Ratings for each story:
A Watchful Gaze - ★★½
Lord of the Road - ★½
The Red Button - ★★
Nocturne - ★★½

Has very interesting art styles that it switches between with each story, but the actual stories themselves don't have any kind of substance or effective horror. Too much reliance on jumpscares, which is a shame, because a lot of the design choices for the creatures are actually scary, they just don't handle them in a good way. Quite a hollow game, only really elevated by its visuals. Gameplay sucks as well. Some stories are worse for this than others.

tedious, derivative. lured by the intriguing graphical direction, the promise of a horror anthology with an overarching narrative, and Alpha Beta Gamer's somewhat positive reception (a very well trusted source of mine) and subsequently disappointed.

i intended to individually review each of the chapters playable here, but ended up with a few limp notes as the game offered little engagement to me. the voice performance, which i turned off after finishing one chapter of four, left much to be desired, and (minor contextless spoiler) the inclusion of yet another "i have a mental illness and suffer from trauma so the only recourse is to end my life" story is displeasing at best. the two star rating is mainly in praise of the range of pixel artwork on display across the chapters which was cohesive and pleasing to the eye, lending to each story's theme and setting.

here's to being the first steam title i've ever had refunded, as well as the first horror game to my knowledge to feature an unironic vine boom sound effect as a scare stinger.