Obscuritas Reviews

I knew this game would be bad before playing because of the reviews, but I played anyway. I got what I expected. I think it tried forming a story at the beginning, then it just took you random places with no explanation and no story. The gameplay was very repetitive. There's only 3 types of levels. 1:Door opening simulator while looking for a key to open the next door. 2: Random tediously long maze 3: look for random objects that go to something but good luck figuring out what it goes to, oh also here's a ghost dog that you can barely see that will kill you and make you restart the entire level. There were only 2 levels that did not fit any of these 3 criteria. One was an actual puzzle (the only puzzle in the entire game) but they made it frustrating due to the fact you can barely see where the pressure plates are to put the statues on and the darkness just makes it even more annoying. The other level was you being chased by a dog through the entire level and you run as fast as you can to the end while also dodging traps, but you have to be PERFECT with your run. If you make even the tiniest mistake your dead. Then there's all these random sections that keep making you go back and forth so many times until eventually it allows you to progress. Also the flashlight constantly keeps turning itself off if you dont have a full battery, incredibly annoying. There was nothing at all in this game that created a fear moment apart from just getting randomly jump scared by seemingly nothing? They really like to just blast a loud noise in your ear whenever they feel like it. The end of this game was non existant. Literally. You finish the last stage, and it goes straight to the credits 5 seconds later. I don't know if this game even had a story. Anyway, this game felt like they had good intentions going in, but then they just fell apart in execution and it never recovered. Know what your getting into if you really feel like you need to play this game.

I've been letting Obscuritas collect dust in my backlog for a long time, and I wish I'd gotten to it sooner. I enjoyed it much more than I expected to. It starts off like any run-of-the-mill horror game in a big creepy house, but ends up taking you through a variety of locations and settings so you always have someplace new to explore. There are also a myriad of puzzles and challenges, which range from clever and satisfying to sometimes being somewhat obtuse and frustrating. However, each new challenge is different enough from the ones before that it doesn't really get too repetitive. One of my favorite aspects of Obscuritas is the sound design. The ambient noise and audio effects in this game do a fantastic job of keeping you on edge the entire time. Another thing I loved about this game is the way it always managed to surprise me with something new. It plays a lot of tricks on the player in many different ways that always drove me to keep going to see what might happen next. If you're a fan of horror and puzzles, I think you'll have a good time. Even if you aren't big on puzzles and have to use a guide to solve some of them, I think the rest of the experience is still worth it. While I highly recommend you play it for yourself, I recorded a no-commentary longplay of Obscuritas in case you'd prefer to watch me fumble through it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K66HX5F8c7Q

the game sucks, the developers are even worse, do not buy this shitty game under any circumstances

As an initial disclaimer, I did not play this game until after they amended some of the major complaints I've seen others mention (namely, the lack of checkpoints in long levels). Short story: This game is playable, and does have some decent moments. But overall, it's another entry in the list of "mediocre horror games that I picked up despite the reviews." Long story: In Obscuritas, you play as Sarah, who one day inherits her estranged Great-Uncle's country estate. As the "inherited old mansion" trope dictates, Sarah heads over to the estate alone. Little does she know that her Great-Uncle is kind of a dick, and leaves her with a bunch of puzzles to solve and deadly traps to avoid. Although the atmosphere of the game is decent, and there were some genuinely eerie moments, most of the scares in the game (especially the first chapter) are cheap jump-scares. Something strange will happen (the phone will suddenly ring, something will suddenly fall, etc.), the screen will flash, and dramatic music will play. While I don't mind jump scares from time to time, the way these were constructed made it feel more like it was a desperate attempt to make the game scary. It didn't help that you could often retrigger some of the jump scares just by passing by the same area, which greatly diminishes the effect. It also didn't help that I didn't often see WHAT the jump scare was, although I was painfully aware that they attempted it by the flashing screen and dramatic music. The puzzles tend to range from "overly simplistic, as long as you find all of the right items scattered around" to "satisfyingly challenging" to "trial and error, or you have to die at least once to figure out how to progress, because there isn't really a good way to have known beforehand that you were bound to die (namely, [spoiler]the roller coaster track[/spoiler])." They supposedly tried to help out the player with some of the more challenging puzzles by giving hints in Normal and Easy mode, but I occasionally found this to be more grating than helpful. This was more apparent in later levels, where Sarah would helpfully explain the situation before I had a chance to look at it myself (but oddly enough, not in the places where it may have ACTUALLY been beneficial to hear her chime in, like with the "you'd have to die at least once" puzzles). To add insult to injury, if you had the audacity to die multiple times in a certain section, Sarah will chime in with "Would've been better in Easy mode!" I suspect much of the commentary was added in with some of the other updates, and I'm convinced that they added Sarah's "better in Easy mode" comment out of spite. The enemies that show up later in the game attempt to add a stealth component to the game, which I found interesting considering that the controls don't lend to much of a stealth-style game. Not only are they transparent, which makes them very difficult to see from a distance, but they are also extremely fast, which makes them impossible to outrun. I found myself caught off-guard in later sections by their presence, as I was often on top of them before I realized that they patrolled the area I needed to go. Your only defense against them (once you know they're in the area) is to listen for them, and find somewhere to hide out of their line of sight. There isn't much room for error though, because they are right on top of you the second they spot you. They also occasionally phase through walls, as I found when one of them spotted me from inside a greenhouse. I thought I maybe had some time to react, but I then found myself dead a second after being spotted. As for the story, there isn't really much to say: Save for a smattering of letters from Sarah's douchebag Great-Uncle, the story is practically non-existant. To summarize, I don't feel like the developers hit the right balance in difficulty. I also feel like they were trying too hard to make it scary by adding cheap scares and common tropes. I would only recommend this game if you get it severely discounted, as I don't think it's worth the $14.99 it currently costs.

