Starting with the obvious, this game was extremely pretty. Unlike The Voidness, Scanner Sombre was moreso focused on the "mapping" aspect of the lidar. The dots you laid out stayed forever, and were a certain colour the closer you were to them, creating rainbows wherever you went. This entire game was really beautiful, visually.

This game was apparently intended as a VR tech demo, revealed at the end. You literally put on a VR headset at the beginning. I can imagine this game is probably especially stunning in VR, but it was also good on PC. I find a lot of made for VR games tend to have a lot of shortcomings on PC, but I never experienced that with this, other than it was a bit weird that you interacted with things by running directly into them.

This game wasn't a horror, though it did market some scary parts. Little known fact, I'm actually really scared of caves, but not to the point where it'll hinder me going into a normal regulated cave (one of my favourite museums on earth is the Britannia Mine Museum), just that I'd never go spelunking in my life. Games that take place in open, empty caves freak me the fuck out. However, despite being a game with horror elements, I actually was never scared at any point. The only real bit where it could've been alarming was during the witch area, where if you step in the water, creatures will climb out and attempt to drown you. But this was unnerving at best and I was casually talking throughout.

While you paint your surroundings, there's some flavour text that reveals some things about wherever you are. As you walk through the cave you also walk through its history, from the untouched parts, to the carved out religious cult complete with sacrifices, to the salem witch trials, and then the mining operation. The main focus on the game is clearly from seeing what's around you and gleaning what you will from that, with additional input from your player character. Notably, you figure out that who you're playing as was a miner, and after you get outside and see your wife and children honouring you, figure out that you'd died in the cave. I figured out that part during the mining sequence, but it was confirmed once I'd seen the ending.

The one thing about this game that's stuck in my mind was the boat sequence. If you've played the game you know what I'm referring to. Luci and I were having a conversation before that scene, and I literally trailed off into only being able to say "wow" in pure awe as the music crecendoed and the visuals sparkled. For the the lows of the game up until this point, this really made you see the beauty in your surroudings.

The story is OK, but clearly wasn't the main draw. Again, this is revealed to be a tech demo in the extras menu, so the story is not especially thought through and the gameplay instead takes the forefront. This isn't a bad thing, but it does leave a bit more to be desired. As MetaStatistical put it, "flawed but underappreciated." (definitely watch that video essay if you've played the game! It was awesome)

The Cabin Factory is one of those anomaly hunt games, and I'm not immune to a bit of slop. Because this game most definitely fits that bill.

I honestly didn't have high hopes going in, because I know how to meter my expectations and not expect much out of an unoriginal game.

But Christ, I was not expecting it to lag on the title screen.

It was completely black, 0 rendered models or much of anything on screen. Just the title and the text. Yet it still took a solid 3 SECONDS to select an option. I had to crank all settings down to medium, because holy unoptimization, batman!

Another mark of unoptimization is commonly motion blur when moving free look. I honestly spent the first part of the game repeatedly pausing and tweaking at settings, because it was too dark, disorienting amounts of blur, nauseating head bobbing... this is the companies' first game, so I guess I can excuse it for inexperience.

Speaking of the devs, there is some suspicious shit going on with them. For one, the company "International Cat Studios" seems to be dedicated to this one single game, to the point that their steam profile is nonexistant and instead points to their publisher. On the website is 0 elaboration on who's on the team or not, saying they're "based betwen [sic] Barcelona, Spain and Tokyo, Japan"

If you ask me, it comes off kind of like the equivalent of a mafia front restaurant. A team cobbled together for a cash grab, perhaps. Sorry to ICS if they're an actual company, this is just the image they're presenting.

Anyways, to the game. The game is an anomaly hunter; a genre that's gotten increasingly popular. The basic premise is you're put in some sort of location that's haunted or has "anomalies", and you then need to search for and call out the irregularities. It's particularly based off of the "Exit 8" subgenre, which is a type of anomaly hunter where you repeatedly walk through an area, and if there's any irregularities you then need to either turn around, or mark it as unsafe. Rinse and repeat 8 times.

I played this at Luci's reccomendation. I don't particularly care for anomaly hunters, and mostly see them as a small entertaining pasttime. But at no point have this genre of game ever particularly tried to make any sort of point, or really a cohesive story. The Cabin Factory will attempt this, and it will fall incredibly short of anything particularly impactful.

The gameplay loop is predictable. You're on the first day of the job at the titular Cabin Factory, and your goal is to inspect the cabins, walk out, and mark it as "safe" or "unsafe." The gameplay wasn't riveting, and instead the main point of the game is the scares and weird happening in the cabin you're inspecting. The main part of the game that tripped me up is the main mechanic differentiates from all of the other games that precede it; and this was the main critique of the game from outsiders. The game only counts haunting as moving, so if the entire house is upside down and the mannequins are staring at you, it's not haunted.

This honestly lessened the impact of the scares 90% of the time, where instead of the intended reaction of shock and suprise, i would instead see a scary moment and immediately have to take myself out of it by asking whether that counted or not. And the rules are so loosely interpreted by the game, because sometimes "appearing and disappearing when you turned around" DIDN'T count, but other times it did??

