you could reach up to half a day or more to finish this if casually or first-time player with multiple retries through game over because that was what i felt and even then, it took days lol, so i assumed this finished version was what the supposed story with its shorter than the original length like? okay aside from that question, the following were the rest of my thoughts during the gameplay.
- first impression was the closer perspective that can set you on edge from feeling the zoomed in horror and limited field of vision.
- the shadow of the character sprite, the way it was shaped and inconsistently dense, and cropped sprite at times could look striking, they clash especially during scenes with bright background like this,
they blend well enough when it’s dark/black, though they do could use adjustment to fade or smoothed out more. only Ron’s sprite looked fine to me. - kinda a plot hole i think on the second night, after being woken up by the tv noises which i chose to ignore, followed by alarm to wake up again… Helena said it was morning but right after being prompted to turn off the tv and doing so, she said about going back to sleep? what about work? i thought maybe because she was too stressed out or something but she also said that she couldnt afford to take a day off because of the work pile then also, after hiding from that spooky someone, she said it was last night… that entire day she also spent not going to work since she was in her home, with Ron and everything. im not quite sure if i missed on something connected to that, maybe it was one of strange things happening that messed with the time or it could be a clue of the fake Helena or something?
- the hint not disappearing properly whenever we take a look, choosing x makes that hint stick on the screen unless you reopen and then deliberately press the “close” choice. so, there was no x to cancel or close which i noticed was slightly annoying when i was particularly checking the vending machines and not forced to keep buying more lol.
- this was what unsettled me the most tbh, when you had to
spoilers
escape and retry more than once after going through that particular SA scene with the principal plus in the shoes of the mc too that could be.. triggering, it didnt help that the skipping/fast forwarding feature was too slow, this can get tedious in having to skip through scenes/chapters even multiple times, and i still have yet to know where to pick up from to get those other two endings, if it does require you from the earlier chapters i think i would be content with just the ‘normal’ endings which wasnt exactly happy one for Ron or the best one kinda. back on that uncomfortable scene, i think it would do good to be more specific in the warning like the disturbing content doesnt really suffice (plus what with the blood, bullying, capgras syndrome this was likely inspired off and probably some other elements contained within), still vague and i didnt even expect there would be something like that. while i appreciate the prompt to save after completing every chapter, it would be better to add more of those especially before some chasing events. - the second statue piece misplaced text on supposed ‘painting’ piece
overall, this brought me back to those golden nostalgic era of rpg maker horror except like layered in retro vhs, cranked creepy factor that gave me the shivers and tentativeness on exploring those hallways haha. my favorite character was Beta, and i liked how Helena’s character development shone through admirably.