Put solid hours into the game.
The multiplayer pvp is decent, maps are solid and the new mechanics are interesting.

Campaign is bleh. Its a fever dream and rehashes story points from past games. But overall was "fine"

The Endgame which is the large PvE extraction shooter session was a ton of fun...until it wasn't. If you die, your character resets. Sure I get it, I died a few times, frustrating, but my fault for the most part. But on my next near maxed out character, server disconnect. I log back in, it treated my character as if I died. All progress lost. All abilities reset. All weapon tiers gone. Special weapons disappeared. No recourse.

In this day and age, this isn't acceptable. I'm done.

This is a free to play game done right.

Fast paced, objective based FPS game with a 3 tier class system. Beautiful graphics, 100% destructible environments, optimized well.

Lots of options for cosmetics to show off your style. Play to unlock weapons, which aren't locked out by level. You can build your perfect build early depending on how you spend the in-game coin.

My only gripe is I'd love to see new maps more quickly, but the maps they have are very diverse.

I definitely would recommend giving it a try. There's a bit of a learning curve, but once you practice a bit, you'll sync into great.

Overall, the is quite beautiful. Unreal 5 is a beast of an engine and really makes this game feel more realistic. I had a tightness in my chest throughout most of the game, the atmosphere in many parts, are quite good.

Things I think would make this game better:
Once you realize there is nothing there to get you, the game becomes less scary, and a bit more monotonous. I think the introduction to some figment that is following you or hunting you would add to the scare level, perhaps giving you chase making you use your surroundings as a means of running and juking to try to get away. In that intensity of the chase, the introduction of sudden and macabre imagery within the environment would do well to get a scream out of the most veteran of horror junkies.

I do feel that the jump scares become a bit mundane as they happen too frequently. In my 18 minute run, I hit 61 scares. I feel that building the overall atmosphere with low droning sounds and the loud void of environmental silence, while adding in a slower incorporation of horror elements would do wonders as a means of intensifying the horror experience.

More long environmental elements like the hanging bodies would do great at building scenic atmosphere. Having sounds that persist longer than just a few seconds and fade in and out as the player passes them could also be another thing to consider.

As far as story, there obviously isn't one right now, its mainly a walking simulator. I understand that there is lore that will be inputted into the game at some point, which I think would be a great addition, as it in my opinion help with shape the game's overall direction, the types of scares that are utilized, etc.

Overall, its worth a playthrough, if nothing else than to see the beautiful world that 2 indie devs with Unreal 5 can create. Will it scare you? If you freak out at jump scares, then likely. If you are looking for a horror survival experience, that isn't this game. I think with some more polish, this rough entry into the horror genre could become the diamond I know it can be.

I write this review not only for the people who are looking to buy and play the game, but also for the developer who spent his time working on the game. To preface, as the final lines of text in the game state, this was Erebus' first entry into game design.

PROS:
The game does have a clean beginning, middle, and end. Nothing is really left up in the air with the story.
The atmosphere of the game is good. It could be better with further sound design, but as it stands, it is serviceable and doesn't detract from the game at all.
The graphics in the game were decent, sans a few things I'll discuss in the cons section.
The game was optimized well enough and didn't crash or drop frame running at max settings on a mid-tier gaming rig.
There were sections of the game where I did feel some genuine terror, which I think is necessary for a horror game.

CONS:
My biggest complaint of game: the "operator" was too on the nose when it came to the story. While the subject matter was left vague in order for you to discover, often times I found the operator narrating back to me what I just learned by reading documents in the game. The operator also had the tendency to restate notes that he supposedly left almost immediately after you spent the time to discover and then read them. One of the hardest parts of story telling is not fill your audience with exposition, and the method in which this aspect of the story was implemented was lacking. A way to fix this is to have the operator ADD to the story or the horror by saying completely different lines that add vs repeat. OR have the operator read the note at the same time as you open it. Personally, I prefer games that give me less to read and more to listen/watch as video games are...well... a VIDEO medium.

The voice acting of the operator was stilted. My assumption is that this was Erebus himself. In the future, I would recommended spending the money on a professional voice actor that can deliver lines with a wide range of emotion and inflection. A great example to look at would be Wheatley from Portal 2. Another example would be The Ghost from Destiny. Both are interesting characters that give more than they regurgitate.

Graphics: The only real negative I have for the graphics are mainly the model and animation for the grandmother. Cleaning up the model's mesh and adding in better physics would help secure her to the world's ominous and horror driven tone. And her running animations could be cleaned up more. As it stands now, it does break the immersion the game creates.

The story: The story, as it was revealed, became a bit predictable. Hiring a writer or 2 to hammer out a fun twist or two would help with the memorability of the game.

Gameplay mechanics: While I don't believe a game should spoon feed you everything, there was one thing that was a little bit difficult. Most times "E" was your action button. But then other times, you'd need to use "V" as an action button, and then other times you'd need to zoom into an element in order for something to trigger. None of this was really explained and was able to be found out through trial and error, but keeping these controls more consistent or giving slightly more context about certain actions would help remove any undo frustration.

Overall:
In conclusion, I think the game is worth a purchase, albeit on sale. The game does have a nice story to it, and the atmosphere does hit home on many sections. I did experience true sensations of horror when playing this game. Is this game ground breaking? No. Is it one of the best horror titles I've played to date? Not at all. But, I would recommend others give it a try. Its not bad for a first go, especially since it was designed, from what it looks like, by 1 person.