But once you know how to complete the puzzles, you can do them in seconds.Īll being said, this game is simply so much fun, and as someone who is both a fan of Michael Jackson (the Ayuwoki) and the horror genre, this is a win-win game which has so much potential to be a real classic. You also need to spread out to find these puzzles (as the mansion is procedurally generated) and minimise the risk of a massacre, so for a large portion of my experience I've not really seen or interacted with others. What I mean by that is that there are lots of puzzles which aren't obvious at first glance, meaning you're forced to spend time to work them out whilst being hunted, and these take time to do, particularly as there's no way to communicate with other people on how to complete them, even with the pre-formed phrases. One final thing I'll say (as I appreciate this review is getting rather long) is that it does feel like a single player game with a multiplayer mechanic. You don't need to buy these new cosmetics with real money, it looks like you buy them with in-game currency which they've not added yet, so customisation is currently limited. They've now added a season progression bar, so you can see what you get by levelling up (I think it's just cosmetics for the survivors or the Ayuwoki). The game has also crashed on me twice during a game, forcing me to quit and lose any XP I would have got, so things like that are slowing down my ability to level up. If you choose to leave the game, you don't get XP for what you've done, you get nothing. This week I ran around trying to 'solo' the game not bumping in to anyone, and given how quickly the Ayuwoki can cover the mansion, it can't have been coincidence. Sometimes I've sat in the lobby for around 20 minutes to get a game, and once you're in the game, the game doesn't tell you if people quit or if they're killed. There is also a progression system, but it takes a lifetime to level up (I've got over six hours at the time of writing this and I'm still level one), and I think it's mainly because there isn't a big enough population to get public games going regularly yet. I'd describe it as a cross between World of Warcraft's visual style and an enchanted Disney castle with it's cartoony feel, and with it's cheesy classic horror soundtrack it is a bit of a cliched setting, but that's not an insult, I love it. The art style is fantastic but I appreciate it might not be everyone's taste in a horror game. There are also pickups like health, energy drinks and oil to refill your lantern, not to mention eerie 'webbing' than can hinder your progress if it's closed, but will open to let you through. You can use purple wardrobes to teleport to another part of the mansion, yellow wardrobes to push over to get in the way of the Ayuwoki (I've heard you can hide in them too), and dropping rats whilst the creature is chasing you will force the Ayuwoki to stop and eat them. The environment also plays an important role - survivors can open and close doors, but the Ayuwoki can only break them down, requiring several hits to do so, so this can buy you time as a survivor. Hitting them several times will down them, forcing them to crawl around until another survivor helps them back up, or you can execute them with an 'ultimate' move every 2-3 minutes or so. If you play as the creature, you can see clearly, or lope extremely fast on all fours, and can attack players. They also have a special ability to help them, such as being able to roll and dodge, or turn invisible when crouching and staying still. Each survivor can run, walk or crawl (the latter being the quietest movement) and can pull out a lantern to help them see, but will make them more visible to the creature. The survivors have to escape the mansion by solving puzzles to find items they need to escape the house, but even though all puzzles are always available to solve, the ones that reward the player with the items are randomised. You can't choose to queue as either - the Ayuwoki is always selected at random. Two to four players take on the role of the survivors, and one person is the Ayuwoki (so you need a minimum of three). So at the time of writing, there's one environment - the mansion. I'm really comfortable playing with randoms in this, because the interaction is controlled through the ability to select pre-formed phrases like "Hello", or "Have you seen the creature" that your character says, but can give away your position to the Ayuwoki. I usually play multiplayer games solo, or with close friends, as I'm not normally a fan of PVP / asymmetrical COOP where you have to play with random players unless you've got a full team of friends to play the game with you, but I took the plunge with this one as I love the Ayuwoki theme and couldn't resist. I wanted to put my overarching thought on the first line - this game is simply fantastic.
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