It Steals is a delightful goodie bag of horror minigames. You can get through all of it in around three hours, so it’s perfect for a Friday or Saturday night where you just want to sit down and beat something all the way through. It’s also actually quite scary at times, Zeekerss demonstrates much understanding of what goes into making horror games actually horrifying. Proper tension build-up, forcing the player to think on their toes, great sound design, fairly smart enemy AI, the list goes on. Best part is it’s 5 bucks. That’s like two gallons of milk in today’s economy. Go check it out.

At its core, Pandora’s Tower is about the relationship between two lovers, Aeron and Elena. The story, music, even game design all fall in service towards it, and that is precisely what makes this game so special. As for the story, its main conflict stems from Elena’s curse, which can only be stalled by her eating beast flesh and fully eradicated after eating twelve Master Flesh. This is the most natural of the three, because the story is simply written with the two of them together in mind. Aeron’s motivations are all from his desire to cure her curse, which brings a very nice simplicity to the narrative despite some elements of it being rather convoluted at times.

Next falls the soundtrack, which to my surprise actually has no original music made for it. I first thought the game’s use of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique was a sort of one-off, but then as I made my way into the Observatory for the first time, a very familiar melody played that I could swear I’d heard somewhere before. This melody is Liebesraum No. 3 by Frank Liszt, more commonly known as Love Dream, and serves as what I would call the main theme of the game, even though that title technically goes to the song in the intro cutscene based on Dies Irae. This song doesn’t just represent Elena, this song is Elena, for she sings on many occasions throughout the game, most importantly during her performance at the Harvest Festival which kickstarts the main events of the story. With the Observatory sharing this melody, it’s almost as if the game is saying that it by its lonesome is not home, but rather only because Elena is there with you too. You’ll find yourself returning back many times throughout a playthrough, and it only serves to further instill this feeling. For the remainder of the tracks, they all carry this sense of grandiose because of the classical pieces they take from, perfectly fitting for the booming nature of the Thirteen Towers. The Final Boss theme in particular is incredible for the way it builds on recognizable melodies by the end of the game to truly leave an impression, and the credits theme is just lovely.

Though perhaps the most important aspect of them all is the way the game design is used to sell the two’s relationship and really make you care for Elena. I have nothing to say on the level design and combat, both of which are serviceable, but instead the timer that ticks down while you’re going through the towers. Whenever you’re not at the Observatory, a timer representative of how long till Elena transforms will slowly go down. There are certain points in the timer that dictate how far of a transformation she’ll undergo, as you take longer and longer to feed her the Master Flesh you get at the end of a tower. In the beginning, I would do a tower all in one go and wonder why the game gave me so much additional beast flesh since I could just get the Master Flesh quickly and bring Elena’s Timer back up to max like that. But around the third or fourth dungeon, it started getting to the point where Elena would transform almost entirely, and at that point I realized how much of a mistake I had made. There was no point in optimizing how fast I could get through the dungeon to get the Master Flesh if Elena would have to transform and suffer every time. This revelation completely shifted how I played the game, and from then on I would never let her transform even to the minimal level. Pandora’s Tower is so good at making you feel a genuine connection with Elena, mainly due to the fact that a good portion of the game(if you choose to do so for the best ending) is spending time with her and giving gifts. There is an absolutely staggering amount of detail put into this almost dating sim aspect, an incredible amount of very specific voiced lines, special cutscenes that only play when you do certain things, and many different places she’ll be during the day. One of my personal favorites is a scene you get after continuously giving her flower seeds and having the time pass until it grows into a whole patch. The game constantly acknowledges your efforts and shows that what you’re doing has an impact on the world and more importantly, Elena. I remember being a bit disappointed when Elena took off a dress I had given her and went back to her normal clothes, only to later realize that she actually switches between all the necklaces, bracelets, and dresses she’s acquired from you. It’s all this and so, so much more that really make this very small area the game takes place in feel so alive. I still find myself wondering if I really understood everything that was going on in the story, but it almost feels like it doesn’t even matter. Whenever I look back on Pandora’s Tower, that’s not what I’ll be thinking of, nor the towers or gameplay. It’ll be the quiet times spent with Elena, sometimes sharing a meal, looking out at fireflies during the night, and listening to her sing an Eternal Blessing.

If you were to ask me what game I’d pick to represent the survival horror genre in its entirety, I’d probably go with the Resident Evil Remake based on personal preference. However, the original Resident Evil 2 is what I would consider the quintessential survival horror game. Everything about what it means to be a survival horror game is found here in its absolute prime. But before talking about RE2 in particular, I want to go over what I believe to be the most important aspects of making a survival horror game, Restriction, Resource Management, and Level Design. Restriction can be done in many ways, through a puzzle you have yet to solve, a locked door that you need a key for, or even just more enemies than you can shoot or heal for. Resource Management is a lot more self explanatory, being forced to consider whether or not to use something is the true cause of tenseness in this genre. Should I risk shooting this guy with handgun ammo and taking the hit or should I use my shotgun that I only have 2 bullets left for. Should I wait till I hit red health to use a full heal or should I use it now to not risk being killed? Level Design is the most Umbrella(heh) term, as it encompasses a majority of aspects in game design. What I really want to focus on is how good level design is used to place Restriction and Resource Management. Knowing where to place puzzles, locked doors, as well as ammo, heals, and even saves are crucial parts of how a survival horror game flows. Now that I’ve said all that jargon, watch me show how RE2 cooks in every single one of those categories.