The game only has a singular rule, yet because of the flippant way it interprets it at times, it meant I spent the entire game attempting to grasp it, lessening the fear every time and increasing the frustration that I would then have to decide whether it counted by the games rules.

It was clear they implemented this so you would dwell on the cabin a lot more, since if it was just a normal cabin at some rounds, it would make the game a lot less thrilling. I propose the alternative of a "haunted tally," where instead you decide whether or not the house is haunted by the number of anomalies you encounter. Encountering a singular anomaly doesn't mean the house is haunted, because clearly the company doesn't care about weird mannequins and unmoving plushies in the base game, however if you encounter say, 3 things that are off, you're then required to flag it as haunted? Or maybe this whole concept is just flawed to cause frustration, because that solution only works if the game's built around it.

There was also one particular scare I was fucking done with. There's one where you'll enter the house, the male mannequin is gone, and when you exit, the buttons where you mark it as haunted or not are then gone. When you walk up to the buttons, there's then running behind you, and when you turn around, the male mannequin then kills you.

This is a random event that resets your progress. You're intended to run away towards a far door to your left, but the game isn't clear about this save for an ambiguous sound clue. I may just be stupid, but on the 3rd time I experienced this, I was incredibly frustrated because I just perceived the game as randomly choosing to fuck me over out of nowhere. I only found said door by a fluke, when I was running away aimlessly. There were also a couple points where the enemies are invisible, and again, if you run into them you're going right back to the start. It honestly feels like frustrating ways to elongate play time.

Something Luci stated during the game was "at least the failures aren't bad and we're getting tidbits of story," which I absolutely disagree with. This game attempts to tackle the subject of child abuse and does so in a very surface level way. It's revealed by the end of it that you were actually the little girl in the house, and the rest are your family. It felt like they threw this fact out the window when they have very out of character moments just to be scary, such as the little girl singing and chasing you around, and the family members smiling unnaturally widely. Those "tidbits" of story was quite literally the game repeating over and over that the children are abused by the parents. Like okay, I fucking got that part.

Not to mention these moments were lessened by the game diving back into Oooooh, scaaary!" happenings. There was this one moment where the child calls 911 to talk about how their parents are abusing them, and 911 responds with "being a parent is very hard." There's a moment for elaboration there, maybe even emotional impact, but no, as soon as you go back downstairs the parents are just flickering around you with those big scawwwy smiles.

There was potential to break out of a mold here, and The Cabin Factory didn't even bother past a single rule that caused more frustration and immersion-breaking than the default would have. This review focuses a lot on the negativity, but I don't think this game was a complete loss, as it was entertaining at times and did it's job as a short and scary experience.

as always i was watching, but at times it fell repetitive and frustrating… at one point hal only found out what to do bc he was fucking around which was. unfortunate… and it was a bit confusing at first to differentiate between the usual spot the anomaly where you’re spotting differences vs this one where you are strictly looking for movement. it was definitely confusing at times with how it was set up, but it was cool to see something different in that scene

i think the game definitely needs to work on being clearer at points, since sometimes it came across as more frustrating than mysterious and something to figure out (e.g. when running away from the dad because the buttons were missing, and only noting moving anomalies and not differences) because it even ended in the game getting a few negative reviews on people being confused. honestly this game was pretty bland, but it really appealed to me and i really enjoyed it for some reason. i think if the story and graphics were a bit more refined, along with more clarity, it’d be a super creepy game. for the price though, it’s definitely a pretty decent game! i can’t exactly label why, but i really enjoyed it despite my critiques

ps i loved the plushies they are my saving grace

So, important context, we tried to play another game before this one, and it was... bad enough that we stopped playing. I'm sure I'll subconciously compare it to this game and maybe sing higher praises than deserved.

The voidness is one of those lidar games with a horror twist. This concept immediately drew me in, because one of my favourite past times is to load up GMOD'S lidar mod and explore some random map in a new light. So having a game that's explicitly horror oriented, with a sci-fi background? Sign me up!

Something the reviews mentioned is that the Voidness has a very odd free look function that almost seems "slippery", which I definitely agree with. I got used to it pretty easily, it was just a bit jarring at first.

ANOTHER thing the reviews mentioned, and I also experienced myself, was this odd glitch. There's a section where you're dropped into your house, and for some reason whenever you turn to the left, the game lags BADLY. No amount of settings fiddling fixed this. Once you get back to the void, it fixes, until you go into the building at the end of the game, which it lags again. Out of curiosity I reset the game, and it actually fixed whatever issue was happening. There are multiple reviews saying their (likely weaker) computer crashed from this, but it hasn't been fixed, despite this being the company's best game.

A game like this could easily have you losing your direction, especially with the way your lidar mapping fades pretty quickly. There are thankfully some landmarks to keep you oriented, but I can see how someone not directionally inclined would struggle.

With actually mapping out, the whole lidar function definitely adds a lot of tension to the whole thing. I wish that some concepts were utilized better, such as better stealth mechanics and there's definitely some ways the lidar could have been utilised better. But that doesn't mean what's there is bad by any means.

