Derange

Review

Selecting a new game will allow you to choose the game’s difficulty; Casual (weaker enemies with plenty of supplies), Survival (standard game difficulty) and Nightmare (deadlier enemies, scarce supplies).

“His first words were: “don’t come for me.” We should have listened. It had been two years since we’d last seen Dr. Prestor. He had vanished off the face of the earth after leaving his post at the university. He hadn’t even bothered to tell us where he was going. He had always said he would stop at nothing to unravel the secrets of life. Perhaps he’d just become wrapped up in his research? We hoped, wherever he was, that he would find he was looking for.

Then, without warning...he sent us an email. “Don’t come for me”, it said. “I may not live to see the day, but I know what I am doing will help humanity, in the end. I just wanted to let you know that I’m giving my life for the benefit of you and everyone else.” I knew only one thing: Prestor was in trouble, and it was up to us to save him. We traced the email to its source. We only had one lead to follow. Whoever had sent the email had done so from an isolated location in Massachusetts. Somewhere, tucked away in the mountains, we would find Prestor waiting for us. Or...so we thought.

After the short introduction you’ll then have the choice to play as either Jessica King or Nathan Romero. Jessica, a Grad Student, starts the game with a lighter and can carry two extra items. Nathan is an IT Technician; he starts with a multitool and can find hidden items and supplies. After deciding, you pull up in your car and make your way towards the place where the email was sent. Your adventure starts here...

I started with Nathan (I don’t dress up as a woman until the weekend) and arrive at the house from where the email seems to have been sent. It looks abandoned and the front door is locked. So as Nathan you leave Jessica behind and go in search of a key for the door. Moving around searching for a key, you find another building to search. Upon entering, you find a dead body, with cuts and bite marks and blood everywhere.

As you progress, you’ll have to solve puzzles, and unlock doors by finding their hidden keys. As you search you will come across items like blank notes which can be used anywhere to save the game. You can save your game at a desk in various locations should you not have any blank notes. Painkillers and Antidotes will heal your Health and cure you from being Poisoned. Other items can be found, including weapons such as Knives, Baseball Bats, Pistols and Shotguns along with Ammo.

Combat can be a little frustrating especially if you’re cornered, so only attack if there is no way past. I found the baseball bat quite handy, even if I had a shotgun with ammo. I wanted to save the shotgun for later; ammo isn’t found everywhere so saving it until you really need it I’d say is a must. I have got three magazines of 9mm bullets but sadly I don’t have the pistol.  There’s a place where I knew I could find one, but this place is no longer available to me after reaching a certain point in the game. I am hoping there’s another pistol somewhere as I progress. When it comes to combat, if you can’t avoid it, I found that mashing my Enter or Space Bar as quickly as possible more successful.

There is no tutorial, but you will be given some information on the keyboard shortcuts. WASD or Arrow Keys for movement, Shift to run, Escape or Right Mouse to access status screen. Enter, Space Bar or Left Mouse (doesn’t seem to work for me) to activate something, accept or next chat. There are no options either for you to tinkle except for F5 which will allow you to play in either Full Screen or Windowed Mode.

I’ve enjoyed playing Derange; I’m a sucker for these types of games, although I have had a few problems. I’ve had the text changing to Russian a couple times, but the developer soon sorted it out. Another problem I found which I thought had been sorted was in the inventory; you should be able to store ten items, however, except for one time I’ve only been able to have eight items in my inventory before being told it was full. Even the time when I had ten items after using or placing items into a chest for storage it went back to being full with only eight items.

Another problem which I found very frustrating was if I went to take a screenshot. Pressing F12 would exit the game and restart, taking you back to the main menu screen. This would mean that you’d have to restart at your last game save. This isn’t a problem if you have saved regularly, but if you haven’t then you’d have to go back over everything again. This happened to me near the beginning of the game; I had found a pistol, only for me to hit F12, restart the game and then forget to collect the pistol as I went over everything again. Then when I realised I hadn’t got the pistol it was too late to try and fetch it as I was unable to re-enter the building. I’m sure these problems will be sorted by the developer as they do seem to be sorting any problems out as they appear.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!