28 - I'm On Obversation Duty (PC 2018) - BEAT - I normally don't like to play most modern horror games, the sorta stuff that came out post Slenderman/Five Nights at Freddy's, there was a huge boom of copycat games or variations or stuff with that simple, indie, style in mind and most of them are basically just jumpscare simulators. So normally I wouldn't like a game like this, it's just staring at cameras the whole time, but the gameplay hook is that within these cameras are rooms with set objects, furniture, paintings, etc...Eventually something will change. A cup will move, a chair will disappear, an extra table will show up, a random person will appear, your camera will malfunction, and it's your job to identify what changed or what the issue is, and report that anomaly.
It's less of a jump scare sim (Which it still technically is) and it's almost a puzzle game, or like one of those games where you have to "find the object", but rather than find something specific, you have to find out what changed in the room. That can get real challenging when it's small things. You start to get tunnel vision, thinking you are on the ball, not recognizing that a painting shifted to a different version, or a shadow is out of place. My big negative with the game is that I think the black/white visuals make it really hard to notice some changes, and it's less the nature of being a realistic challenge, it's just a problem of the visuals. I'm positive there were things that changed that I didn't notice, specifically because the quality made it hard to see. Also the "Anomaly Fixed" screen is like a damn flashbang with how bright it is. I also don't like that are random noises that'll play, rather than being audio cues to something going on.
Jump scares aside, which are not constant, they are used sparingly, they want tension to build, I really weirdly like the gameplay loop. It's about pattern recognition in regards to pattern breaking, it's oddly engaging when I'm not talking to myself, getting mad that I know there's at least 3 things changed and I can't figure them out at all lol You basically have to last 6 hours (I think it's 20 minutes? Maybe I'm wrong?) and you can answer incorrectly all you want, but if 4 anomaly's are active, you'll auto-fail.
This is the first one, it's very short (I actually beat it in 5 hours, which is more than I thought, and that's just to do a complete run through only two levels), but also very cheap, I think it's fine for what it is and it looks like the sequels noticeably improve on the visuals and the actual locations, so I might keep going with the sequels.