Vidjama Gmaes Work

I played the Deppart Prototype today and I’m going to give a small commentary.

Fully admitted going into this review I tend to be a little more heavy handed on horror games, especially of the indie variety. I love horror games, they are the butter to my bread. The meat to my potatoes. The steroids to my buttcheeks. But I will admit I pass on 95% of indie horror because if indie devs love one thing, it is trampling a trend to death through sheer quantity.

The trend for the last six years or so has been cutesy horror, where the player is surviving in a place called Smoochy Sam’s Snuggletorium or some other such cute name, with characters like Huggy Wuggy, Snacktime Sam, the adorable Cuddlepupper and more. The twist of course being that those cute looking characters with their cute faces and lovability? They do the murders sometimes. And while some of those games are pretty good like Poppy Playtime and Amanda’s Whatever, they really need a new shtick.

In comes Deppart, a prototype horror game based off a simple premise; the camera is a bodycam. Very simple, right? You do the normal horror prototype stuff of walking around until the spoopies happen, and then you shoot the bad guys. Credit to this game for actually letting you kill stuff and not forcing you to run and hide like a chump.

It does show how much you can do with very little. Deppart is not a bad looking game by any measure, but the effect is heightened by some seemingly minor additions. The flashlight and its rounded, limited sight. The way your hands move across the screen and the lack of reticle also do a lot for immersion. The complete lack of a HUD. The AMBIANCE as you walk around. Had this game shoved your gun to your side FPS style and had a constant ammo counter and health bar, the result wouldn’t be nearly as terrifying.

My only real critique of Deppart is that the game needs to equalize its audio a little better. The quiets are very quiet, but the sudden ear-piercing screams during the spoopy moments need to be toned down. You want to scare users, not have them distracted and worried about hearing damage. I didn’t even play the demo with headphones on and I was still hurting after it was over.

Otherwise this game is not only perfect YouTuber bait, it’s actually a damn promising prototype.