inhabits the sense of childness better than most things; the third graders here being utterly unhinged in their expression in a way that rings far more true than either the naive or precocious archetypes that children are often chained to in fiction. in third grade they wrestle with mental health, death, and the eternal cudgel of generational trauma; they respond accordingly with coarse jokes, catastrophic outbursts and reflection; they seek companionship and try to wrangle their feelings; and the outcomes are mercurial and messy and ugly and dumb and real. in third grade these kids they're about what I remember of being in third grade — an impressionistic, heightened portrait, if not always a direct doppelganger

it uses its own status as remake as an opportunity to carve up the format with broad, erratic cuts. equally crushingly earnest and sneering at its own earnestness, picking at its skin with irreverent humour. embracing a need for warmth, kindness, and compassionate understanding while burning its own history with a magnifying glass for fun and interjecting frequently with self conscious fourth wall breaks and edgy non sequiturs

plumbs the depths of rpg maker design to pull elaborate gotchas; a puckish sprit overtaking the game's more perplexing asks. scenarios get increasingly brazen and unmanageable, forcing failure and having you reckon with an endless parade of "what if"s while boasting an undeniable cleverness for the kind of punji stick designs where saving a life's only possible by being hypervigilant to the point of psychic phenomena or counter clockwise time travel

the queasy true ending is the elaborate last showcase of the game's dueling philosophies. telling us what we already know, it sets the table up for unconditional love and understanding before the dealer flips their cards to reveal some things are immutable; the participants bowing out with a hideous BANG, canned laughter, and the wistful murmur of those who want to be better — to themselves, and to those around them

rest in peace parun

(this game is too damn expensive lol)
I beat this game first back in March, and came back to play it again on hard mode. I can say without a doubt this game is much, much Superior on the harder difficulty and I like it leagues more. I'm coming to realize how much detail and thought was put into this game even for just being a scrapped and edited script of RE4


Haunting Ground stands out to me because it incentives replays through the usage of different play styles you can experiment with, there's sooo much to unlock after beating the game. Fiona has many different accessories and costumes that give her new mechanics, take for example the Cowgirl outfit, equipping this gives Fiona a gun that can make you have a guns blazing approach, or wearing an accessory earring that allows Fiona to turn invisible to be more sneaky. I think this is really awesome and different from a survival horror game because it opens the game up tremendously and encourages new playstyles like in Resident Evil, there's even a ranking system at the end of each playthrough that tells you about your kind of playstyle.

On Standard, I was feeling underwhelmed due to how easy it is to get away from stalkers and survive them but on hard is a much different story, the enemy AI is much smarter now (or at least the first 3 stalkers), they take more effort to shake off your trail, you have to be much smarter when hiding, there were quite some times where stalkers like Riccardo, Debilitas, or Daniella would catch me off guard, and almost one-shot me

I ain't gonna dwell much on the story, since the gameplay really is where I'm most interested, all I know is that I liked Daniella's parts (she can have me btw.) Hewie best boy, and Fiona best girl.

For what it's worth I get the feminist readings and interpretations of what the game is trying to say through the eyes of Fiona, objectification against a woman's will is apparent in it however, I somewhat feel like the game contradicts itself in that category with the alt skimpy costumes you obtain lol. (Not to bash the funny boob physics harshly) Almost in a sense the game kinda wants you in on the sexualization at that point. I think the way to rectify this is Fiona only getting those outfits when she has a weapon of power, or dominance, but I still think it's a slight leap in thought considering parts of this game are an heavy analogy of SA or R*pe. I get where the readings are coming from though.



Most horror games nowadays don't really do much to bring you back but Haunting Ground is unique in this regard because of how many different ways you can run through this game. Wanna run past the sections and speed through the game as quickly as possible? Sure! Wanna get risky and go in guns blazing with all the unlockable costumes, or different items you can craft? Easy. Want to use all those items you've found/crafted to plant traps around the map, and ambush the stalkers with Hewie? Very doable. Want to sneak past your enemies, skip most of the encounters, and scout for all the items? Fun. Want to just max out the dog meter and pet Hewie all day? Go ahead! These are all really optimal playstyles and the game knows it. There are so many different outcomes and little details the game is filled with that sometimes on a new playthrough the game can feel really different and you'll encounter something new that you didn't last time.

If the game isn't gripping you after a first playthrough, I don't blame you! Haunting Ground is one of those games that gets better on a replay as you understand how things work, the game opens up much more after completion, it's a game im currently learning to luv. I think that's really neat.
My only real gripes with this game is some of the level design gets weaker in some sections in the last quarter of the game given how strong it is in the main 3 sections, or the inconsistency of Hewie's AI that sometimes lead to deaths.
The game does a poor job explaining some of the mechanics like Hewie for example but I think some of that is apart of the experience, like the lack of a UI hud for the game. The game would be infinitely easier if there was a HUD that showed health or stamina and even your bond with Hewie throughout the game. You have to rely more so on the animations, AI behaviors, and aesthetical cues to understand how things are operating to apply the proper judgment of the situation, I think that's a smart choice on the designers of this game, makes you pay attention more. This game is by no means a perfect cookie, but the kind of cookie that gets better as you take another bite.

If there is something else I would add though in the game would be a limited saves mode (ink ribbons like from RE) where you can only save through an item (like the chips) but that's just me dreaming lol.

Might make a video explaining its mechanics for it who knows lol