Enigma of Fear

Horrendous gameplay, cringe voice acting (Spanish) and I just couldn't get into the story with constant and dumb mentions of the god of fear, enigma of this, ending of that. I was looking forward to this game but finishing the first chapter I just can't force myself to keep going. Enigma of Fear did absolutely nothing for me. 2/5

You have two life bars - health and sanity. You recover health by using med kits. You recover sanity by finding a quiet room and hugging your dog. Anyway, its a cool, survival horror game with some well done puzzles. If anything detracts from playing its the constant backtracking because, at first, you have no idea in what order to do things. You end up playing until you hit a wall and go to another area to see if anything gets knocked loose. This is especially annoying with areas like the graveyard that require repeating the maze puzzle. Game's pacing will require some patience, but its got decent puzzles and story. ---- These meta puzzles always stump me. Walking around with a flashlight and being prompted for darkness does not mean turn off the flashlight - damn.

Incredible Puzzle Adventure With Light Horror I was only drawn to this game by its beautiful pixelated art style initially. The isometric point of view was a rather rare sight in the horror genre (or at least I haven't experienced this kind of playstyle much). What I didn't expect is that Enigma Of Fear leans heavily into the puzzle part of the survival horror, and that's fine. Not every survival horror game has to be packed with action. Plus, the mystery behind the arching story is really interesting. The puzzles are fun to solve, even though some can be frustratingly obscure. If you enjoy puzzle-solving with a few horror elements sprinkled all over, then Enigma Of Fear is a great game to pick up. Things I Like About Enigma Of Fear: • Incredible Art Style: The 2.5D visual is incredible. The 2D pixelated characters never look out of place in the detailed 3D environment. The dynamic lighting and the thin fog effects surrounding the levels easily create a slightly creepy but memorable atmosphere. The game is also not shy about its distinct color palettes. Each level has a unique color scheme to help it stand out among others, and the contrast between cool and warm color scores an additional point for incredible ambience. • Puzzle-heavy, Horror-lite: Like I said before, Enigma Of Fear focuses more on solving puzzles instead of running around monsters. The world is full of strange mysteries and paranormal activities waiting for you to uncover. The game will not hold your hands. All the puzzles and obstacles rely on you deciphering the clues through key documents and doing simple logical thinking. It's a very rewarding process. I may not be the brightest when it comes to puzzles, but even I can feel the dopamine tingling in my brain when I finally manage to connect the dots together. As for the horror element, I see it more of a palate cleanser to relieve some stress and tension from brainstorming, similar to the visual novels in Neon White. • Many Surprised Interactions: It's been a while since I played something this "meta" before. Some of the solutions for certain puzzles go outside of the core game, like inputting different sigils on the main menu to trigger a completely different story progression or adjusting the audio in the "option" menu to reveal hidden clues. However, the real meta puzzles are the cursed items. Each item requires you to search through the game files and solve some cryptic apps in order to find the keywords. They are frustratingly hard for my smooth brain (in a good way). What do you mean I have to learn about the Vigenère cipher to decipher the sequence?!What do you mean I have to learn how the visible spectrum works to tune the color?! What do you mean I have to reverse-engineer an audio file to find the clues?! Thing I Like And Dislike About Enigma Of Fear: • Open-world And The Potentially Chaotic Pacing: Open-world design is a double-edged sword for this game. From the gameplay perspective, the sense of exploration is incredible. The game doesn't bar you out of any major areas. You are free to explore all the areas in any order you prefer. There are even some branching paths along the way for collectibles, aka cursed items. Of course there is still a set progression, but the game will gently nudge you in the right direction. From the narrative perspective, quite the contrary, the game may suffer some pacing issues. Since both the clues and story fragments rely heavily on you reading through tons of documents scattering all over the places, it can be really tricky to grasp the situation or get attached to the characters. In some cases, you might even get disoriented and lose the sense of progress. Things I Dislike About Enigma Of Fear: • Lacking Proper Ability Introduction: The main gripe I have for this game is the lack of proper introduction to the new abilities. In my opinion, whenever you introduce new abilities or skills to the players, it is always best to let them practice usin…