This game makes me feel a little less lonely.


Also just generally really cute and wholesome.

First to note, ignore any posts about balance.

Every game that is remotely competitive and/or pvp that isn't something of exactly equal footing (such as chess) will more often than not, be unbalanced to some degree. We all hold our biases on whats more unbalanced in one way or another, whether its a character, role, etc. But who cares.

The way most people will look at this game, much like any other asymmetrical horror that's arisen after dead by daylight's rise to popularity since 2016 when it released, will often be compared to it.

Some were poor comparisons. Friday the 13th played nothing alike to dbd, and ended up fostering a more casual enviroment until its inevitable lawsuit death. Last Year the Nightmare played more like versus mode from Left4dead than anything comparable to Dead by daylight.

This game, is very comparible to dead by daylight. 1v4, objectives and chase mechanics, etc. This is the closest we've been besides Identity V to a direct competitor, and from its Alpha so far, its doing a damn good job.

The good:
- Playing a specific Survivor means something.

Unlike Dead by daylight, where you eventually with enough playtime, can make every survivor into essentially a re skin of one another with the perk system, this game has locked a unique trait to each character, as well as stats. This alone means that picking a character allows you to specialize your role or play-style instead of being the same exact person as everyone else. With this, it allows team comps, and different approaches to the game, as well as ways to freshen up the gameplay by swapping who you play when you feel you want to play a different way. I've found it hard not to play survivor just because of this fact alone.

- You aren't an objective slave

Dbd, as its grown in its almost 5 years of existence, has slowly moved its game-play more and more to objective only game-play. Alternative and aggressive strategies against equal skilled players is rarely worth the effective trade-off cost when just rushing gen progress would've been better 9/10 cases. This game, you want to assess your options. If you wish to rush the objective, you sacrifice a lot of your safety in chases, since most methods of keeping distance for most characters is through items found in chests. Rushing the objective before looting can result in some very early kills for the killer. This adds more things to focus on, while also giving the killer some lee-way against objective rush heavy play-styles, as many killer players of dbd would complain about "gen-rushing," regardless of the eligibility of their complaints.

The Neutral:
- Killer
Compared to dbd, its mostly the same feeling. It does feel awkward to now be in a third person view as the killer, but otherwise I like how much less downtime there is as killer. You don't have to waste 20 seconds to hook someone. You're always on the move. I have played killer less compared to survivor in this game, simply because I'm enjoying how fresh survivor feels in this game. My main gripe with killer stems from what I will talk about next.
-Progression
This game, does not have a blood-web. You get what you go for, and things are locked behind in game currency and/or level. However, perks are not character specific, so once you buy one, all your characters have access to it. This cuts down on that element of the game, but sadly this comes with a trade-off. Many characters are locked behind pay-walls, whether real money or in-game. The grind is comparable to dbd's grind for blood shards, which generally is fine as for continual updates they will need money to pay their employees (yeah its crazy they don't just code for free). I would hope that after early access, their will be more than 1 option killer side available starting out. Its also awkward to play the tutorial as one killer, then only get to play a different killer until you can acquire the one it taught you?
-Loot boxes
Tbh, I don't care about these when the content is only for cosmetics. Cosmetics rarely have bearings on any game, and as long as gameplay content isnt locked behind gambling, then it's okay in my book.

Cons:
-Swamp:
this game has a swamp map.

Other than that, I can't think of anything to glaring. The game is early access, balance will be imperfect and bugs will exist, but for being cheaper than dbd, it offers a lot more, and the only draw-back is that they don't have all those horror icons that dbd has amassed. So if that's what you're looking for, this game doesn't have it, but if you're looking for more refreshing game-play, this is your ticket.

As a game, its mediocre, lack luster, and a meh experience if you take it super seriously. On server's without plugins, almost all scp's are abuse-able and easy to avoid unless you face a good Computer. With Surface still being its linear choke point, escapes can be easily stopped by an ntf spawn, blocking the path of a d-boi who made it thus far, and easily hunted down since they were just spectating them.

However, the fun comes when you don't take the game seriously. When you delve into a more comedic roleplay approach, the game gets its spark. With use of proximity chat and lack of knowing all the information, it makes the people you interact with feel like companions. The 2 d-bois that you sneak around with, your small squad of security officers, or your loving family of monsters. The longer you live the more invested you can feel with those around you. Just hope their mics aren't exceeding a certain decibel limit, as muting resets every round.

It's free, spooky, and best if ya like to ♥♥♥♥ around. If you want to be sweaty and tryhard, go play dead by daylight.

Quite the fun game concept, a crossover of a fps and Starcraft game-play. However, the game has some imbalances here and there, but its main issue is just a low player base. The game deserves a little love and should be tried out by people. I'd advise with the up coming summer sale to try this game out and see it for yourself. Teamwork is required, so you can't just rambo your way through.

