- Dread xp 5 -
Siento que de todos los Dread collection este tiene la mayoria de juegos solidos, a mi gusto el unico que fuertemente no me gusto y no logre entender fue Interim.
Y me parecio bien los acertijos y la forma de explorar el cine para lograr desbloquear cada pedazo del comic y los regalos/juegos.

Y pues de rendimiento me parecio que me consume mucho rendimiento.

Once again a weird hub, but at least the connection between the games is interesting.

Overall, the games on this one are okay. Most of them are cool, but “The Book of Blood” is simply great, I loved it! Unfortunately, this hub is a bit buggy. Had a few crashes for some reason.

Worth playing the entire franchise to get to know cool small dev teams! Even more worth it if you catch it on a promo like I did.

An anthology horror series, one that had been on a bit of a hiatus since The Hunt. These all play pretty similarly, 12 games, some good and some bad, and a hub game to connect them with a weird overarching lore that I don't pay attention to. This game's theme is "Entertainment" and the hub is not the best. It's probably the worst hub in the series but it's not egregious. Some of the puzzles in it truly suck and make no sense but eh. I'm gonna run through the games in the order I played them.

Hunsvotti - Weird game to start off with. I wonder if any finnish game ever depicts finland as anything but a horrific demon hellhole. It's fun, short and stuck with me for how weird it was. 6/10

Gallerie - The longest dread x game by far, clocking in at around 90 minutes with secrets to find after that if you really dig it. It's by the guy who made Golden Light and Rose of Meat so you can expect very, very odd visuals and bizarre gameplay mechanics. Everything comes together really well, though, and I think I like it a bit more than Golden Light. Does stick around a bit long but that's a criticism that a game jam game should wear with pride, maybe. 7.5/10

The Book of Blood - A great atmosphere and gameplay loop here. I wish it were expanded upon in a full game, honestly. I dock points because the noise mechanic doesn't seem to matter and by the end of the game the bad guy was spawning in directly in front of me - not that it mattered anyway given the dodge QTE is so painfully easy to do. I liked it, though. 6.5/10

Karao - I could have sworn this was made by the Lost in Vivo person but apparently not. This game is damn solid, the best in the collection for sure. It nails an oppressive urban hell atmosphere, reminds me of Paratopic. Sometimes the enemies can be a bit cheap but that's really a nitpick. Easy recommend for people into horror games set in dingy city environments. 8.5/10

Rotten Stigma - An attempt at a resident evil style third person action game with the rookie mistake of having melee combat that's impossible to use without taking damage and not enough bullets to kill every necessary enemy in the game. It also spells out every aspect of its plot in very specific detail to you so there's no mystery whatsoever. Plays alright, puzzles are ok, story made me roll my eyes. 5/10

Spirit Guardian - How the fuck did a random dogshit granny game from ios make it into a dread x collection. Nothing here is good. This is possibly the worst dread x game. Rotgut probably still clears but at least rotgut didn't make me feel like i was playing a knockoff of a knockoff. 1.5/10

We Never Left - Another standout in the collection. Takes you through a text adventure game made by your brother who has gone missing. It's a bit predictable but it's so well executed I don't care. 8/10

Vestige - Play a minigame with a skeleton on a motorcycle and occasionally a screamer pops up with a loud noise. It's like pony island if it was even more unsubtle. 4.5/10

Resver - I'm not exactly sure what this game was going for but the style is so on point that it carries a lot of the weight. It's a short walking sim that takes you through the nightmare of going to a club whose vibes are all fucked up. 6.5/10

Ludomalica - There are some good ideas here but this entire game boils down to rolling dice, walking around your house turning off lights, and going back to roll the dice. Also the monster is literally just a transparent gray blender default humanoid. 3/10

Beyond the Curtain - This game has a disclaimer that you should not use the run button unless you need to. It proceeds to drop you off with the slowest goddamn character speed of all time. Running doesn't help, this is 30 minutes of walking through copy pasted environments while someone falls asleep on an accordion in the background. The atmosphere is alright but it loses all goodwill by the 30th identical corridor or so. 3.5/10

Interim - I have no clue what the fuck this game is trying to be and I stopped playing it at the timed physics based platforming bit because the game looks like vomit and I couldn't figure out which platforms were where. I like the intro, I guess. 3.5/10

Overall one of the weaker dread x games, but Karao and We Never Left are well worth the price of admission. I would say it's still mostly good games but the amount of stinkers is definitely higher than usual.

This one's theme is "entertainment" which I like because it's focused enough while still leaving plenty room for various interpretations. The main drawback here is that almost all devs are newcomers, which makes the game lack a big selling point since they're all unknown, but it's cool to see some different stuff.

