I got this game for free and was really excited about it. The idea of getting to play with different investigators that have different abilities and have different options for reacting to events depending on who you are playing while engaging with Lovecraftian themes seems like it should make for a pretty entertaining game. Slap on different ailments that require different cures and items that can make you immune to said ailments and you should be headed towards more than a mindless point and shoot game. The problem is the balance a mangled mess. Many "minievents" lead to massive sanity damage it is not uncommon to end up near self terminating crazy after just one. Chocolate bars heal sanity however they are rare, expensive, and may or may not be bugged as they don't always seem to work. That said I haven't actually had a game over due to sanity. The reason for that is that enemies are olympic level sprinters and hit hard as freight train. To make matters worse rooms are often full damaging tiles and assorted stage objects you cant pass through making it really easy to get cornered and slaughtered. Did I mention some monsters explode on death? So how does one fix damage? there are 3 types of health restoring items which isnt so bad unless you need to remove a negative effect such as bleeding, poison, a curse, or parasites which all require separate items to cure. Inventory space is quite small and likely to be taken up by items you want to sell in a desperate attempt to get enough money for the ludicrously over priced item you need or items that you dont need for this level but might need for the next. Finally I'm not sure the difficulty settings actually change anything. I want to like this game but it seems like it just wants to give me the finger.
I started this game on my mac and it immediately wanted access to my calendar which I denied. It sat there loading for a min or two then wanted access to my photos, again I denied it. Another two mins and its still trying to load and now its asking access to my contact list I am slightly disturbed at this point as I can't come up with a legit reason it wants this sort of info. Three more mins of loading and I get to the main menu and none of the buttons work nor can I exit the game! Shoddy programing seems to be rampant these days but I did get this game for free so I guess Im not quite as angry as I would be if I had actually paid for this. What really gets me though is feeling like the game is trying to spy on me. As far as I can tell it is virus free but I still would recommend staying away from it.
