July the Lost Child Reviews

Cool game, unusual concept. You play through a series of events like a recurring nightmare trying to fugure out how to avoid 'waking up' and starting over. Great soundtrack and moody lighting. Loved it! Some dialogue would be good to skip through once you have played a few times. Looking forward to episode 2...

July the Lost Child is a cryptic voxel based experience disguised as a point and click adventure game. Its strongest points are an unnverving atmosphere and refined camera angles during cutscenes. After some "rewinds" it becomes clear that the gameplay is based on trial and error. Performing some actions and using the few items at disposal as fast as possible is the key. Despite many misspellings and the unskippable cutscenes (they're cool but after ten times...), I really enjoyed the experience. But I'm aware it's not for everyone.

[b] July the Lost Child [/b] is a psychological horror game that uses a point&click interface. It has a very interesting format where instead of following a linear path, you are replaying the same 10-15 minutes in order to find a different conclusion to the story (a bit similar to Red Haze and Dear Red). The game basically has many abrupt endings, so I guess we are trying to navigate around the mistakes that often get you killed. You play as a little girl that keeps waking up in her room whenever you find a wrong ending, that is where the psychological aspect comes in. If you take too long to explore, your mom shows up and that is when things can go bad. Let me tell you, that mom will do subzero fatalities on you if you do not behave -- I **** you not she can take off your head from your spine. This game just oozes atmosphere that is created by disturbing visuals, spooky sound effects, and mysterious narrative. I find that all aspects of this game complement each other, creating a very immersive experience. Despite having a silly voxel design (makes me think of The Padre), it is actually a little scary. Like I am genuinely not comfortable playing this game because it uses its jump scares sparingly, when you least expect it. I have not discovered all of the endings but you could probably do it under 3 hours. It is not a very cryptic game if you pay attention, although there are some things that change depending on your timing so you have to keep that in mind. I love games where you do not have a lot of exploration in terms of size, but you can find many cool things if you know where to look. [h1] Pros: [/h1] + immersive atmosphere / nice suspense + unusual format / many psychological effects + the sounds effects were used very well + captivating narrative / fun mystery + pretty cool visuals in my opinion [h1] Cons: [/h1] - could use a skip for text/cutscene feature [b] Overall Thoughts: 8/10 [/b] I think that [i] July the Lost Child [/i] is a genuinely enjoyable horror game if you don't mind its blurry appearance. It has more exploration than you may initially think, it just takes a little bit of experimenting. One of the better horror games when it comes to suspense and atmosphere - can't beat that at $4. [code]For more hidden gems: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]