Review of No70: Eye of Basir
There is a real lull in the gaming industry in the summer, a kind of off-season for gamers. Usually, not many developers decide to release their games on Steam during the summer sale. Under the pressure of discounts on already popular games, it will most likely be difficult to notice an interesting novelty. And the chances that players will buy a novelty from a little-known studio than an AAA title, for example, with a discount of -75%, become even lower. Oldmoustache Gameworks from Turkey decided to take a chance by releasing the horror No70: Eye of Basir.
• The plot
The main characters Aras and Erhal spent their childhood with their grandmother in house No70, where they encountered paranormal phenomena that they could not explain. After the death of their grandmother, the brothers split up and began to live their own lives. 20 years have passed since then, and now Erhal is a successful archaeologist, and Aras is a creative director. In the morning, Erhal realizes that something is wrong and while he is trying to figure it out, he disappears. Aras decides to visit his brother, as he does not get in touch for a long time. But he has no idea what's going to happen. There are several other characters in the game that you can learn about from the scattered notes. I don't like spoilers in reviews, I'll just note that the notes are quite interesting to read (although in general I don't like reading them), they shed light on events well. I would not call the story deep, and most of the conclusions are on the surface, but despite this, it is interesting to observe the development of the plot. It feels like he's been given a lot of attention.
• Gameplay
No70: Eye of Basir is a first-person horror game with elements of puzzles and location exploration. The game is divided into three parts, and each of them caused separate impressions. Let's start in order. In the first part, Erhal wanders through the dark rooms of the aforementioned house. There are notes and objects in the rooms, which then need to be applied to other objects. Apart from notes and story items, there are practically no objects in the game that you can interact with. Everything looks static, destroying the feeling of realism of what you see. The artifact eye of Basyr also does not represent anything radically fresh, through it you can see what is hidden to the human eye. And we've seen similar mechanics in other games.
The next important disadvantage of gameplay is the very concept of puzzles. It consists of running from one end of the house to the other in order to use the found object. In short, it all looks like a shuttle run, running with an object from one end to the other and back. The location in the second part turned out to be more spacious, but unfortunately it could not save from annoying running, on the contrary, the shuttle run has to be carried out at an even longer distance. Problems with static are still present, for example, a cat on the street does not react to the environment. There is not even an explanation for why the notes in the tunnel are hung directly on the walls. I just want to ask why they hung them up like that, and why not just put them on the table? It looks absurd. The third part serves as a definite epilogue. Although it was the third part that I liked more, probably because of the lack of races in search of where to put the right item. For the first time, surrealism and just creepy moments appear here. Unfortunately, the last part was short.
• Atmospheric conditions
The atmosphere creates a completely different feeling in each part. If in the first part the game tried to scare the player at least a little, and despite the boring gameplay it could still be called horror, in the second part there is no trace of it. The game turns into a continuous walking simulator. The already weak atmosphere of otherworldliness is completely dissipated. With the third part, the game tries to rehabilitate itself, but it turns out to be so short that the impression of the game is formed by the first two not entirely successful parts. And now about the passage. You can complete the first part without stretching in half an hour, the second part in about an hour, and the third in no more than 15 minutes. This is considering the search for notes. The game specifically uses "dirty tricks" to intentionally prolong the playing time. Now about the advantages. The game has good musical accompaniment, I can also call the sounds in the game high-quality (I played with good headphones), and it was really interesting to hear Turkish rock on the radio. Well-chosen voice acting of the main characters.
• Images
The game uses the Unreal Engine 4 game engine. Graphics settings are represented only by the choice of one of the three screen extensions and the choice of graphics quality (low / high). In general, the optimization was pleasantly surprised, but in the third part there were abnormal drawdowns in the frame rate. As for the graphics themselves, we managed to see a good picture at some points, but the locations lack detail and greater polygonality. The textures themselves are of good clarity. The worst thing about the overall picture was the color filter. Purple tones in dark rooms look nasty. It feels like the developers didn't want to bother with lighting and just applied an ugly filter to mask the picture. The same problem is felt in the second location, only with different tones. Guesses about lighting problems are confirmed at the second location, in underground tunnels where torches do not illuminate the area. There are noticeably fewer problems in the third location, and after going through the entire game, I can confidently say that I liked the third part more in terms of graphics, although the sins from the previous parts are partially present in it. The in-game videos are well-directed, although there are not as many of them as we would like. By the way, I was surprised by what I saw, because I could not have expected such a level of play.
Bottom line: So, let's see what the developers promise us on the game's Steam page? Atmospheric sounds and music. Yes, there are no complaints about them, as I wrote above, I even liked them, but against the general background, this is the best component of the game. The unique atmosphere of the old house - horror in old houses is such an outdated theme that the original place of events could only be a mental hospital (no). The difficulty of the puzzles, as described above, lies in the complete absence of hints. In conclusion, psychological horror. Nothing can describe the game better than answering a single question. Are you scared? No. Nevertheless, I recommend the game for review because of the adequate price tag and a rather interesting plot. Similar solutions were used in the development of the platform https://dafabet.work/ . Register to see for yourself what's inside.
