TLDR: I review games on this here site. This game is quite boring. There is a nice little setup at the end for a scare. I would consider this more on the further end of an interactive visual novel. I played it because of the #1 horror game scream jam. Was pretty disappointed ngl...
Now I know the TLDR is pretty pessimistic but I typed a few sentences of what I felt was the main thing I felt while playing. Before I start yapping about how bad this game is apparently, I will say I did go and look at some of the other submission and I still stand by my opinion.
Now some good. I can tell by the setup and the setting itself that the dev did put time, effort, and did care some what about the subject matter. You are actually kind of curious when you are in the first room of the bunker. Then the idea that you are searching for ghosts with and emf reader and you have to take photos of them, ok that doesn't sound too bad. Even you emphases on getting their faces sounded a bit creepy.
This game very quickly becomes boring and dull because of the amount of notes you are presented with before anything of note actually happens in game. Don't get me wrong if you were just to say how many notes are actually in the game I don't really think there are that many but you must remember every time you pick up a note you are no longer in game mentally, you are just reading a note. It's almost separate from the game itself, notes in game usually mean you are safe, or the game is paused in the background, sometimes the notes are multiple pages. All in game turning something you are involving in or apart of (as in controlling, playing, doing. Pretty much the difference between playing a game and reading a book) into just words on a screen for a bit.
Now with that being said is it bad to have notes in your game or to have your story unveiled in a written form. Absolutely Not. The problem comes when a game from the start expects the player to care about reading it's story. If someone wanted to do nothing but read then they would get a book. So when you start up a video game and are tasked with reading a bunch of notes right off the bat it kills your games momentum before it even starts. You need to have something that pulls you to read the notes, not just a vague idea that "hey you gamer there is a note, read it". Like one or 2 notes in the game actually stand out I even say that in the video, Even the notes on the wall that's much better then picking up a piece of paper that pauses the game and covers my screen completely killing any atmosphere you established.
Well why did I talk about just the notes for like 2 and a half paragraphs. Because that is pretty much all there is to this game. The camera and emf don't matter. The locations are all in rooms that you don't have to search for. you just walk about the room until the beeping stops look around a click. This game is 60% read a note and 40% taking pictures. I type multiple paragraphs for every game I do but this one is a bit long so let me talk about one good thing before I wrap this up.
The last scene is extremely predictable I even say as such at 17:31 in the video but it still wasn't too bad ngl. The build up to them coming to the door and forcing you to take a final picture was nice and the only creepy thing in this whole game.
Sorry if most of this was sour my expectations were too high when I went into this game seeing that badge and all. But also alot of games suffer from dumping all of it's story onto notes when they could have story beats like the shadows on the walls maybe one sentence on a page written really big so you don't have to pick it up and you can tell the person that was writing it was in distress at the time, see stuff like that turns your paperback book tale into an actual game. GG
ps. sorry for any typos in this.