In recent years, there have been many excellent domestic horror games, and "Paper Man" and "Fireworks" two years ago have left a very deep impression on me. Recently, a new demo "Black Sheep" at the Steam New Product Festival caught my attention with its excellent standing paintings. Click in to see, good guys, the capacity of the game demo has reached 6 g, such a volume, in a 2D horizontal board AVG demo version is not common.
Sincere art design
I have to say that there is a reason why this demo is as high as 6G, as soon as it enters the game, the production team shows full sincerity. On the way to school at the beginning, whether it is a nearby trash can or a basketball hoop in the distance, there are quite beautiful drawings, and interactive scripts are also written.
The overall drawing of the characters has reached the first-class level of domestic horror games. Due to the overall style of the game is realistic, the characters adopt a semi-realistic style, the image recognition is high enough, and it is beautiful enough, and everyone is handsome and beautiful (which I personally like). Character expressions also change with character emotions – a basic thing that many games can't do, especially the generally lower-cost horror games.
It is said that your eyes are unfocused, and the highlight is diffuse, which inexplicably reminds me of "Projectile Theory", although the artistic similarity between the two seems to have no highlight...
The overall UI and operation of the game are designed quite well, and the overall layout is clean and concise, but it does not lose the dark and oppressive atmosphere. The layout of the UI is amazing when investigating clues, collecting items, and viewing announcements — all the props used in the game are based on the operating logic of real characters.
For example, when the clues are investigated in the previous few pictures, you can also see other clues that have just been turned over, which is very consistent with the situation when viewing the note in real life; when viewing the notice board in the dark, the light of the flashlight will move with your cursor; the handwriting on each note is clearly visible, enough for me to read directly and get some information that cannot be obtained in the printed font (the notes of the characters, the thickness of the font color, can indicate the identity and psychological state of the owner of the note).
The light also moves as the cursor moves, allowing you to read different texts
Reading the text of the note directly can really greatly improve the amount of information obtained and the sense of substitution
Elements of film are introduced into archiving, reinforcing the concept of the "past" in time
These details seem to be a bit of a fuss individually, but in a horror game that pays attention to atmospheric rendering, such an important and detailed place can really see the attitude and design skills of the production team, and "Black Sheep" really does a good job in this regard.
In addition to the basic elements of characters, UI, and operation, the story's portrayal of the background of the times, the urban high school in the late 90s, has reached a stunning level. This amazes me in the first reel at the beginning, and it is also the first game to portray the atmosphere of Chinese universities in such a rich and meticulous way. In my impression, the last time the school was used as a background to reproduce a lifelike student scene, it was "Perfect Day" that portrayed the elementary school.
The scene in the first scroll, the board and the sign of the school gate, can only be said to be exactly the same
The small notes and "Story Club" that were searched out were full of memories
Unified flashlight in the 90s
Sleeping in the classroom, gathering in groups, very real, incidentally playing a jojo terrier
"Perfect Day": The note on the back, the big stereo in the upper right corner, the green paint, so right! It's just that my desk and blackboard were worse at that time
After that, all the scenes in the game that take place in the plot remain adhering to this advantage. Familiar scenes and elements always make me smile and think back to my time in high school. The grasp of the overall atmosphere of the campus is also very good, through the meticulous script, you can always know what the small groups of three or five are doing, and the story of the game unfolds slowly in such a noisy sound.
A complete and continuous plot
The plot is the soul. The following content contains certain spoilers, it is recommended to play this demo or cloud clearance before reading, after all, the clearance only takes more than an hour.
The entire game revolves around the theme of school bullying, and the demo restores the first event of this three-month-long tragedy. Such a theme is also reflected in the title of the game "Black Sheep", and the English word "black sheep" means the black sheep.
The game uses flashbacks in its narrative, with the protagonist missing a memory and the player having to go back three months to find clues to recall what happened.
Unlike traditional horror games such as ghosts and ghosts, because "Black Sheep" is mainly about an incident about school bullying, the interpersonal relationship between NPCs in the game is still more complicated. From the fragments of gossip in the mouth of classmates, understand the school group; from the notes passed from the hands of classmates, restore interpersonal relationships, and finally restore the truth of the event, so that the game's internal loop "plot - exploration - clues - plot" is very solidly established, collect clues, find the truth, and become the core goal of the game.
The setting that the protagonist has lost his memories of the past has long been expressed in some details. The male protagonist's early name is a question mark that has implied that he is not clear about his identity and has a lack of memory
Such features make the core of Black Sheep more like a reasoning game than a horror game. (That being said, I was panicked when I found a cabinet in the game where I could hide.) After the clue collection of the event is over, there is even a special meditation space for the protagonist to piece together the clues, helping you restore the truth of the whole thing through the tone of the protagonist. This design greatly relieves the player's comprehension pressure, and the game is able to move forward steadily in chapters. (How come the more you talk about it, the more you feel like "Projectile"?) ）
Based on the excellent plot and solid gameplay, the game's art pushes the game's horror atmosphere to the peak. For a "horror game sufferer" like me, the thriller elements of the game are just right: a restrained jump scare and a gentler bgm that doesn't make me bored or abandon the pit. It is said to be a horror game, but it is rather a reasoning game with horror elements. In the entire demo' gameplay, there are only two places that will lead to the death of the protagonist. Where you may die, the production team will intimately auto-save for you, and the game is very friendly, without any barriers to entry.
The only chase battle in the game that needs to be operated, you can also break free through qte indefinitely, it is really not possible to read the disk indefinitely
Dolls are an important element of the game, referring to accomplices. With the same campus thriller and puppet elements, the game as a whole feels very much like "another"
At last
Overall, Black Sheep's experience was excellent, with just the right amount of horror elements, wonderful and rich character relationships, and an art UI that I could fall in love with at a glance, all of which showed that this was another horror game masterpiece. In terms of volume, considering that the demo's playthrough time is about 100 minutes, the game has a total of five chapters, and the play time of the entire game should be about ten hours. So far, the game has not yet determined when it will be released, and the plot is not easy to evaluate, but I sincerely hope that the production team can be patient and polished, under such a solid gameplay foundation, tell a good story, and implement the quality presented by the demo throughout the game.