Metaphobia's presentation is remarkable, with its rotoscoped animations, quality voice work and engaging story, especially for a freeware game, but its puzzle design often leaves a lot to be desired.
It's usually competent, though you'll here and there be stumped by an unfortunate amount of pixel hunting while searching for that elusive barely visible item that's all of three white pixels on a grey background (an issue compounded by the fact you only get a not very eye-catching cursor change and no names while hovering over objects), its puzzles are still for the most part logical enough to escape the pitfalls of moon logic. Sometimes, however they cross into pure clunky idiocy, despite the game being deadly serious throughout: trying to talk to a warehouse worker results in the character stealing his employee ID card for no reason, then you'll use that very same card to convince a pharmacist that you are a company inspector. In another occasion you will talk to a cop that won't let you into a psychiatric ward, only to return minutes later with a psychiatrist pass and an all-new Alabama accent, with no objections raised. The cop even tells you he hasn't seen you before. These are jarring moments that don't disrupt the flow too much, but what does do that are the endgame puzzles, which require to hit a 20 symbol combination without any margin for error or hint of where you made one, especially infuriating when you realize that two symbols looked virtually identical.
On a side note, while games like Shadow of the Comet and Prisoner of Ice don't leave you with the impression their creators believe in Cthulhu, after completing Metaphobia you might be left wondering if its authors actually think the creatures at the center of its narration are indeed real and if they unironically buy into the conspiracy theories surrounding them. It's an intangible suspicion and likely unfounded, but a suspicion nonetheless.
All that aside, for a free game this is an absolute no brainer: fans of the genre have no reason whatsoever to not give it a try.
It's usually competent, though you'll here and there be stumped by an unfortunate amount of pixel hunting while searching for that elusive barely visible item that's all of three white pixels on a grey background (an issue compounded by the fact you only get a not very eye-catching cursor change and no names while hovering over objects), its puzzles are still for the most part logical enough to escape the pitfalls of moon logic. Sometimes, however they cross into pure clunky idiocy, despite the game being deadly serious throughout: trying to talk to a warehouse worker results in the character stealing his employee ID card for no reason, then you'll use that very same card to convince a pharmacist that you are a company inspector. In another occasion you will talk to a cop that won't let you into a psychiatric ward, only to return minutes later with a psychiatrist pass and an all-new Alabama accent, with no objections raised. The cop even tells you he hasn't seen you before. These are jarring moments that don't disrupt the flow too much, but what does do that are the endgame puzzles, which require to hit a 20 symbol combination without any margin for error or hint of where you made one, especially infuriating when you realize that two symbols looked virtually identical.
On a side note, while games like Shadow of the Comet and Prisoner of Ice don't leave you with the impression their creators believe in Cthulhu, after completing Metaphobia you might be left wondering if its authors actually think the creatures at the center of its narration are indeed real and if they unironically buy into the conspiracy theories surrounding them. It's an intangible suspicion and likely unfounded, but a suspicion nonetheless.
All that aside, for a free game this is an absolute no brainer: fans of the genre have no reason whatsoever to not give it a try.