The Unwelcomed Review (HTC Vive)
For the purposes of transparency, this review was created using a code provided by the company or their respective PR company. The use of a review code does not affect my judgement of the game.
With the introduction of Virtual Reality gaming it has opened up the ability to experience escape rooms in your own home. In the case of The Unwelcomed a mansion, but there is a large number of these showing up now. Which means a lot of competition in this genre, so how does The Unwelcomed hold up?
The Unwelcomed plays out as you learn you have inherited your uncles mansion following his recent death. You will then go to this mansion, but getting out isn’t as simple as it was getting in. This is the base of the story, however, around mansion you will find notes from people who have stayed there and also from your uncle – that would suggest he was losing his sanity.
The reason it is harder get out than it was to get in is because you will have to solve the puzzles in each room to order to escape this mansion. This opens up the element of the gameplay with it being an escape room. As you find with all escape room games, you will be required to solve the puzzles in these rooms.
I found the ones in The Unwelcomed to be fantastic and difficult at times. A lot of the puzzles are based around riddles which is something that I love – but can struggle with at the same time. Other than the riddles it can follow be instructions for example cooking a recipe in the first room, or burn things later in the game. Either way the puzzles have been well thought out and even some of the instruction related ones come with some difficultly – or even at times open up a new riddle. There’s not really much more I can say about the gameplay without discussing the puzzles, but I can say if you are a fan or riddles this one is certainly for you.
Standing up there with the puzzles in the atmosphere the team The Unwelcomed Studios have brought into the game. Most of the time you will feel like something is going to jump at you – but the game does not bring one jump with it. This this shows that the team have managed to bring a spooky atmosphere to game without needed to add any cheap scares.
With that being the case you can see they have done a great job with the presentation in the game. The use of the audio really does give you that chilling at feeling times, and some of the voice over narration can bring that with it as well. Overall the visuals were strong as well, everything was finished off well. But, the best part about the visual presentation was the use of the lighting, be it from a candle or a torch, there was times I just stopped to take in the great job the team had done.
However, where overall the presentation in the game did a great job of setting that atmospheric feeling and bringing the immersion together, there was a couple of bugs that removed this at times. The one I encountered to most was clipping between the objects and the environment. This had me placing objects inside parts of the environment and in some cases losing clues or items for the puzzles. The best example at one time I placed my hand through a cupboard door and let go of the key in error rather than pressing the interaction button, the key was now inside the cupboard – resulting in me needing to restart the room.
The second one was if you use the teleportation movement, it can suddenly just pitch black because you have teleported into parts of the environment. There is no barriers in place to stop you doing this and you need to teleport back out, but this will only be encountered if you use this method of movement – full locomotion is also available.
Speaking about locomotion in the game, let’s take a look at the controls. You will not use many buttons on your controller, but there is a number of options you can change, one of which I much preferred. Your Tracked Motion controllers represent the corresponding hands of your character, and the game is required to be played via either standing or using room-scale. As mentioned previously there is the two type of locomotion available, either way they both done using the touch pad. Then you will use the grips on the side of the controller you grab the objects, and the trigger on each controller to interact with objects.
Those are the controls, the one thing I preferred was you can change the grabbing mechanic. By default this is set to grab and hold meaning you always have to hold in the grips, but this can be changed to grab which means you only need to press the grips to hold an item and then again to release it. I personally found this the best grabbing option, as I kept letting go of grips all the time not thinking about it.
The game comes with seven rooms within the mansion, with the rooms taking me forty-five minutes to an hour to complete each one. Now this might come down to my aforementioned struggles with riddles, but I am sure others will still find each room lasting at least around the forty-five minutes mark. With the game costing £10.99 I really feel you are getting good value for money in The Unwelcomed.
Conclusion
The Unwelcomed brings an escape room experience which doesn’t only bring some mind racking puzzles and riddles, but also brings a great atmosphere with it. This is an atmosphere that feels right out of a horror game, however, there is no scares in sight – showing what a great job they’ve done with the immersion in this game. If you are a fan of puzzles and riddles you will love The Unwelcomed, which is down to the level of thought and effort that has been put into them.
Also available on Oculus Rift
Developers: The Unwelcomed Studios
