God this game is genuinely so cool, I was just surfing for games to play but the opening to this game really intrigued me, I love the setting and premise, it's already memorable and unique, the sense of mystery gives an allure to playing, wanting to uncover more the more you progress, it isn't just about numbers going up, it's about understanding what happened, and what will happen. And most of all, the music is SO GOOD I was genuinely jamming out while playing- and I adore how the beats of the machinery often sync up with the music and elevate it, it's so cool <3
SPOILERS!! VV
Very cool twist with the gate, I do love how it's a gradual opening though as opposed to a set number, we must keep up the flow of bodies! I like how the person symbol is visible from the start but unexplained, it made me curious, and the reveal of what it meant was so menacing! And I love how it goes in stages of upgrades, to first learn, then understand, it's hard to describe but it gives it a sort of emphasis, that there's stages of denial before realisation. And it's curious how the perspective seems to warp a bit over the course of the game, becoming more obsessed with understanding the substance and understanding the gate and then finally deciding to do what was required to open it, it's a short game but it feels like a succinct story of a loss of humanity, you begin by trying to understand what happened to Old Gloomhollow, and by the end of it you sacrifice New Gloomhollow willingly, out of sheer obsessive curiosity. They may not have known what was under the gate, but they knew people had to die to find out, not just one or two but large swathes of people. It's made even more unsettling by how the town was created for this purpose, it was just a small workforce until they knew they needed bodies, and started luring people in, getting them to raise their families there and build the population for the sole premeditated objective of sacrificing them. It's honestly haunting!
I genuinely love this setting, the entire story is so interesting it makes me wanna know more :DDD 10/10 awesome experience