One of the best looking Unity games i played so far. I play with a GTX 1080 card and a 165 Hz g-sync monitor, so i have no performance problems and can enjoy this game with a 1440p resolution. I love the creepy atmosphere! I'm glad that the developer took some early critcs serious and updated the game in sense of adding checkpoints, making some levels easier, optimising performance.

The most frustrating game I've ever played. The fact that the maker/makers of this game decided to go full on lazymode and put invisible hellhounds to almost every fucking chapter tell's a lot about their creativity. Don't get me wrong, the hellhound was a good idea in the graveyard and in the asylum but then you guys kinda started overuse it. I really liked this at the beginning but the closer I got to the end the more unmotivated I became. Could have used my 19,99€ better.

Seriously, if the game was more about puzzles and less about horror, it could be better. Enjoyed the first chapter and was nothing but annoyed for the rest of the game. It doesn't make you want to accept the challenge you face, it only makes you wanna drop and uninstal. There's no fun in redoing the half of the level from the last checkpoint you had quite a while ago, if you did at all. There's no horror in being killed over and over and getting all the same jumpscares. For the year it was made in, the optimization is poor as well. If this game didnt cost this much, it could be worth its price, but for the one it currently has - it's a big no-no. Don't waste your money.

[b]Breaks in the second chapter and can not be completed.[/b] [spoiler]There is a part where you need a cog from a greenhouse area to make a lever work. The cog will not interact with the lever no matter when angle or distance I try. I've watched old videos from 2016(when the game was new) showing how the mechanism works correctly. This is not what happens at all in my game so I can't complete it. Even after several reloads and attempts. Thus, the game is broken and I can not finish it.[/spoiler] Oh boy, I am really unhappy with this title. I bought this game when it was new and had the same big problems with it that other people had. The flashlight is awful and batteries are useless after about 30 seconds. The save system is convoluted at best-- checkpoints aren't really checkpoints because if you reload a save, you lose all progress. Ridiculous mazes with traps that return you to the beginning. 'Dogs' that are invisible and also return you to the beginnings of areas. 95% of your time is spent blindly feeling around in the dark, walking down unnecessarily long paths or hallways, being killed by dogs or traps, and having to start over. The voice actress sounds like they fed the script through one of those 'text-to-voice' bots. All of that was enough to make me walk away 4 years ago. But, recently I've been digging up games that I had given up on because I refuse to be defeated by pixels. I regret spending any time on this one. Now-- all of these things may not sound so bad to deal with. They aren't... as long as they are in moderation. I can handle a few deaths and reloads and long walks. A quarter of the games I play are walking sims[looking at you, 103]. The problems I mention are so obnoxiously prevalent that you start to wonder why you are bothering at all. That being said, there are two pro-tips of which I advocate the second: *Turning the brightness up in the game and/or on your monitor makes it so you don't need the flashlight at all. *Save your money and avoid the game altogether. 13 hours of my life that I will never get back. Are the visuals solid? Probably. But the game itself is such a steaming pile that it made me not care how pretty it was. Feels like every game I play that comes from ViS makes me like them less and less. Yikes. The verdict: Grab on 75% off sale... if you dare. I wish you luck in getting past the spot where my game broke. I just don't have it within me to want to deal with that terrible maze and constant reloads again. Games are supposed to be fun.