tension between the bigger scares better to keep you more on edge and induce bigger emotions.

This is a beautifully designed and unique horror anomaly video game. The music and colour palette create a truly sombre feeling to the gaming environment. This feels very cinematic. The emphases of this game are the story and horror aspects. I have played a wide variety of anomaly video games at this point and I have found that many rely on humour and quirkiness and Ten Bells breaks form and the result is tremendous. The story draws you in, the jump-scares are well thought out and placed. This becomes less of an anomaly game after a while and more of a detective ghost story with you wanting to find all the clues to what happened and to set the haunting ghost free. This is dark, emotive and encourages you to keep playing. This also reminded me heavily of Layers of Fear. The game also offers a normal mode which is more focused on the basic story and horror and a nightmare mode which is more of a challenging anomaly game with the true ending. Highly recommend for both horror and anomaly video game fans.