Short Opinion:
It's fun with friends, its fun to kill. Its got a community akin to league. It's got the biggest player base of all current asymmetrical horror games.

Also bugs tend to come and go, and any veteran can give you a history of the funny ones.


Long opinion:

Returning to the game after about a year hiatus, I have a couple of things to say on my return (for those who care i play solo-que survivor and killer about 30/50% each respectively, with the remaining 20% being swf)

Firstly, as it stands, this is your only option for a decent horror multiplayer asymmetrical game. Other's like Friday the 13th, tend to flop, or others are small party games for friends. Last year might prove some decent competition, but reflecting on its discord release, its not likely. (Also important to mention, Identity V is also a nice similar game with a mobile and pc version)

The game's come a long way in balance. From what used to be a HEAVILY survivor sided game now is quite a bit more balanced, but saying killer's are op is too broad of a statement. It's better to look at killers on an individual basement. It does go to mention however, that most new killer perks are not clearly thought about if used on other killers, which has on many occasions caused broken load-outs. Most infinites are gone, there's 1/4 as many pallets on the map then before, and most broken survivor perks are either gone, or have a decent anti-perk that's worth running on killer.

I do think some options on killer, specifically anything on nurse, can be borderline unfair to play against. I'm aware of the argument of you just have to learn to out play her but from a killer who was invented to prevent infinites, she's dated and frankly, a good nurse will almost always win.

In addition, survivors have around 5-10 good perks, another 10 decent ones, then the rest are either super situational, or just bad past your first 30 hours in the game. It feels frustrating how trying to mix-up your play-style on survivor just leads to a more difficult and frustrating time, as more gimicky play-styles get pushed out. Stealth perks require several to be equipped to be able to combat some detection but with situational requirements or limited use, and then leave you weak in other regards, as well as requires you to buy 5 dlc's, or wait weeks for the shrine to give you what you need. Killers like nurse, who's weakness was stealth, can be fixed by slapping on bbq, or some other gen monitoring perk. Also, no survivor is unique, and once you reach a certain point they are just glorified skins, with most females being shorter models, being the better option.

Killer feels great, as in killers who have counter-play feel great once you play for longer amounts of time. Something about playing killers that basically boil down to spending about 5-20 (or more depending on your pacing) hours learning how to use their ability, such as spirit and nurse, to then only be able to be able to be countered if you're using your base kit, gets boring fairly quick. When there's little struggle, the rewards starts to feel unearned. Other killers, such as trapper, hag, pig, and huntress, will always have a weakness no matter what you put on them.

Bloodlust, still exists. When it was implemented it was understandable, there were a massive amount of loops that the survivor could just keep away from the killer for all time, and run them around the entire match. But now with all the map tweaks, there's 1-2 locations where bloodlust might be necessary. All it does now, is remove the ability for a survivor to outplay a killer. It's very simple to just wait around a medium sized loop, avoiding breaking a pallet, to just gain speed until the survivor has little to no options on what to do against you. There's already plenty of unsafe pallets as is, and you can't counter bloodlust without walls or not running away. While it does take time to build bloodlust, its marginally shorter of a time waster then then the survivor making it to a another place to run you around since they pulled off a juke.

The game sucks for solo que survivor. Much alike how swf groups are a pain for killers, the same goes for solo survivors. Balance tends to be more focused on dealing with a 4-man group. So things like noed, or blindness, are fairly weak against a 4 man. When you're solo with no communication, a perk like noed can alone end a match you were winning. Its not a simple fix to separate ques for a killer to opt in and out of going against swf, but if they made the option to, solo survivors should have the ability to win exclusive cosmetics, and killers who opt into swf the same. It would keep ques alive for swf, while not hindering killers who want to rank up, and survivors who wish to play solo. These opt-in modes would have a separate ranking, but upon certain thresholds, yield cosmetic rewards that would be all the worthwhile.

The game varies from states of being a buggy mess, to being semi-decent at normally operating. You will have games where a bug ♥♥♥♥♥ you over. Other games it'll be funny. However, game-play bugs should take priority in fixing. I don't know how to code so I can't say it's easy, but there should be more quality assurance before full releases are made, and they can very well afford it.

As it stands tho, if you're survivor and want to have a good time, play with friends. If you're killer, I ask you, if you were on the receiving end of what you were doing, would you enjoy yourself? Though that statement is subject to bias, as I play trapper and despise nurse.

I came to this game in the want of more combat since space engineers lacked some of the action, so this game had similar building and desinging vehicles, as while I stopped playing for a while, lots of changes have been made, and I'd say more for the better. New players wont have to experience the bank point emptying of buying 5 chasis blocks of the next tier.

While the loading time can be long at times, it is worth the wait to get into games, though if you are quite impatient, don't join team deathmatch, as for you could potentially be shot and killed right off the bat and have to re-wait to play again.