Alone is an early access psychological horror game from a little known developer called Deceptive Games; the game is about a young man named Sam, who receives a letter from his sister asking for help – His goal is to track her down in the home they grew up in, and witness the various horrors that awaits him.
Firstly, I’d like to say I am a huge fan of early access games; I really enjoy seeing a game grow over time, and the developers of such games tend to listen to the actual gamers a lot more, and implement features and improvements that the community actually wants in the game, and not what they just think we want – With that in mind, I can already tell the game will get better over time.
The game so far looks incredibly immersive, and has a creepy atmosphere that just feels so intense, especially when it‘s paired with a pair of surround-sound headphones; the audio of the game consists of various shuffles and creeks, from every step of someone stalking you, or the wheezy breaths of something watching you and waiting to pounce, the audio is where this game nails the mark; and yes this game will support VR in the future, which just makes it all the more sweeter.
The story of the game isn’t really thrust upon you, rather you have to piece it together with notes placed around the house, along with small puzzles. I am very impressed with the dynamic changing world, even though it can be frustrating walking in to a room, turning around to leave, and the door has bloody gone.
Alone has a lot of replayability with its multiple endings, and with it‘s current price of £2.49 (Which will most likely increase over time due to it being early access), you can’t really go wrong. I really enjoyed playing this game, but the only thing that really annoyed me were the controls – Before playing this game, you will need to make sure you change the mouse sensitivity, or use a controller as it kind of breaks the immersiveness when you turn and you end up turning about 80% more than you actually wanted to.
If you are a lover of the horror genre, and you really like games that keep you on the edge of your seat, I implore you to try this game – I assure that you will not regret it, especially as the game gets more and more updates over time to improve on it‘s already brilliant concept – Given this, however, if you are not one for playing a game that may have bugs, crashes and a lot of immediate changes, I would steer well clear until the game is fully released on Steam, as the dev’s have said to think of the current state of the game a cut-down version of the promised game, and will be including voice acting, cut-scenes and much more in the near future to come.
Overall, I will give the current state of the game an 8/10, as it is in early access and has so much potential – Feel free to check out the game below!