It's that time again: the time when a combination of slack release schedules and a busy week means I have to quickly review a free indie game over the weekend just to keep things going.
I used to believe that the longer and more expensive the game was then the better it is. This was in the golden age, however, when the words 'Triple A' actually meant quality. You know when films in the 50's/60's started shooting in colour and widescreen, started having massive budgets with enormous sets and were brilliant until a film called Cleopatra ruined everything? In the late 90's/early 2000's, gaming when through the same revolution: when more was more. Then a series called Call Of Duty kicked off and 'Triple A' became 'shallow spectacle.'
OK, that's a bit unfair. It wasn't necessarily Call Of Duty that ruined Triple A gaming, though it's popularity was certainly a notable influence. It's more the process that makes games. As gaming demanded higher resolution graphics, hardware developed way too fast.
You only need to look at the early days of the PS3 to see where things all went Pete Tong. Remember when the Wii was the highest selling console? Seems laughable now given how it died a death, but at the time the Wii sold the most because the XBOX 360 kept overheating and the PS3 was a massive, expensive black box that hardly had any games for it. Why? Because the PS3's hardware was too cutting edge, so no-one knew how to make games for it.
So with the video game industry crashing in the slowest and most underwhelming way, the artform is now open to anyone. With Minecraft, an indie game initially developed by just one guy, being one of the biggest things of all time - anyone can make a hit. This is how art should work; free for the proletariat to make their voice heard. However, when you look at Close Your Eyes, you start to wonder if throwing the industry open to everyone is such a good idea.
Close Your Eyes is a top-down, 8-bit horror game where you play as a young man plucked from death row to participate in a bizarre game that often you're unaware you're playing. So it's Manhunt but without the graphics and moral panic.
As always, there's a bit more to it than that. It's unclear if the protagonist is sane of not, and it's also never specified if the protagonist is a hardened murderer or if he's forced into the profile of a murderer...except the actual murdering comes out of nowhere. You're encountered by another human being and suddenly you're given the option to murder that person with no alternative. You're not given an option to think about it for a bit, and there's no realisation that this is the only possible way to progress. There's one part where you cannot find a key. You bump into a person who says hello, then you're given an option to murder him. You have no choice but to do this, and on his body you find a key.
First of all: how did the protagonist know this person had the key. Secondly: why didn't he just ask for the key?! This is like that part in Bioshock Infinite where you're forced to kill a group of people just to get a health upgrade. Why is Civilization V the only game to use diplomacy?
I played this game with an XBOX One controller, but I don't recommend it because for some reason you can't use the D-Pad - and if you've always wanted to play a game where you can only move in four directions with a analogue stick then look no further. In the end I just went back to using my keyboard - which thankfully can work simultaneously. Not being able to move diagonally is weird for a person who grew up in the analogue-stick generation. I know the SNES Final Fantasy games moved like this, but this is 2015.
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| This is what it's SUPPOSED to look like... |
And it doesn't even have to be 8-bit because it occasionally uses JPEG images, so the game clearly isn't limited by its graphics engine. Again: I really wish the entire game used this hand-drawn, childish design.
The game also entirely revolves around puzzles; like a top-down Amnesia. And if you thought the puzzles in that game could get convoluted then you're not going to like Close Your Eyes. Why is the scariest part of any horror game the contrived and over-complicated puzzles? I enjoy a challenge, and the alternative would be walking through a corridor, but these are ridiculous. What kind of train system uses a combination of colours as a password? Why is the combination given away in a riddle right by it? Why does the riddle defy its own logic by not telling which station the train starts at? Why does the train have four doors of a different colour? And why does each door just lead to the same station when it's implied that each will lead to a different one?
On the other hand, there was another puzzle where the game kept asking me to look for a clue, but I just used trial and error until I got the answer. More playtesting required.
One thing I do like about the game is that it only uses jump scares once or twice, which is fine. The rest of the horror is all about the atmosphere and sound design - which occasionally is surprisingly great. Whilst the idea of a protagonist being stuck in a sick game and wondering if their escaping or just delving deeper into the game is nothing new; it's handled well. It's not just a game about some guy going into a haunted place, or some guy being stalked by some ghost. I have no idea why the game keeps asking you to close your eyes when this is a visual medium though. I also never really got the significance of closing your eyes, but perhaps I'm being dumb.
As a product to be ranked alongside many other games in this genre, it just doesn't hold up. As a little freebie made by amateur's who are using this game as a stepping stone to greater things, it's perfectly fine. There's a whole suspiciously brown coloured swamp of awful indie horror games, and so I applaud Close Your Eyes for at least attempting to be different from all this.
