Scotophobia

I don’t know why this game is stuck in mixed review hell. It’s a pretty typical horror game that mixes mundanity with tension and horror as the game ramps up to a surprising ending. I didn’t expect to like this as much as I did, but I found the final stage to be quite clever and with interesting gameplay mechanics. The achievements force a replay from a certain save point but give you different endings that all add to the story. Overall, I really enjoyed this one.

Pros
- Short but sweet
- Achievements and different endings give the game replayability
- Mixes mundanity with tension and horror perfectly
- The final stage has some interesting gameplay mechanics that aren’t just find a fuse etc.

Cons
- Short
- Follows a pretty typical horror game plot and playthrough

Overall Rating: 8.5/10

A Title That Doesn't Really Touch on Fear of Darkness

I'm hiding from the creatures, trying to find a crowbar so I can make it to the next room. I've run through this section a few times now and keep dying. WHERE IS THE CROWBAR!?!

Scotophobia is a walking sim horror game that involves your character waking up in the night to various scary happenings and creatures appearing throughout their apartment. As you progress, your apartment morphs and changes until you get to the point where a hole in the wall appears, leading you deeper into the spooky happenings.

Pros:

-Some okay scares: Some of the scares were somewhat decent. While there was nothing that ever outright make me feel terror, a few of the spooks made me feel somewhat uncomfortable.

Cons:

-Frustrating gameplay with annoying brightness: While I get the game is "Scotophobia" and supposed to involve the darkness, the game cannot seem to find a happy middle ground. You either have your flashlight on, which gives away your position but allows you to actually see enemies, or you turn it off and get to be absolutely blind to whether or not an enemy is nearby. I had a few times I turned on my light while hiding under a table only for the enemy to still grab me and end my run solely because I couldn't tell if they were gone.

-Story is weak: The whole thing seems to involve some sort of entity haunting our character and leading them to the choices they make at the end. Only problem is the ending feels very tacked on. A lot of the notes seem to hint at the character undergoing some sort of mental issue, only for it to turn out to be some SCP-esque entity that actually haunted them. While this appears to be a tie-in to the dev's other game, it seems almost tacked on to this one.

Overall I can't quite recommend this game. If you're willing to put up with the flaws it has, it's okay. But there's a lot of points where the game drops the ball and seems to not really pull off a good horror game.

It's a small game with a lot of potential that hasn't been revealed even by 10%, but the game has just been released, so I hope that the game will improve even more. Buy only bundled with Polygon of Reality. Why? You will find out after completing the game. And I give a positive review about this game, only as part of the bundle.

Great dark horror game, will get back to try a few endings

Laughably bad. Not even close to being an awesome game about scotophobia. Don't let the screenshots fool you.
I beat this game in approximately one hour, about 30 minutes of that hour I was dying over and over again trying to find a crowbar while 2 naked mutants walked toward me and killed me. There is literally about 20 minutes of actual gameplay here beginning to end.

Whole game:
Step 1: Wake up, go to washroom toilet, go to kitchen look in cupboard
Step 2: Clean up the apartment, pick up books, tidy up washroom while weird naked man runs away from your flashlight
Step 3: Check front door, find key, and go to bed.
Step 4: Wake up, walk down weird hallway while 2 naked guys walk towards you as you try to find a crowbar to escape a boarded door. The End.

- There are hiding spots that you can click on, such as under tables, that are completely useless. The mutants just grab you can kill you anyway.
- 90% of the game can be seen in the 5 pictures advertising the game. There are no cool trippy scenes at all about scotophobia. The picture with the hallway and the eyes in the Steam game preview section? Yeah that's the whole game. That one picture. The game might as well have been called "Naked Weird Chasing Hallway Mutants".
- There is a section that says "Check the front door, then go to bed". I spent 10 minutes clicking on the door and clicking on the bed nothing happened. Ohhhh there's a key on the table next to the door...
- The zombie / mutants or whatever they are look super dumb and silly, not scary at all
- Difficulty is unbalanced during the last section of the game as mentioned above

2 / 10
One of the worst of the year! Stay away!