Psychical Madness | a Review
originally published by 19/09/2022;
Hello everyone, I am the freezing in the Siberian Wastes G.E.M.Simov, a non-russian goon playing yet another indie Russian game. It’s called Psychical Madness
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
This is a first-person pixel-art game. It seems as though it’s more pixelated than pixel art, and it seems as though it was intended to be a First-Person Shooter/Survival Horror, but the way it has come out is… Not quite that.
WASD to move, mouse/arrow keys to control the camera, SPACE to supposedly interact with things and the Left Mouse Button to shoot.
Issues, however, crop up as soon as one starts playing the game. There are invisible walls. So, SO many invisible walls that it just fails to make any sense. There are trees strewn about here and there, but some of these trees can be walked through, while others can not be walked through. There’s no indication which ones are which, so the game is just making sure that the area the Player can explore is limited as mightily as possible.
There’s very little in the way of indicating what is and what isn’t interactable. That could be a Presentation issue - much like the what’s walk-throughable and what isn’t issue - but in a game like this, which has puzzle elements, that’s part of the Gameplay. Thus, it becomes problematic.
Then there’s a temperature bar… Gauge… Counter. It is such, because there’s an icon depicting an old-school mercury based thermometer that’s blue and then there’s also a snowflake next to it. Either way, that one drops monstrously quickly and the Player Character tends to die within a minute if it isn’t addressed. That gets addressed by finding a fire and walking past it, which immediately tops up the counter. Unfortunately, fires don’t always work, which is very weird.
That mechanic gets swapped out for a ‘fear’ mechanic. I think it is something along those lines, because it’s a value that rapidly decreases while enemies are present… Wait, no, it kinda works like that but not quite. It’s very janky, because sometimes you die from the air, other times you can look at the enemy and be just fine.
In fact, a lot of this game is janky. Supposedly, the Player needs to collect keys to open some gates, but half the gates can just be walked through… Sideways. On top of that, moving sideways is a lot faster than moving otherwise.
But what of the fighting, the shooting? It’s… It’s not much fun, nor is it any good. Frankly, this game is just a huge jumble of mazes and the occasional enemy that can be shimmied past. Not very good.
There is, however, a cool feature - the Steam installation comes with a save-game on level 4 (out of 10), which is kinda neat. 1/3
Presentation
As mentioned in the Gameplay section, this is a First-Person game that’s quite pixelated. Those two things would not have been issues, but they’re made use of in such an improper way that they wind up being very detrimental to the quality of the product. Sure, the thing was made by… 1 person, but that doesn’t mean visual cohesion shouldn’t be a priority.
It gets very bad, very quickly. The first level the Player finds themselves in suffers tremendously from the: “everything looks the same and I can’t orient myself no matter what I do!” issue. That’s owed up to a very low render distance - meaning there’s a black fog just a few units of distance away from the Player Character - and then every sprite or object is the same. The floor, too, is just a constantly repeating mesh.
There’s no indication of nearly anything. Fortunately, there’s an attempt - blood splatter is made use of as a means of nudging the Player in a direction - but that’s barely functional.
Not only that, but the sound effects are quite clumsy. Some are decent, even okay, but others are dreadful - such as the sound for moving. It’s a constantly repeating, super rapid snow-crunching noise.
The voice-acting is very corny, at best, though it does seem as though the Voice Actor was putting in effort.
Those things seem as though they’re big issues - and one of them is - but things keep going more and more awry. Halfway through the game, the UI changes completely. A bit shocking, but it is somewhat understandable.
At one point the music from Hitchcock’s Psycho (the one utilized in the 'Bathroom’ scene) plays. Quite interesting how that happens. Other than that, the music that does show up in this game is surprisingly neat. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make for the lackluster, at best, presentation. 1/3
Story
You crash your car in a forest. You start running about looking for help. You find a fenced off location. You get in. You get indoors. Spooky stuff. You go deeper and deeper, finding more spooky stuff. At the bottom, you get ‘jump scared’ by a spooky red girl. Then you walk back to your broken down, crashed car and drive off.
It had the premise. It was really intriguing to see what was going to show up… But when things actually did show up, they were quite underwhelming. Unfortunate, but I suppose it is what it is. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? NO, it does not. It’s not worthy, to be fair. 0/1
Conclusion
3/10. This is a truly bad game. See, the concept was there, the developer wanted to do something, and if they had more time, or maybe if they had put in more effort, it could have been something really good… Maybe not really good, but something decent. As it is now, it’s not worth it at all. Watch the 6 minute speedrun on YouTube and don’t engage with this game any more.
Much like the previous Russian game, this one is no longer purchasable on Steam. There’s no Store Page for it… But that’s not a great loss.
On the Wall of Shame I hang this game. Conceptual potential, though potential is not something actual. Thus it goes to hang there.