Developer: Mogila Games
Publisher: Mogila Games
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Clinically Dead – Review
Mogila Games is new to the game development scene, not newborn new, but babbling baby new. As Clinically Dead is their second game. The first was Grimind. The studio, from what you can garner on their blog is led by a single individual doing all the work. Where Grimind was written from the ground up, Clinically Dead uses a premade engine, giving the developer a lot more time to create the game than spend typing line after line of code. Clinically Dead has been in development for quite some time, as the first hint of it was back in February of 2015, so the whole process took four years. That’s a lot of work having been done by one single person.
Story
The story behind Clinically Dead is actually a rather sad one. You are a man who had a part of his throat cut out because of what is presumed cancer, and is on death’s doorstep. In his last moments, he’s all alone in the room, with only a voice behind the emergency buzzer to keep him company. Sad is that a lot of people die this way, alone and uncared for. As he reaches for the glass of vitamins, he transpires. The majority of the game takes place in the last 30 seconds of brain activity before he’s completely gone. Which is actually an interesting take from a narrative viewpoint.
The writing could have been a lot better. There are grammatical errors, and some things don’t make any kind of sense, making you wonder what’s actually being meant when you get the clues that are supposed to help you finish a puzzle. When you write your instructions for the player so confusingly, it’s going to throw out the immersion as the player will be forced to think, which most gamers are trying to get away from when they do dive into the created world. An example is that the game refers to ‘high time’ and ‘low time’ which could have better been described in a manner like: ‘time sped up’ or ‘time wound down’. Then again, the writer might not have the time to fully rewrite the dialogues and taking the one man show this game is, it almost feels like nit-picking.
Graphics
Clinically Dead probably had the codename: ‘Man I be tripping bawls up in the plaise’, because boy oh boy, does this game not fuck around with the visual noise being thrown at the player. Usually when a game warns about epilepsy, it’s because the developer/publisher doesn’t want to get sued and the strain of the games are actually quite low, but not in Clinically Dead. It’s bright, its color palette is all over the place and has a very distinct and unique visual style. It’s also very headache inducing. This is a shame because you want to play this game for more time than you can probably handle. Clinically Dead is going to blow your mind by overexciting your eyes.
The game has a very unique and uncanny feel to it. You don’t feel at ease even though there’s no real threat. The developer nailed the feeling of unease. So hats of for creating that feeling, a lot of horror games try and fail at this aspect.
Sound
Clinically Dead is as interesting in its music department, as it fits the trippy feeling the graphics give. What is laughable is the nurse talking through the intercom, how she constantly says the patients name in a different manner, but always wrong. It’s almost as if she’s mocking him. The voice of your subconscious in the game is on point though, it’s cool to hear how the voice after the tracheotomy and his voice is distinct enough to make it easy for players to understand who is giving the instructions.
Gameplay
Clinically Dead is an horror/puzzle/platform game. The main objective of the game is to collect pieces of time. You only have 30 seconds, in the outside world. Don’t worry though, in the time between time, it all has slowed down so much that you have an infinite amount of time to collect the seconds. What do you do with the fragments of time? Rewind and fast forward time to complete more puzzles and get even more time.
W,A,S,D moves you around, while Q and E rewind and fast forward time, so you can solve puzzles by playing with it. The level design is really well done, and actual platforming isn’t floaty, this is sometimes a problem when you platform in first person. It’s on point, which is really good and this shows that the developer has put quite a lot of work into making the game functional. This is something that puts the developer head and shoulders above other ones that are willing to put games in Early Access and not actually finishing it, while siphoning money from the players until they pull the plug on their projects, leaving players with nothing to show for it.
Clinically Dead is a really good platformer, although it has to be said that longer sessions of play aren’t possible due to the visual nature of the game.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a fun platformer with a weird vibe to it, then Clinically Dead is what you are looking for, the game needs some polish when it comes to the actual voice acting and writing, but nonetheless it’s impressive how much the developer got done in their lonesome. *Spoiler* Also, the reason Mr. Samson died is probably because they cut off his hair.
Clinically Dead - Review,
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