The moral of this story is apparent from the very beginning: teenagers are assholes.  At least, the group of teenagers that sets up this game is a bunch of assholes.  The playable character is a teen suffering a nasty bout of hazing at the hands of their “friends.”  They taunt you with an urban legend about a house that burned down in the woods, but the bodies of the children were never found.  Then they blindfold you, arm you with a set of matches, and leave you there alone to survive for the next six hours. Surviving isn’t easy either.

You begin each hour with an easy to find, already lit candle to guide your way through the dense fog and woods.  There are drawings nearby that give huge hints on how to handle what you’re about to face, and then it’s up to you to navigate the woods looking for clues on the missing children while avoiding ghostly encounters.  It’s no casual stroll through the woods.  You must constantly be vigilant for the next candle, as they burn very quickly here, and the only hints you have to their location is a faint glimmer of light in the distance.  Without the candle light, you’re far more vulnerable to ghostly attacks. These ghost children really, really want to play with you.

Teenagers are assholes

While this game is extremely heavy on jump scares and limited on gameplay mechanics, it proves much more strategic than your typical Five Nights at Freddy’s style point-and-click survival horror.  Each new hour brings a new ghost child into the fold, and each child brings their own bag of tricks.  One brings instant death if you look at them directly, while another would rather chase you.  Some like to blow out your candle, and some like to teleport you to a different part of the woods altogether.  Quite frustrating when you’re on the cusp of grabbing that much needed candle.  It’s critical to learn about the children if you have any hope in making it to the final hour.

Despite the simple premise, its execution is much more complicated.  Contending with one deadly ghost while managing your light source is already tricky, but what about hour 4 when you’re dealing with all of them at once?  Prepare to die.  A lot.  In fact, the very first game achievement you’ll likely unlock is “Everyone Dies” in the first hour.  The developers had no desire to make this game a cake walk for its players, and it shows.  If this sounds like a complaint, it’s not.  The game’s difficulty not only stretches out a short concept, but it enhances the atmosphere tenfold.

Wick taught me that when it comes to fight-or-flight fear responses, I’m definitely a fighter.  At least that’s my assumption based on the amount of times I mashed the keyboard when Tim or Tom popped up on my screen.  It wasn’t just the jump scares that got to me, but the haunting visuals and the eerie sound design.  The stress levels from your candles burning out are enough to induce nyctophobia.

The game’s difficulty not only stretches out a short concept, but it enhances the atmosphere tenfold.

For those looking for a casual survival horror game with an interesting story, this is for you.  The simple controls make it easy to pick up, and piecing together what happened to the children makes it easier to get through all of the nightmare inducing jump scares.  That it’s easy on the eyes surely helps as well.  Because of its simplicity, however, the replay value is virtually nonexistent.  The developers attempt to bypass this with offering a “true ending,” which the player can only get if they’ve collected all of the relics from each hour.  The normal ending is disappointing enough to try to unlock the true ending, but after a very exhaustive and unforgiving hour 4, many players may not find it worth it. A fantastic yet short survival horror game, but its $12.99 current price tag on Steam might not feel proportionate.

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