Unlike most people apparently, I enjoyed the hub. Lacks meaningful puzzles like 2 or some well-paced dialogue like 3 and The Hunt, but the setting is pretty cool. I also really liked the monster, creepy design, very disgusting and while it becomes predictable, it's first appearances came off as a surprise for me. While The Hunt ended with a showdown against the monster, it was right at the climax and it wasn't particularly well animated or a difficult chase either. In most hubs there is no real threat, and I thought that was the same case here when the monster first appeared at the stage. But after that you see the damn thing chasing you and it becomes a different story. Gave me a couple of good scares. Honestly quite enjoyed the setting and atmosphere, story was fine too.

12. Interim

Idk what that was, kind of embarrassing lol. I think it was going for a Videodrome kind of thing but it's just all over the place and janky af, couldn't enjoy it or take it seriously.

11. Spirit Guardian

Kind of the same, I like the visuals but the nanny herself is really dumb and the way you fend her off is so stupid it loses all tension in the first couple of minuts. Puzzles are really silly too, idk, seemed more like a meme game.

10. Ludomalica

This one's a shame because the concept and ideas are really cool but it doesn't delve too far into any of them. The "you must be alone" thing gets old faster than it should and the game can't come up with anything else aside from running you around turning off the lights. The monster isn't scary at all either. Would've liked to see it build up more tension, but flopped hard quite quickly.

9. Rotten Stigma

Idk what this one was going for, it doesn't even fit the theme I think? I mean you could argue the sports center serves as entertainment but idk. Played like a mini-silent hill thing and it was actually fun but there was little aside from that, the scares were pretty silly. I had fun with it but that's about it.

8. Hunsvotti

This one was too silly but it was also fun, I wasn't expecting it to end like that lol. It's a really short game but it sets up the story nicely. Fun stuff.

7. Vestige

This one was silly too but I respect the commitment to the concept. This one gave me the most scares and the game within a game is really fun, really stupid too but it's genuinely well polished lol, I liked how it combined 2 completely different types of games. Had a good time

6. Beyond the Curtain

I've seen people shit in this one and I don't get it! There's nothing besides walking and the scenery isn't that interesting but it's quite short and keeps you on edge once the knife buddy appears. Nothing particularly amazing imo but it's well designed. Ending is fucked up.

5. The Book of Blood

Really liked the concept here but some stuff completely trivializes how it works, like the evade mechanic when the clown tries to stab you. There's also the thing with keeping your stand secure by locking the doors and looking through the windows, would've liked to see more of that, or that the game forced you more to explore the place in which it takes place. It's good tho, never drops the ball and is very focused despite the flaws, the scary factor quickly became meaningless tho.

4. Resver

The style's amazing and that's about the point I think, I can understand the general aspects of the story but it's left very vague. Still enjoyed it a lot, the visuals keep it going for a while.

3. We Never Left

This one would have surprised me more if I hadn't played Stories Untold before, although the concept is definitely explored better here, made me nervous more than I'd like to admit. One of the more polished ones for sure.

2. Gallerie

Holy shit this thing's long, I thought Squirrel Stapler was the longest Dread X stuff but this can go on for like 2 hours or so lol. I liked a lot of ideas here, didn't fully buy the asmr at first but I enjoyed how the rest played out. The "horror by stress" thing, the "trying to decipher a language" thing, the setting itself, idk, really enjoyed it. It definitely felt like too much sometimes, but the final thing feels very consistent, might be the most ambitious release in any collection.

1. Karao

I WOKE UP EARLY THIS MORNING. This one takes the cake tho, everything's just on point, looks cool, plays cool, story ends up being cool, I was expecting it to the predictable way but it absolutely delivered.

Overall, this one's all over the place. They didn't have a strict time limit like previous collections apparently so that's why you end up with lengthy and/or polished stuff like Gallerie, Karao or We Never Left and then some really short and/or limited stuff like Hunsvotti and Ludomalica. I absolutely wouldn't put it below other collections though, there's more to like than to hate here, and I think it has more to do with all devs being newcomers this time. The highlights here are really different to what you're used to in these collections by this point so the reaction is sort of understandable, but in many was I consider it superior to the previous ones. Apparently Dread XP is more focused on publishing now and this one might be the last one, at least for a good while, but I personally don't mind it. The hub story feels disconnected from previous ones but I like what it went for.

Glad I played these honestly, I enjoy little horror games but I don't usually go on hunting for them on itch or stuff, so having them delivered like this was quite the treat. It also introduced me to a lot of cool devs and made me appreciate some I knew before even know, so I'm thankful for that.

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