This was solid! What I think I appreciate most is how the game's tone can just completely turn on a dime. While for the most part, the story plays off the humour of its kooky, slightly exaggerated characters bickering with each other, the horror aspect of the game can suddenly rear its head and produce sections that feel genuinely stressful to play — hearing your friends slowly die over the radio as your hazmat suit slowly runs out of oxygen. The plot starts out mundane enough, where you and your friends seek a way out of a hospital while also trying to cure yourself from the various viruses you catch, but out of nowhere, near the end, it just becomes absolutely unhinged in a way that kinda has to be seen to be believed. I liked the adventure game mechanics, too, even if I was happy to have a walkthrough for most of it: the first-person linear hallways, the mostly sparse sound design, and the empty, almost decrepit landscapes do a lot to characterize the hospital you're trying to escape, and the varied time-limit mechanics do a lot to make the player hurry a bit as they try and solve inventory puzzles. I'm a bit less sure about how slowly you plod as you walk back and forth between areas (even if it does, admittedly, add something to the tension) and the controls as a whole feel... finicky, with how sometimes you have to walk in circles or attempt something several times for the game to continue, but as a whole I had fun with this! It perhaps wasn't my favourite thing in the world to play, but as an experience I definitely appreciated what it brought to the table, both in terms of its specific atmosphere (and how it could play with tension) and in terms of just how entertaining it was to watch unfold.

Reviewed on Nov 05, 2023


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