I don’t have a lot of experience playing horror games but I have a lot of experience with frightening books and movies and I love to be scared. But I’m not so easily scared. The Wounded demo took care of that for me! I jumped several times, pulled my feet up onto the bed (yes I was gaming in bed – it’s the best way to do it) so nothing could get me, and at one point thought I was going to pee my pants. I played the game while I was alone and had no other background noise (no that isn’t an excuse for my being scared, just setting the scene for ya).
I was thrown into the role of a father who has come home a little drunk and is disoriented. Wandering around my house for a bit gave me my first few scares and a feel for the controls. They are pretty basic. Arrows for walking and you use the mouse to look around and get facing the way you want to go. Everything else is explained as you play. The E key takes care of most things while I could hit shift and control to either crouch or sprint… and sprint I did! The controls all seemed responsive, thank goodness.
After checking out my house I start to think what exactly am I playing and then I’m suddenly outside! I’ve been in a car accident. Sweet. Getting scared in the house was fun but I wasn’t sure where we were going. Now we are getting to the good stuff. It’s time to look for my daughter since she is nowhere to be seen. As I started looking around I realized how much dude must care for her. It would take unconditional love or a massive amount of drugs for someone to walk around this kind of place… at night… while disoriented from a car accident.
The first thing I had to do is get the electricity working so I could see what is going on. It is hard to find someone in the dark. I’m still not sure I want to see what is going on but alas I got it working. Now I’m looking for the guy’s daughter and instead I’m finding a burn barrel with bodies in it. There was a crowbar I picked up so I guess SCORE!?
While walking around the game suggests I check the hotel. It does a good job of suggesting where I should go if I get stuck just walking around. If I try to go somewhere I’m not supposed to go then I got a message that I can’t leave without finding my daughter. That was a huge bonus with me as I hate getting lost and spending hours aimlessly wandering.
While exploring the hotel I take the time to appreciate the atmosphere and the fact that I’ve been scared several times already. They did away with BGM which was a brilliant idea as it would just distract me from what I’m doing. I know sometimes music can add to it, but trust me, in this case it was nice not to have it. No background music coupled with footsteps is creepy enough but the game goes one step further; I could hear things moving around in the building with you from time to time. It’s clear that I wasn’t alone in there and every time I thought I might be OK, there was another noise to make me scared.
There are locked doors that require keys and other doors that need to be pried open. One door is shut and I couldn’t get in it because “someone” is holding it closed from the inside. Not something but someone. Was it my daughter? Was it a skinless meatbag? While I was exploring to try and find the items needed to open the doors I got a sense of the horror that has happened here. This place is creepy as hell. It is an abandoned hotel that people had probably been partying in. Everything is trashed. There is blood everywhere and I keep finding corpses all around. That can’t be good.
Graphically the game is beautiful. If you find bodies without skin, blood, and a ruined hotel beautiful. I played with the setup options to have things run smooth and not look the prettiest (because I wasn’t sure what the system requirements were – they should put that on the Kickstarter page!) so the game was a little dark for me. Even with that I definitely got the feel for the horror. They went all out with the details. Papers strewn about, old furniture that is torn up, lamps turned over with the wiring going crazy and throwing off sparks. Even the vending machines in this place look creepy.
If you are a fan of horror games you should definitely check out this demo. I was terrified every single time I opened a door or rounded a corner. I wanted more! Nothing that drastic had happened to me yet but I knew from the situation I was in, and how on edge the game had me, that anything could happen. At one point all I could hear was the sound of the main character breathing and every hair on the back of my neck stood up. At another point something ran down the hall in front of me (which is where the reference to about peeing my pants came from in the intro to this impressions article) and I thought if the game keeps scaring me like this, I could be a little bit in love.
Check out our in depth coverage of the Kickstarter, play the demo, and decide for yourself if you should back this project.
