True Fear – Forsaken Souls Review: Through the Darkness

Point-and-click games have been around since the late 80’s, and despite present day games offering many varied options, the “genre” still has a loyal following. While they have never been my cup of tea, the premise of this title intrigued me. You’re tasked with finding your missing sister after receiving a strange letter from her requesting you meet her at a place from their childhood. Despite the building appearing vacant, there are signs that someone was there recently, which later proves that you are not alone in the house.

The gameplay is fairly basic, as you would expect from this type of game. You’ll explore the decrepit locations solving minor puzzles and collecting items to progress. Unlike most of my attempts at this genre, I found the navigation as well as the interactions with the world to be intuitive. While similar titles make moving from scene to scene a chore, you’re given multiple options for traversal here. My personal favorite is the option to quick travel throughout the area using a map, which highlights areas that still have actions or items remaining. In addition to this option, you may use the D pad or use the icon to highlight the direction you wish to move to, much like selecting an item to interact with. I found this option to be the least appealing, as it will tend to open your inventory or cause you to move in the wrong direction. With the exception of this, the game controls extremely well, with the cursor moving as quickly as you would like throughout the scenes.

While the puzzles are frequent, few of them require much brain power, as most are common sense based. The only portions I struggled with were the puzzles that required multiple steps to complete, meaning you need to be thorough in exploration.  If you do get stuck, there is a hint system which is completely optional. In addition to the hints, you can turn on the option to have items that can be picked up or interacted with to be highlighted. This limits any frustration, which was a big draw back for me in previous attempts at the genre.

The visuals offered are on par with similar games in this style coupled with some full motion cut scenes that would have been awe inspiring if added to the original Resident Evil or Silent Hill entries. While they are not going to win any awards, they do keep the player immersed in the game world; its biggest draw will be the story which clocks in around 3 hours, depending in how quickly you can solve the puzzles. The story kept me engaged throughout my time with it, which is the first entry in a planned trilogy.

For fans of point-and-click or horror games, True Fear: Forsaken Souls is a pretty enjoyable experience, albeit a bit unpolished at times.

7 out of 10

Pros

  • Intuitive Controls
  • Interesting Story

Cons:

  • Point-and-Click Gameplay Isn’t for Everyone

True Fear: Forsaken Souls was developed by Goblinz and published by The Digital Lounge. It was released on PC in 2016, mobile devices in 2017, and PS4 February 13th, 2018 for $9.99. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of True Fear: Forsaken Souls, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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