While watching me play through the game, a friend of mine said “if you were to take out those long ass door animations, the game would still feel modernly designed.” Resident Evil 2 aged better than the finest glass of wine, so much so that I can’t believe I’m playing a game made in 1998 and not some retro-inspired survival horror game that was released last year. The level design is impeccable and shines the absolute brightest in the police station, which I’m very glad takes up most of the game’s runtime. Everything flows together beautifully and the brilliant restriction of where you can go guides you naturally into solving well-thought out puzzles and finding your way through, turning the Police Station into one giant puzzle itself. You never feel as though you are lost, instead slowly learning where everything is until the moment everything clicks and you know exactly what to do. As for the sewer and laboratory sections, they take up much less time than they do in the Remake, which arguably works in OG RE2’s favor. You never have that moment where you’re thinking “God I wish this section would end already” and instead get a really comforting “Wow, that wasn’t so bad and actually pretty fun.” Both are much easier to navigate, and at that point in the game you’ve gotten comfortable enough with your weapons and movement that you can almost breeze through, it’s a really nice way of “showing” player growth. These latter stages become more focused on the resource management aspect of survival horror rather than the restriction, as you’ll be fighting more dangerous enemies upon reaching the laboratory. RE2’s impeccable level design just never stumbles, even for a second.

Learning how to deal with specific enemies types is one of my favorite parts when first playing a new survival horror game, and the weapons you’re given in both discs play heavily into that. With the different enemies, your main task is learning when is the best time to shoot the slowly approaching zombie, poisonous giant spider, or pissed-off plant monster. The second half of it then lies in how to respond with the weapons at your disposal. With Leon, you have the Handgun, Shotgun, and Magnum. If you’re like me, the magnum is off-limits and only to be used during the final boss, so that leaves only the handgun and shotgun. Knowing when to use which and successfully executing it is immensely satisfying, I can’t even begin to describe how awesome it feels blowing a zombie’s head off with one shotgun shell by waiting till they get up close and aiming upwards. Then there’s Claire, who’s a fucking Spec-Ops soldier compared to Leon. She has the Handgun. Bowgun, and Grenade Launcher. I don’t even need to explain how stacked this makes Claire, so instead I’ll talk about the Submachine Gun, Flamethrower, and Spark Shot. These are “special weapons” in the fact that they have limited ammo that can never be refilled. These just kick so much ass and really feel like power weapons with how limited yet powerful they can be. Then we have the boss fights, which aren’t anything too special but act as a nice test of skill and to see if you’ve properly managed to save enough resources from everything leading up to the fight.

RE2’s story is camp perfection, it’s just plain fun and I adore it. The twists and turns in both character runs are like a wooden roller coaster that’s about to fall apart, but manages to not and give you an exhilarating ride to boot. The characters play a major part in this(as is with most RE games), with the charm and wit from the protagonists Leon and Claire, and the memorable nature of all the side characters. Lore also serves as a layered aspect of the narrative and gives the player purpose in searching every nook and cranny for more information on what really went on behind the scenes at Umbrella. To tie this already world-class game together into a neat bow, you have the soundtrack which by god slaps to an unhealthy degree. The imposing nature of the police station theme, the exhilaration during the escape from the laboratory, and of course the magical save room theme, in its sober and droning noise instills a peace inside as you save and prepare for your next venture out. The atmosphere in this game is already top-notch, but the soundtrack elevates it into another plane of existence. Any time I listen to it on my own time, I feel instantly transported back to zombie-infested Raccoon City. And of course, I can’t end this without talking about T-00 Mr. X himself. I spent the whole first playthrough thinking my game was bugged because he didn’t show up at all in the police station, only to learn that he only shows up on a second playthrough. Not only is this an extremely smart way of making the additional playthrough fresh(in addition to the level design and story being altered), Mr. X is bone-chilling. I knew already that he couldn’t be killed and would just run whenever I saw him, but the scripted events where he shows up while you think you can relax are some of the most well done jumpscares period. RE2 is a world-class buffet of goodness that’s aged better than games that have released within the past decade. Everything that survival horror stands for is here at its best, and is an absolute must to anyone who loves the genre.

One of the best co-op horror games out there period. Just like every scary game in existence, gradually the fear and scares begin to wear off, but where other games have this as a massive reduction in its quality, is where The Outlast Trials begins to thrive. It feels like a tactical objective game more than anything else, as you slowly begin to learn how enemies work, what you can and cannot do in regards to them, and how the tools at your disposal can be used to circumvent them. The level design is fairly simple, most of the time it’s simply go here and press this or find this and use it somewhere else(up until what I’ve played at the very least), but the location of the objectives are RNG so you can never just memorize where everything is and speed through it. What really makes the game shine though, are the Rigs, Amps, and Prescriptions you can add to your character, as well as the Psychosis meter that makes you slowly lose your sanity.