• The plot
The main characters Aras and Erhal spent their childhood with their grandmother in house No70, where they encountered paranormal phenomena that they could not explain. After the death of their grandmother, the brothers split up and began to live their own lives. 20 years have passed since then, and now Erhal is a successful archaeologist, and Aras is a creative director. In the morning, Erhal realizes that something is wrong and while he is trying to figure it out, he disappears. Aras decides to visit his brother, as he does not get in touch for a long time. But he has no idea what's going to happen. There are several other characters in the game that you can learn about from the scattered notes. I don't like spoilers in reviews, I'll just note that the notes are quite interesting to read (although in general I don't like reading them), they shed light on events well. I would not call the story deep, and most of the conclusions are on the surface, but despite this, it is interesting to observe the development of the plot. It feels like he's been given a lot of attention.
• Gameplay
No70: Eye of Basir is a first-person horror game with elements of puzzles and location exploration. The game is divided into three parts, and each of them caused separate impressions. Let's start in order. In the first part, Erhal wanders through the dark rooms of the aforementioned house. There are notes and objects in the rooms, which then need to be applied to other objects. Apart from notes and story items, there are practically no objects in the game that you can interact with. Everything looks static, destroying the feeling of realism of what you see. The artifact eye of Basyr also does not represent anything radically fresh, through it you can see what is hidden to the human eye. And we've seen similar mechanics in other games.
The next important disadvantage of gameplay is the very concept of puzzles. It consists of running from one end of the house to the other in order to use the found object. In short, it all looks like a shuttle run, running with an object from one end to the other and back. The location in the second part turned out to be more spacious, but unfortunately it could not save from annoying running, on the contrary, the shuttle run has to be carried out at an even longer distance. Problems with static are still present, for example, a cat on the street does not react to the environment. There is not even an explanation for why the notes in the tunnel are hung directly on the walls. I just want to ask why they hung them up like that, and why not just put them on the table? It looks absurd. The third part serves as a definite epilogue. Although it was the third part that I liked more, probably because of the lack of races in search of where to put the right item. For the first time, surrealism and just creepy moments appear here. Unfortunately, the last part was short.
• Atmospheric conditions
The atmosphere creates a completely different feeling in each part. If in the first part the game tried to scare the player at least a little, and despite the boring gameplay it could still be called horror, in the second part there is no trace of it. The game turns into a continuous walking simulator. The already weak atmosphere of otherworldliness is completely dissipated. With the third part, the game tries to rehabilitate itself, but it turns out to be so short that the impression of the game is formed by the first two not entirely successful parts. And now about the passage. You can complete the first part without stretching in half an hour, the second part in about an hour, and the third in no more than 15 minutes. This is considering the search for notes. The game specifically uses "dirty tricks" to intentionally prolong the playing time. Now about the advantages. The game has good musical accompaniment, I can also call the sounds in the game high-quality (I played with good headphones), and it was really interesting to hear Turkish rock on the radio. Well-chosen voice acting of the main characters.
• Images
The game uses the Unreal Engine 4 game engine. Graphics settings are represented only by the choice of one of the three screen extensions and the choice of graphics quality (low / high). In general, the optimization was pleasantly surprised, but in the third part there were abnormal drawdowns in the frame rate. As for the graphics themselves, we managed to see a good picture at some points, but the locations lack detail and greater polygonality. The textures themselves are of good clarity. The worst thing about the overall picture was the color filter. Purple tones in dark rooms look nasty. It feels like the developers didn't want to bother with lighting and just applied an ugly filter to mask the picture. The same problem is felt in the second location, only with different tones. Guesses about lighting problems are confirmed at the second location, in underground tunnels where torches do not illuminate the area. There are noticeably fewer problems in the third location, and after going through the entire game, I can confidently say that I liked the third part more in terms of graphics, although the sins from the previous parts are partially present in it. The in-game videos are well-directed, although there are not as many of them as we would like. By the way, I was surprised by what I saw, because I could not have expected such a level of play.
Bottom line: So, let's see what the developers promise us on the game's Steam page? Atmospheric sounds and music. Yes, there are no complaints about them, as I wrote above, I even liked them, but against the general background, this is the best component of the game. The unique atmosphere of the old house - horror in old houses is such an outdated theme that the original place of events could only be a mental hospital (no). The difficulty of the puzzles, as described above, lies in the complete absence of hints. In conclusion, psychological horror. Nothing can describe the game better than answering a single question. Are you scared? No. Nevertheless, I recommend the game for review because of the adequate price tag and a rather interesting plot. Similar solutions were used in the development of the platform https://dafabet.work/ . Register to see for yourself what's inside.