Damned Review

With Halloween right around the corner, I thought I'd check out a horror game for once. Not "Dead by Daylight", because that's having identity crisis right now. Plus, I don't have a Twitch account... "SOMA" is good, but it has a lot more than just scares going on.

I know they're making new "Five Nights at Freddy's" spin-off, but... ♪ MacGoogles is me name, I like a swampy bog ♪ This series got fucking weird... ♪ It's time to play a game with your favorite highland frog ♪ ♪ It's time to play a game with your favorite highland frog ♪ Okay, so this is "Damned" – the OTHER four versus one horror game.

This game flew pretty under the radar. I didn't even check it out until it was out of Early Access. That's because, when I hear the words "horror", "indie" and "early access" together in a sentence, I sort of imagine myself throwing my wallet into a lake.

But it's not just me. There's a dedicated player base, especially now in October, but it's not huge... In fact, it's sometimes a single digit playing. To understand why, first we have to look at the developers. AYMAR: "Hello everybody! My name's Aymar – I'm the programmer for Nine Heads game studios." AYMAR: "We are a small team of developers, and we are from Florianopolis, Brazil." It was made by a small group of Brazilians.

That doesn't scream "marketing budget". Plus, they can't make deals with streamers... But hey, they're still supporting this game. I contacted one of the developers, and they told me they've been working on a map editor and modding tools to come out in early 2017.

So they're dedicated, but what is the game like? It's dark, atmospheric and you have a sense of dre- Oh... Oh, right... Let's take it from the top. The first thing you need to know is that it'll probably run well, but you never know with it. And even though it works on my machine, I have friends with better hardware from the same manufacturer who get very low FPS.

They'll try all sorts of fixes that do nothing, and then one day it just works on its own. It's sort of like operation Brother Sam: you can prepare all you want, but it might just fix itself. To get in the game, you either host a lobby or you join a server.

I think the lack of matchmaking is a positive. Everyone is screwing it up recently. You load into the game and, if you're playing a monster, you have your first problem: the game is astoundingly vague. Hey, what were those instructions that were on the screen for four seconds? "Arm the traps to generate statue clones and gather energy." There's a lot of questions.

Now, this was a monster I hadn't played before, so I thought I'd try and figure it out. Those things are glowing so I could click on them, right? Well, that didn't do anything... Maybe the toilet will do something. Uuuh... Oh, well, that made a statue, so that's the trap, but how does it work? How does any of this work? What's my energy used for? Is it just for putting down more traps? And how come not all the objects even make traps? We'll come back to the monsters later, but you can see how this is a problem.

Now, the survivor gameplay is much more straightforward. You're trying to escape the map, but might need tools or keys to advance through certain areas. You really have to dig around for some of these keys, and only the person who has it can open the door.

So, if someone gets killed you have to get it off their body. The monster can set up to make this harder. If that still sounds too easy – your flashlight could also run out of battery. So you gotta watch that when you're looking for some Duracells. This game is NOT on your side.

Even the environment's out to ruin your day. Personally, this is what makes the game really fun to me. This is a HUNT, not a fight. A lot of asymmetrical games have problems balancing, because they're trying to make them equal. To do that, you give each side their own special mechanics.

So "Dead by Daylight" is the ghoul in the room for this comparison, since the "Friday the 13th" game isn't out yet. Now, this was advertised as a horror game, and even the in-game tutorials are pretty lax on UI elements. But then you actually play the game and it's more like this: There are big icons and constant little prompts for things.

When the monster catches you, you can escape, or tear down his means of killing you. It's fun, but this is more of a competitive match than a horror game. There's no sabotage mechanic in "Damned". That's got to be frustrating for the killer. The only time he wants to hear that word is from the Beastie Boys.

Whether by intentional design or laziness, "Damned" is a lot more atmospheric. This is a great game to play on Halloween with some friends. You can't fight the monster – you can only run and hide from it. This means stacking up with friends helps you coordinate search efforts for getting out, rather than fighting the monster.

Not Mandalore: "Come ooon..". Not Mandalore: "Cooome ooooon..." Mandalore: "I think it set up noise traps." Mandalore: "Oh, shit!" Not Mandalore: "He's dead..." Not Mandalore: "Oh!" So if you're playing survivors, this game is a blast. When it comes to the monster, you have some variation.

