Reviews from

in the past


Please stop charging money for demos.

I get the rationale behind it. I understand that indie development is a complete and utter hellscape where it can be nearly impossible to secure enough funding for even a single person to live an uncomfortable life. I understand that putting out these smaller-scale releases can help to get a little extra cash flow, and maybe make it a little easier to make the game you actually want to make. I understand that it's part of a greater business strategy. I get it. The problem with El Paso, Nightmare is twofold; it won't be anything like the final game, and it isn't fun.

El Paso, Nightmare is intended as a prelude to the upcoming El Paso, Elsewhere, which seems to be a Max Payne game where you gun down cryptids instead of New York City goons (you could argue there's little fundamental difference between the two groups). Nightmare, though, isn't a third-person shooter, and it doesn't have bullet time like Elsewhere advertises; it's a two-parter of a vaguely bad horror walk-about, and an extremely bad arena wave shooter.

The horror part isn't especially egregious, but it's also not that interesting. You walk around a dimly-lit motel searching for colored hearts to open corresponding colored doors while sneaking past unaware monsters. The penalty for getting caught by them is almost negligible: they deal very little damage, and you'll outrun them by just walking in a straight line. You can chug down the very plentiful bottles of painkillers strewn about the map to heal (remember, the final game is going to be like Max Payne), and you're basically guaranteed to be carrying the maximum amount of them on you at all times. It feels like an extended kiting tutorial for enemies with exceptionally uncomplicated AI, which is a major waste of time. In a game with a runtime of under thirty minutes total, this is an unacceptable fault.

At the end of the sequence, though, the music shifts from this boring ambient track into a legitimately interesting, heavy, plodding, Southern Gothic hip-hop song. It was a different enough sound from what I usually hear in games like this that I immediately perked up. It was interesting. I wanted to hear more. Surely the game was about to get fun.

Unfortunately, all that was left for me was a wave shooter that felt like a very, very bad custom Killing Floor map. It's kind of shocking. This would have felt dated ten years ago, and it feels positively ancient now. All you do is run around for about fifteen minutes before the game decides you're allowed to progress, and then you wake up from the nightmare. It's a snooze, ironically. The weapons feel bad to use, and the monsters are so simple that they're boring instead of threatening; what you're left with is something that's too easy to be scary, and too clunky to feel satisfying.

When you wake up from the nightmare, there's a lengthy sequence where you can listen to the protagonist leaving a voicemail for his dead father explaining why he didn't go to his funeral. This is a sudden, heavy turn, but I kind of liked it. It's acted well, which is strange considering how amateur the voice acting is everywhere else in the game. I don't know why this sequence got so much care put into it, considering how easily you can skip it. I bet some players wouldn't even notice that they could listen to the answering machine that it's left on and proceed straight to the credits.

El Paso, Nightmare is bad, but it's a very weird kind of bad. I know I don't hate it, but I don't think there's much of anything here to like. The good moments are little sparks that immediately get snuffed out, and the overwhelming majority of the game is just a slog. I sincerely hope that Elsewhere ends up being better, because I can see the potential here. Considering how poor this is, though, I won't hold my breath.

Great first chapter, iffy second one. I'm so excited for El Paso Elsewhere.

Nothing interesting to say about this one unfortunately. I know this is supposed to be the "Appetizer" to El Paso, Elsewhere's "Main Course," but it leaves a lot to be desired.

Unsatisfying. Not worth the price of admission I'm afraid.

[EDIT 12/17/23] I've finished El Paso, Elsewhere and this game specifically remains an anomaly to me. I don't think I would've had such an adverse reaction if any of this game capitalized on the strengths of Elsewhere, but since it doesn't, what you're left with is a pretty bland, boring, and short wave survival FPS. Definitely feel like if the gameplay was closer to Elsewhere, this would at least be a shoo-in. Still can't recommend this one.

Really wish the checkpointing in this was better, I am simply too bad at navigation to get through it without turning the difficulty down so much that there's basically no game. It's cool though, looking forward to El Paso, Elsewhere.

Love the design and look of the game, but it shouldn't be chugging the framerate down to 20 fps on a RTX 2060. The price is right for the game, though, and is a pretty good introduction to El Paso, Elsewhere.


Pep's Season of Spooks - Game 5
Part run-and-hide horror, part run-and-gun wave shooter - sadly I wasn't particularly enamoured with either of them.
I may check out the full game that this is a preview for but the wave-based shooting was a little too frantic for me to figure out where I was supposed to be going until it was too late and I was being overwhelmed by enemies.
That said, the final scene (and the main character's emotional monologue on the phone) were very well done. It may just be enough for me to give EP,E a go now that it's out.
Scary Rating 3/10 - Overall Rating 5/10

Fun concept game, worth spending an hour and few bucks on imo.

This is the first of my "recently played" reviews!

Overall, this is solid enough as a playable teaser for the real game that they are pitching. With that said, the early game is hectic and spoopy enough to give me an overall decent kick, especially for the price.

What happens next I won't spoil. I found it all right for a bit but then it just got kind of tedious.

While I don't find it a terribly compelling game at the end of the day, I do really love the format of playable teasers as a way to build hype for a main game.

It's interesting enough to be worth checking out I think, but I would never consider it esssential.

Cute little demo but that's all it is. The voice acting isn't nearly as good as the base game and the map layout is more confusing than anything. It has an endless mode which is cool but I didn't find anything special with it. It has one good song and also is just cool to play a game from a different perspective. That's about it though, nothing really interesting.

alem do pessimo framerate, o jogo n oferece nada muito interessante fora os visuais e a ação estilizada, espero mais da continuação