Starting with the character related stuff, Rigs are these core abilities that recharge every so often.
There are four rigs currently in the game thus far:
The Stun rig, a throwable that (you guessed it) stuns enemies for a short period of time.
The Blind rig, a landmine that when stepped on, blinds any enemies in the smoke it emits.
The Heal rig, a healing spray that can heal you and nearby teammates.
The X-ray rig, a vision enhancement that allows you to see enemies through walls.
All of these can be upgraded further, increasing the variety of their uses, the impact they have when used, and shortening the cooldowns to use them. Amps are like mini-perks, three of them can be equipped in total and they give helpful bonuses. Finally, there are the Prescriptions, which act as permanent upgrades to the player character, such as being able to slide or break through doors while sprinting. All of these tools and upgrades are bought with the same currency(tickets), so it’s up to the player on choosing what they buy next and how they customize their character. Do you split everything across evenly, perhaps raise your fundamental character up, or maybe put everything into your rig as a trump card? This satisfaction of progression is mainly highlighted in running back missions that you’ve already done to get better scores, as not only have you gotten better in terms of knowing the general layout of how the mission goes, but are now also technically better and have new abilities or upgrades to work with.

With that out of the way we can talk about the funny part, Psychosis. You have three bars of sanity that can be lost via stepping on a mine, gas sprayed after opening a kit, or the Pusher, an enemy that completely deteriorates all your sanity. The more sanity you lose, the more your surroundings start to warp, and false images plague your head while the voices around you start to meld into unintelligible noises. This includes the voices from the friends you’re potentially playing with, making it impossible to understand what they are saying and further disorganizing whatever objective you’re trying to complete. Many of my favorite moments from playing the game so far have been heavily under the influence of psychosis, schizoing around while your friends are left wondering “what the hell is going on with him.” If you manage to lose all your sanity bars, the Skinner Man comes out and drains your health whenever you are near him, but if you run away for long enough he just fucks off.

To round things out, let’s talk quickly about some enemies. We already talked about the Pusher so we can ignore him. Grunts are mostly whatever, just attacking if you get near them. The large grunts pose a much bigger threat, varying between being sight enabled and sound enabled. Then there’s the Screamers, which does as their name states and alerts enemies near your location while also stunning you briefly. The Night Watcher can see you even in the dark, which is a great twist as every other enemy cannot see you if you’re crouched in the dark. There are loads more enemies types, but what you can see with the ones listed thus far is that they’re designed in a way to never make you feel comfortable, always keeping you on your toes and prepared to go off-script.

Basically this game fucks ultra hard. As someone who really didn’t like Outlast 2 and thought it was more of a comedy game than anything else, The Outlast Trials is a delightful surprise. The game is technically in early access, but it’s extremely polished and has loads of content that honestly feels more like an already released game with confirmed content updates than a typical buggy, never releasing, money laundering shovelware that 95% of early access games end up being. All that’s left to say is the voices won’t go away and are getting louder, help.

Very light story spoilers

Really well done Portal 2 mod. Most mods are either centered around taking the building blocks of the base game and ramping it up to 11(which a lot of the time ends up backfiring and feeling unintuitive and difficult to naturally solve), or taking some new concept and centering the mod around that(ex. Portal Reloaded). Portal Revolution instead falls into the more underrepresented category of mods trying to emulate full on Portal games(such as Portal Stories: Mel), and for the most part succeeds at it.

The mod is split into 8 different chapters and took me around 8 hours to complete, nearly double that of what it takes me to beat Portal 2 now after so many runs through it to the point where I’ve memorized every bit of the game. Much of this is due to it boasting an actual narrative, complete with voice acted characters and a good portion of the game that isn’t just doing test chamber after test chamber, instead navigating the entirety of Aperture in unconventional ways as you did in Portal 2. Unfortunately, there-in lies my main problem, as most of the story structure is a retreading of Portal 2’s, which often makes it feel like you’re just experiencing an inferior version of that narrative. The initial side character you meet is essentially a less moronic Wheatley(now with a somewhat questionable “twist”), but I found myself enjoying the other side character a lot more courtesy of them having their own distinct feeling despite filling the same role as GLaDOS did in the latter half of Portal 2.

That being said, this game is probably the only Portal 2 mod I’ve played that almost feels Valve-made puzzle wise. The difficulty increase is very natural, and rarely do you feel completely stumped, only facepalming after realizing how simple the answer was(which is a sign of good puzzle design). It’s really easy to make a beginner or expert level test chamber, but what is not easy is designing a test chamber with difficulty that lands in the middle and slowly increases in difficulty as the player learns and becomes familiar with new mechanics. The only issue I have with the puzzles is that oftentimes I noticed the solution would require repeating a sequence you just did, but it only happened a couple of times so I’m not too bugged by it. Overall, yeah this was a really cool mod, glad they got it out after eight years.