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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: Pixelsplit/Daedalic Entertainment Released: March 6, 2024 Requirements: OS: Windows 10/11 Processor: Minimum, Intel Core i5 8400/AMD Ryzen 5 1600X; Recommended, Intel Core i7 11370H/AMD Ryzen 7 3700H Memory: Minimum 12 GB RAM; Recommended, 16 GB RAM Graphics: Minimum, Intel Iris Xe/AMD RX Vega 10 Recommended, Nvidia GTX 1060/Radeon RX 580/Intel ARC A380 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 30 GB available space
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By flotsam
REVEIL Pixelsplit/Daedalic Entertainment While offering nothing new or surprising, this is a solid six or so hours of psychological adventuring. Played in the first person using the mouse and the keyboard (you can bind keys to suit), after a short introductory sequence suggestive of what is to come, Walter gets out of bed with a headache. He can’t find his wife and daughter, and after puzzling his way through his house, his daughter’s room eventually gives way to the circus that it is clear they are all part of. And off we go. Aspects of REVEIL reminded me of Layers of Fear, as well as The Park, which is not such a bad thing. Some weirdly behaving surreal environments, an entity to avoid at times, a rinse-and-repeat dynamic, plus a bunch of freaky bits and pieces, with a Circus setting and its sideshow trappings thrown in set the stage. There is a horror-tinge to some game elements (and the entity you need to evade at times is fairly horrific), but I wouldn’t call it a horror title and nor does the game itself. Psychological works for me, as Walter grapples with what is and what isn’t real, and whether he is dreaming or is it something else, and why can’t he remember much of anything. The unravelling of Walter’s blurred reality is what it is all about. It isn’t a hard game, but certain aspects might cause a degree of frustration. There is more than one maze-like environment, and while there are clues about where to go next you may well find yourself wandering and wondering where to go next. There is another sequence right near the end where you explore a forest by torchlight, needing to evade said horrific entity while hoping to stumble upon somewhere that might contain the three things you are looking for. This was the area that held me up the longest, as I tried to just meticulously search the obvious location, rather than realise that I needed to run into the wilderness. Take that as a heads-up. Certain puzzles might also hold you up, because that is what good puzzles should do and there are certainly some good ones here. The mannequin puzzle about half-way through and a puzzle box near the end were probably the stand-outs for me, but more than once you will have to decipher information and/or just fiddle and winkle the solution out. Sometimes the answer is obvious, if you are simply paying attention; other times it isn’t at all. I did think too that there was a degree of redundancy in some of the puzzles. By which I mean that you might be able to force the answer out of the game without understanding absolutely every nuance of what was going on. It was more than simply trial and error; I thought there were ways to get to the answer that didn’t mean you had to pristinely solve the conundrum. Which in my view was a plus. Similarly, an early puzzle involves rolling a marble around a platform without it falling down the holes. We have all played something like this in the real world, and it can be a challenge. Having failed a few times, I noticed that the holes I fell into became pegged and so were no longer holes, improving my chances and reducing the frustration level enormously. This is way better than a skip button, as you still have to do the puzzle, but it accepts that you could be stuck here for a long time (and maybe give up entirely) if it doesn’t make allowances. There might be other puzzles which behave in this way. Well done, I say. In another similar vein, if the entity catches you in the sequence referred to above, you retain any items you might have found and any that you placed where they belong remain as well. So you aren’t thrown right back to the very beginning of this sequence, but can build on your progress to date. Which is important to note, given you can’t save manually. You are at the mercy of the game as to when that occurs, which is fairly regularly but not as often as I would have liked at times (those times predominantly being because I wanted to stop playing). I can also tell that that having gone back into the start of the relevant chapter (you can choose to continue your game or can choose to start at various chapter points as you go along) game progresses) and fiddled about, the benevolence described above does not survive you exiting the game. That is, the progress you have made in the forest will not be retained if you exit; the save point is at the start so you will have to start over. Which in hindsight as probably obvious given I never noticed the save symbol rotating bottom right, but its worth mentioning. Other sequences might behave the same way; don’t say you weren’t forewarned. With respect to the entity (and the mannequin that chases you in another sequence) you shouldn’t be put off playing if action is not your thing. Creeping works well when it comes to the entity, as does running away generally. The other elements I have already mentioned should (hopefully) make the sequences more than manageable. You collect inventory items but having them and clicking on the right hotspot will cause them to be used, so there is no inventory management. More items will be picked up and put back done, adding depth and detail to your adventuring. If you do pick up an item you can turn it around and about, which is helpful sometimes and essential some other times. So make sure to do that. REVEIL gives you complete freedom of movement so provided there are no physical barriers you can explore anywhere you can see. WASD to get around, and use the mouse to ‘steer’ and explore the environment. An icon might pop-up in response to the mouse finding a hotspot, and the action occurs perhaps by clicking or perhaps by mimicking the required action; e.g., ‘pull’ the mouse to open the drawer. You will know when to do what. Right click might do something else. It will be very familiar to regular players. Walter is voiced and is largely talking to himself. Voice-wise he is fine. The soundtrack and the ambient sound is rather good, helping to create an unsettling buzz. You collect items as you go, and I found way less than half. Finding them isn’t essential to progress in the game, and you can examine the ones you do find through the menu. There are multiple endings depending on things you do in the endgame. I played on: OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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