Yeah this stinks unfortunately. I played all the way until the end, mostly out of spite, but additionally to see if it got any better. On the first playthrough, it was genuinely awful. I was basically bashing my head against the wall at all the overused tropes and gimmicks that were trying really, really hard to be scary, and falling completely flat. Turns out you have to go into the game again to see anything a little bit cool. From here it turns more ARG-like, which does turn out to be more interesting, but the immersion of the original concept of KinitoPet being a rogue program on your computer is completely broken by a reset of progress and features like a "chapter select". Adding features requiring replaying a game to see all of it's secrets is fine and all, but when the "game" doesn't want you to view it as a "game", it feels incredibly counterintuitive when you have to start all over again, and makes the original experience feel meaningless. The ARG elements added during replay weren't that deep either, mostly consisting of finding a few new things popping up on your second playthrough, a few cyphers, a bit of file digging, but it is very much baby's first ARG stuff here. It's an incredible shame that this game ends up feeling like it's targeted at the Garten of Banban/Piggy/Hello Neighbor kids who get scared by the bare minimum, rather than capitalizing on it's technologically interesting gimmicks that had real potential to create something next-level if utilized properly. If you want something scary with old-school tech aesthetics and actually interesting out-of-game elements attached, check out Shipwrecked 64 instead. It released only a week before this game, and ends up being a much better use of your money and your time.

Reviewed on Mar 03, 2024


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