REFICUL 666

Review

Reficul 666 is a brand new under-development indie, horror-survival title. It brings a lot of time-tested survival horror elements to the table mixed with a couple of new ones.

As an under-development project, I won’t go much over its poor horror elements but the one thing that is truly going for Reficul 666 is its creep factor. The horror and freaky elements of the game don’t really jump out at you, its more of a haunting slow approach, which is enough to creep anyone out.

Plot: The world is in disbelief, as one by one the world is losing every country and continent to darkness. Total communication blackout, nothing works! And it’s approaching America.

You turn on the TV to find out what’s going on as the experts are horrified and in disbelief. They start to speculate; this might be a solar flare that’s causing all the blackouts. As the expert starts to explain deeper, he goes off the air, and the news is cut short.

The National Guard urges everyone to remain indoors and to stock up on water, food, and essentials.

Living in a small town in North America, my elder brother goes out to check up on the neighbour.  He leaves me notes with instructions on what to do next.

He warns about shadowy figures attacking people at random and demonic creatures roaming around.

He leaves me a 9mm pistol, a couple of magazines, and a flashlight to defend myself. He tells me to meet him at our neighbour’s house across the street.

But no one was there; all I found was notes. Now I must find my brother and friends in this haunting darkness full of shadowy figures and demonic creatures roaming around town.

Gameplay: The game is super minimalistic with a simplistic UI, controls, and overall gameplay.

As you start, you are greeted with a very unusual news broadcast intro, unusual for all the wrong reasons. First of all, the tone of the voice and the expressions are totally wrong. You’re reporting on a haunting and mysterious event, so why are the reporter’s and the expert’s expressions of amusement, like they are reporting a piece of glamour news! Where’s the fear? Where’s the anxiety of not knowing what’s going on?

That intro made no sense and on top of that every time you start the game the intro starts playing.

Moving past that, the game starts off with a mini-tutorial, which is not skippable. It’s fairly well done, and educates the player about the game’s features and what you can expect from the game.

The gameplay consists of a lot of simple yet effective gameplay choices theme/story-wise. Simple WASD slow movement controls, which works pretty well with the theme of the game in the darkness, but I can’t tell the difference between walking and running as both are so slow.

The shooting machines work well, but still a bit sluggish, which I’m totally fine with; I expect that to get polished out soon.

Two things that really bothered me throughout my playthrough are –

• Poor navigation; you’re expected to be placed and explore, but there are very few obvious markers and the map is poorly made.
• Reusing the same resources over and over again! It’s a new game under development but still, the game's main focus is on exploration and survival, and it’s pretty easy to notice the reused resources and materials.

Things that I really liked –

• Although the game’s horror elements need some major work, it does a really good job of creeping people out with it’s grainy dark silent atmosphere to it’s dark shadowy figures slowly creepy towards you.
• The game does a great job at maintaining a slow-moving haunting environment.
• The shadowy figures and the demons are nowhere near perfect or near the end product (at least I hope that’s the case), but they did their job just right. I felt a sense of tension when I saw them or when I felt their presence. Genuinely got creeped out.

World design: Absolutely loved the dark, grainy, sweaty silent environment and the atmosphere it created.

The outlook of the buildings was haunting and I didn’t feel comfortable walking in, but walking out it was a different story.

The fact that all the materials and resources are used again and again totally detracts from the survival aspect of the game.

Seeing the styles of the rooms and items throughout the game with only minor changes got annoying very quickly.

Music and sound effects: The music is just fine; it fits the game’s theme and sets the atmosphere. The sound effects need some more work.

Review written by BiteMexD for Zeepond.com!