Hey all, I’m back with another review. This time it’s Distrust!
Plot Synopsis: A helicopter crash left a group of explorers stranded near an Arctic base. As they try to find a way back, all they are doing is sinking deeper into a nightmare scenario. When they sleep, they attract a terrifying force that sucks the life out of their bodies, but the longer they battle exhaustion and stay awake, the less likely they are to survive…
Plot: Honestly this game’s plot is straight out of a horror flick, which to be fair it is since this was inspired by the movie The Thing.
Gameplay: This a roguelike where if you make a mistake you’re pretty much screwed and have to start all over again. To make matters worse, or better if you tend to what I call masochism but others call fun, the game has some serious gameplay flaws.
First is the inability to queue actions into a single sequence. That would only be an annoyance if it weren’t for the second flaw.
The second is the seemingly random issue of being unable to tell your characters to interact with some objects without being right next to it already. These issues together present a serious problem for those trying to complete the game as it requires the player to micromanage the game like they are playing a match of Starcraft at the semi-pro level. The average gamer isn’t going to have those skills and even on the easier difficulty it’s still a pain to deal with.
Now is the game “fun?” I don’t tend to enjoy roguelikes at the best of times, and the frustration caused by the above two issues didn’t help with my impression of the game. Those who enjoy punishing themselves or pushing themselves to the utmost and probably beyond may enjoy Distrust. At $12 on Steam it’s fairly cheap, but I can’t think of it being a worthy investment.
Art: The art is isometric, ala the original Fallout and/or any RTS game ever made. This is both good and bad. Good in that it allows the player to easily see the map and obstacles, for the most part. The strange and bad thing that occurred in this game is the fact you can rotate the camera to view other parts of the map that are normally obscured (although any object that is obscured like this will still have an outline you can see through walls).
This is awkward, but it’s not terrible. The awkwardness is the fact that it by default requires a keypress with no mouse equivalent for those wanting one.
Music: The music is mediocre, it fits the game, but it’s fairly bland as well.
Overall: This is a roguelike that has some issues, it can be fun at times, but it’ll take a true roguelike lover to get the most out of this game.
For those who like: Roguelikes, Difficult Games, Procedurally Generated Levels.
Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.
