ALTERITY EXPERIENCE

Review

Anton Cornwell lives with his family on their ranch in the agricultural district of northern California. Your neighbors have been reporting strange occurrences around the area for months.  One day you awaken to find your crops affected by an unusual goo; the same goo that other farmers have reported tainting their harvest. That evening your family leaves to go to town for a while, so you decide to utilize the time to examine a sample of the weird substance you took and placed in your study earlier in the day. As you’re sitting at your desk examining the goo-covered corn, a blinding light suddenly shines through the French doors.  At first you think it’s just your family returning. Just as fast as it appeared, the entity zips away into the night skies and you realize you are no longer alone.



Released & self-published on Jan 15, 2020, by the developer Onitron Studio, it's user-tagged as Adventure, Indie, Casual, Atmospheric, Mystery. I have added Multiple Endings to the tags. It features a large well-designed modern home, complete with home security systems. The graphics built with the Unreal Engine are sharp & striking in their presentation. An inventive set of mechanics to discover as you fight for survival against the invaders of your property.  A back story that offers a look at the private lives of the family to uncover through objects scattered throughout the house. Multiple endings to discover, with good (as well as not so good) conclusions for you to reveal during your play-through's. Well-done sound effects also accompany the title, setting an eerie tone that immerses you in the game’s world. Full controller support also included.

I was quite excited to get an opportunity to dive into the title. I do love the visual design and the premise of the alien invasion of my home. The design of the game and mechanics lured me in with its survival aspects. Ultimately, however, I was disappointed with some issues that the title is still experiencing, which were immersion-breaking at times. One of the issues is the inability to launch in full screen; the title is unable to launch correctly, which then defaults to window mode. Try to go full-screen before entering the actual play mode, and the title crashes. Only after starting the game are you able to go to settings and adjust it to full-screen without crashing. The second issue is that the keyboard directional controls need work. Moving forward results in strafing right, while moving left results in walking backward with a left strafe, while back and right function normally. I then switched to controllers that functioned as intended for directional movement. With controller use, I could not find a sensitivity setting that allowed me to either move properly or highlight easily. If I lowered sensitivity, I could highlight the object's easily, but turning was really slow. If I raised it, I could turn with ease. But highlighting and clicking objects was tedious and frustrating.

So, I am putting my game-play on hold until these issues are addressed. It would be a very cool game if it did not have these issues; I would have given it a score of 8 or 9, depending on how much I enjoyed it without the control issues. I have forwarded my report to the developers in order to help resolve the issues. When a patch is released, I will see about re-visiting the game and re-evaluate my scoring.

 

Review written by DamageInc.for Zeepond.com!


Positives

+ Creative Story
+ Elegant Graphics
+ Full Controller Support

Negatives

- Some Bugs to Patch
- No Steam Trading Cards (at this time)

Review Summary

Alterity Experience: Other Worldly Visitors Torment A Farming Community. Can You Survive and Solve the Mystery?

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Zeepond Rating: 6/10

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