I'll start off with the weeping angel – The Fallen. The Fallen is a cursed statue. I think it's cursed to listen to a remix of the Cultists' theme from "Endless Legend" for all eternity. When it's in this hunt mode, it can't actually see survivors, so it has to rely on traps to do the vision for it.

When you click a flashing object it'll make a noise trap. This means a survivor going near it will trigger a loud sound you can hear, but for every two you put down it'll spawn a Statue. You can only have five at a time, except for a forest map, where you can put down ten.

Either way they flash even through walls if a survivor comes near them. You can manually activate your killing mode, which only lasts 7 seconds. This is the only time the humans can see you, and you can see them. At the end it resets and has a long cooldown.

This monster is pretty fun! Next is the Phantom, who can place no traps on his own, but has a very good hearing. He's also blind. Noise traps are automatically set throughout the map, and if someone runs, or makes a loud noise near you, then you can see them.

If you're still and quiet, he loses you again. For some reason, It seems like the Phantom confuses new players the most He's also VERY dependent on having a claustrophobic map with hallways. The Forest is just horrible for him. This and some other maps need to be reeled in a lot more.

It's not fun for the monster. Plus, survivors wander around forever. So the Phantom's fun on some maps. Next is Mary and she's spooky, because she makes you want to end your life in the real world... "G'Y-A-A-H!!" Mary's movement speed is slower than a player walking and it used to be even slower.

She passively gains energy and can randomly teleport around the map to offset this. She can charge it up even faster if she's looking at a player, so they want to stay away from her. When she gets enough energy, she can charge at a player at sonic speeds.

But there's an awful catch. First, energy gathering is incredibly slow, even when you're staring right at players. Not Mandalore: "Oh, look, it's the roasty with the mosty." That's frustrating, but that's not the fatal flaw. It's this: Mary will randomly teleport on her own sometimes.

Even when you're closing in on someone, you might just be whisked away to another part of the map. It's even worse on the open maps. And it's a shame, because she's fun to play against, cuz you don't know where she is. But having both, controlled and random teleports, ruins it.

I don't recommend Mary. Last up is the Lurker, and he might be my favorite. The Lurker moves in a ghost form – invisible and not able to see other players, and he just sets traps. Players will know when it's nearby, because it makes strange noises. And this monster has to get the drop on the players.

His physical kill form only lasts a few seconds and is slower than a player sprinting. Both sides can hear the traps going off, but the Lurker can see them. So you need a setup if you want to drop on someone quickly. No matter who you play, noise matters in these rounds, so don't play if it's too busy.

This is a fun monster. Besides performance, I have to warn you that this game has an issue with bugs. There's been a lot of times I played as a monster and kind of gotten stuck on furniture and had to wiggle out of it. There have also been times when I see monsters get outright stuck on things.

So I'm guessing this game has some issues with collision in some areas. I've put 12 hours into this game and I've seen about three hard crashes, so those are there. There used to be a pretty funny bug, where we could queue with two monsters at the same time, but we couldn't replicate it.

Guess they fixed it. Not Mandalore: "Three, two, one, go..." Not Mandalore: "Three, two, one, go..." The bugs aren't constant, but you'll probably see something not right, if you're playing for a few hours. Even though it's a semi-broken indie game made by a small team of Brazilians, I still recommend this.

For the flaws it has, what "Damned" gets right, it gets REALLY right. It's sold on Steam, and if you can get it for sub $10, I say go for it. At the time of this video, the Halloween sale just started up, and you could get it for around $7. That's a fair price.

And that's a small download. So if you end up being one of the chosen people that "Damned" just doesn't like working on, you could get it refunded pretty quickly. It feels kind of strange to recommend the game like this, but I've had so much fun with it I have to give it a chance.

So, who knows, maybe there will be a Halloween miracle. Maybe, more people will give this game a chance instead of buying a "Five Nights at Freddy's" sequel. I definitely don't blame the guy for cashing in on it – he'd be crazy not to. So give this lesser horror game a try.

After all, there's no way people will be satisfied with sequels forever. Right? ♪ You're out of touch, I'm out of time ♪ ♪ But I'm out of my head when you're not around ♪ Man, I hate going in here. The last guy that owned this place kept those old slave hobbles in here after the 13th amendment got passed.