Decay – The Mare
Daedelic's latest release comes from Swedish design team Shining Gate Software, titled Decay – The Mare, a psychological horror puzzle game released in three episodic instalments. In Decay, players take on the role of Sam, an addict who admits himself into a shady institution known as "Reaching Dreams". Sam hopes to battle his inner demons and beat his addiction, however something goes wrong during the first night and he becomes enveloped in a permanent nightmare.
Aesthetically, Decay harks back to other horror titles like Silent Hill, with a touch of the Saw franchise about it too. The visuals aren't the greatest however, with some of the rendered backgrounds suffering under the grainy effects, making some scenes rather pixellated. Cut scenes are spliced into the action at certain points, adding some life to the relatively still world and to further give the player some sense of activity, there are nice touches to the lighting as well as the odd
animation here or there when entering a new room.
Decay is a very old school puzzler that demands you to adapt quickly to the point and click style with the patience to search every inch of each new screen. The interaction is limited to a select few items in every new scenario, and the player is left to work out how or where to use them. There is also a combination function with certain pieces of inventory that adds an extra layer of difficulty and puzzle solving (in the first episode the player is faced with a brick wall and must combine a wooden beam with a metal block to create a sledgehammer, destroying the wall and progressing to the next stage).
Decay does do a good job of keeping the player on edge throughout to counteract the possible boredom such limited interaction might bring about, as each new room continues with a general sense of foreboding due to its inclusion of specific items and horror tropes. These can range from blood stained walls, a shadow flickering past a window, or even a creepy, talking handbag. The background sound also provides a chilling atmosphere, though the voice acting is rather inconsistent. Sam monotonously reels off key information intermittently as the narrative is confusingly tossed between actual dialogue and subtitles.
The puzzles can prove very difficult, and there may be many instances of Googling walkthroughs to save yourself a bulk of time figuring out a number combination or seeing where you may have missed a key item (some of which are incredibly well hidden). That being said, the difficulty is quite refreshing and should give players a fair amount of game time for it's reasonable price. There's a lot of backtracking involved to ensure you've discovered everything necessary, the small spaces you interact with having to be revisited more often than not as it becomes apparent they are integral to a certain puzzle or item. This may prove infuriating with some gamers, as it can often go a touch too far in stretching your patience, but with this type of puzzler it never seems like a cheap way of fleshing the game out.
At the heart of it all this is a horror game, and there are a fair few scares to keep enthusiasts happy. However, as you progress further through the episodes you may find yourself becoming used to the cheap jump sequences (the a camera pans around, a disfigured body appears then disappears and so on). Taking into account though that this is an indie offering from a relatively small team, Decay – The Mare is a good effort that, although not without its flaws, does provide a satisfying small scale adventure with enough chills to have you peering over your shoulder as you play.