The story kept me going, and I was a little disappointed to learn how little of it there was. There's a lot of emotional impact behind how Francesca cares about her son and the whole house sequence was heart wrenching. See Luci's review for the possible symbolism. The story being so short didn't mean it was incomplete by any means, I do have some questions but I've come to learn that games not tying up everything in a neat bow is also okay, because it just gives you something to think about. The twist wasn't mindblowing but garnered a simple "wow" out of me. It didn't feel particularly fufilling though, so definitely don't play it for that.

The horror aspect of the game was relatively effective at best, and cheap at worst. There are multiple sections where you need to stealth by the monster, or it walks infront of you and you need to terrifyingly stand still. These sections were awesome. I do wish that when you hide under tables, you get to scan around and see how terrifyingly close the monster is, but you could only do so from the sides.

However, the ugly was the sheer amount of cheap jumpscares. At multiple points you'd just be walking around, and all of a sudden there's a deafening noise and a bunch of random red in your face. This didn't scare me except for the first time, and eventually had me just feeling flashes of frustration because I thought I just unfairly died because a bad guy spawned infront of me. The game is scary enough and has a great atmosphere, but the jumpscares honestly numbed me to the horror a bit.

I'm sure if the single dev(!) whom made this had some more time and resources, this could have been a really awesome and memorable game. Instead it's just a particularly good tech demo, with a bit more indepth story. I looked into the development company, and... all they do is make backrooms and knock offs of popular IPs. So a massive props to this one guy whom singlehandedly carried their company of slop with a pretty good idea.

the foreshadowing oughhhh…. can it even be called foreshadowing when it was literally staring you right in the face. being in the house and trying to get through the door with literally 4 sets of keys just to get through being the equivalent of professor brown’s attempts to stop francessca getting home and unknowingly infecting the world. chefs kiss. i predicted the twist of the others being controlled by the goopy goopy, but felt like the rug was pulled out from under me when it came to francessca carrying an infection back to earth. not to mention for this all being done by 1 developer, it’s incredible

Go Home Annie started off strong, when it was centered around actually interacting with the SCP's. I really enjoyed reading about, looking at, and interacting with Frank and the bathtub SCP's. I feel like a lot of games tend to overlook the SCP's as genuine, sentient creatures, and instead tend to be the dime-a-dozen AHH! THE SCPS HAVE BREACHED AND ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU!!!

But once you leave the facility, everything kind of becomes a mess.

Annie for one, is not a likeable character. She's decent at first, but you soon find out she's an awful friend, is blindly focused on her father (whom I gained 0 attachment to,) and makes A LOT of questionable choices. There's a scene where the game even shows that they know this, by having an anomaly feed all sorts of self deprecating thoughts to her, such as the fact that she just uses her friends for her own gain, but by the end there is NO EFFORT on her part to rectify this. When faced with her friends literally arrested for her actions, she just blips away to another world. It's incredibly frustrating and doesn't feel like the characters go through any sort of development. I could brush this aside as "she's not supposed to be likeable," but the game literally sets her up for improvement with the cop scene and there's 0 payoff.

The game seems incredibly confused on what it wants to be; an SCP focused game, a game about paranormal activity, a stealth game, a puzzle game, a horror game, a thriller game. This is often common with indie projects, and it's just unfortunate that this ended up clouding the overall experience of the game.

I could have really gone without the birthing VHS also. At that point of the game I was so. Fucking done I just cackled until my head hurt. Which definitely didn't help for the next part, because this game has a REAL problem with explaining jack shit. Nearly every endgame puzzle was a slog, a confusing unexplained mess that only earned to make me frustrated and gave no self accomplishing feeling once I'd figured it out. The mirror puzzle honestly just was a very uninspired way to fuck with the new mechanic you get to enjoy for 10 minutes, and to drag out the rest of the game so it felt worth the price in content.

I didn't like this game, but there is definitely potential, since the first half was so enjoyable. The devs for sure will improve a lot with experience, I'm sure they even improved with this one, and I hope they always keep making new games.

i really loved the direction this game was taking to begin with, even talking about how i was enjoying the game while watching hal play.

as someone who is barely knowledgeable in the scp universe, it was so cool to see examples of real scp’s other people had written being brought to life in game, and some even given personalities. i really enjoyed the games little quirks like these - the personality of the bathtub and water, one of the scp’s literally being just an absurd amount of bananas locked into a room, the flamingos, and other silly interactions. i had high praises for the game and where i thought it was going.

however, i couldn’t help but feel myself growing more and more detached from the game itself and the story when it turned to focus more on just annie.

the storyline became confusing and boring, and not to mention the gameplay becoming way too much with the game giving you no sense of what to do. you were simply thrown in and expected to figure it out. and annie’s story, as well as boring was just… confusing? turns out her mom is a nut case and her dad is now a bald huey emmerich? alright??? i think after the scene of annie finding her house, i just felt completely taken out of the game by then and felt unable to take really any of it seriously.

i could go on and on about all the little nitpicks i have about the game, but i think these were the most relevant to note. the game really did have promising aspects, it’s just disappointing the overall direction they chose in the end.