Spectator
released on Feb 07, 2023
Featuring Backrooms, Slender, FazPizza, and many more locations based on Creepy stories! You are here to watch surveillance cameras in real time and report any kind of suspicious activity. Anomalies range from furniture movement to otherworldly intruders.
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As someone who has actually worked overnight security, I can confirm that Spectator is narrowly more exciting than the real job, and this one has blood pouring from ceilings.
Basically a "spot the difference" puzzle game more than anything horror, Spectator is mediocre in what it's got going here. It feels more like a high school student's semi-ambitious project more so than a game you can actually purchase. End to end this game should take you no more than three hours, and that's being very generous as there are six levels, each twenty minutes, for two hours total. But if you play on Hard or Nightmare, you may make some mistakes as I did and have to restart a level or two.
The anomalies you're spotting on the cameras vary wildly in difficulty. These are hard set, the difficulty choice you can make changes how many anomalies can be present before you lose and have to restart. So some anomalies are very tough to spot, like a chair turning or a medpack disappearing, while others are blaringly apparent, such as definitely-not-Freddy Fazbear screaming into the camera you're looking at. So the only way you'll lose is if enough small things are changed in the rooms you're observing and you just don't report them in time. You can't spam the reports as there's a brief cooldown afterwards, so you gotta be accurate and speedy. Simple stuff.
The story is paper thin. You've agreed to work for someone to spot the anomalies. You're in the apartment from Silent Hill 4: The Room and won't be leaving until you do all six shifts. Someone talks to you through the TV about escaping this job. Do you agree to it? Does it even matter? No, as both endings are almost exactly the same and both feature a very cool cut to black screen after a short walking sequence. You don't play this game for a plot.
Spectator was an alright way to kill a couple hours but I don't think this game is worth your money. It's just someone having fun, making gigantic nods to their favorite horror games around a simple and forgiving puzzle element. I assume the developer is pretty young and I hope they keep up the ambition, but work harder next time making something actually worth releasing. This "game" is one you show mom and dad, not sell on Steam.
Basically a "spot the difference" puzzle game more than anything horror, Spectator is mediocre in what it's got going here. It feels more like a high school student's semi-ambitious project more so than a game you can actually purchase. End to end this game should take you no more than three hours, and that's being very generous as there are six levels, each twenty minutes, for two hours total. But if you play on Hard or Nightmare, you may make some mistakes as I did and have to restart a level or two.
The anomalies you're spotting on the cameras vary wildly in difficulty. These are hard set, the difficulty choice you can make changes how many anomalies can be present before you lose and have to restart. So some anomalies are very tough to spot, like a chair turning or a medpack disappearing, while others are blaringly apparent, such as definitely-not-Freddy Fazbear screaming into the camera you're looking at. So the only way you'll lose is if enough small things are changed in the rooms you're observing and you just don't report them in time. You can't spam the reports as there's a brief cooldown afterwards, so you gotta be accurate and speedy. Simple stuff.
The story is paper thin. You've agreed to work for someone to spot the anomalies. You're in the apartment from Silent Hill 4: The Room and won't be leaving until you do all six shifts. Someone talks to you through the TV about escaping this job. Do you agree to it? Does it even matter? No, as both endings are almost exactly the same and both feature a very cool cut to black screen after a short walking sequence. You don't play this game for a plot.
Spectator was an alright way to kill a couple hours but I don't think this game is worth your money. It's just someone having fun, making gigantic nods to their favorite horror games around a simple and forgiving puzzle element. I assume the developer is pretty young and I hope they keep up the ambition, but work harder next time making something actually worth releasing. This "game" is one you show mom and dad, not sell on Steam.