Developer: VIS - Visual Imagination Software
Publisher: United Independent Entertainment GmbH
Platform: PC
Pineview Drive – Review
Pineview Drive is one of many indie horror games that tries to reach out to the majority of horror fans. This game in particular takes place in a haunted estate. Over the course of 30 days you try to find out what happened to your wife who disappeared in the same mansion 20 years ago.
Story
For 20 years you have found no clues or peace with the disappearance of your wife Linda. You decide to take matters into your own hands and try to find out what happened. The tale around this mysterious house has become renown. Stories tell that nobody has been able to endure more than 30 days in the mansion since the time Linda disappeared.
The story of the game is pretty vague at first, but after a few nights of playing it starts to make sense. The story consists of text notes written by you 20 years ago, around the time when Linda disappeared. Every night you survive you find a text note, which usually contains only one sentence. At the start of the game it’s simply Linda hearing noises or being freaked out. After a while however, she starts to become paranoid and even manages to startle you a bit as well.
Graphics
The graphics in Pineview Drive aren’t the greatest but they’re okay for an indie game. The graphics do the game justice however, since it’s a horror game. The only really bad point graphics wise is the terrible performance the game runs at. It runs around 30 fps max with a decent setup and even drops to 20 fps at times, which is pretty annoying when a lot is happening at the same time.
Sound
The music and sound effects are pretty much designed to scare you. There is a lot of loud music for when tension starts to build and they even throw a loud violin in there sometimes. Sound effects are what really made this game scary for me. When your heart starts pumping and the tension starts to build the game suddenly plays a loud “psst” to the right of you, resulting in… well… being scared to death and almost tossing your mouse off your desk. The sound and music in particular create a very scary and dark atmosphere, making you paranoid as you’ll start to hear footsteps around the house.
Gameplay
The gameplay is of course what it’s all about and there’s a lot of it for an indie horror game! The game features 30 playable nights, auto saving after each of them. In total, the game should take you about 6-8 hours, depending on how fast you find everything.
Playing the game is pretty basic, run around, find keys and unlock doors. Pretty funny how such a simple concept can turn out so scary and difficult. The game itself is very dark and you rely on batteries to use your flashlight. The batteries drain fairly quickly and they don’t respawn, so if you’re not careful you’ll run out of them. Luckily, when the battery is empty it recharges to 1 bar again allowing you to use it again for a very short time. You can also find matches to light candles around the house, creating very little light but it’s better than nothing. The house itself is filled with light switches, which is nice at first, but become useless after a few nights as all the bulbs break due to lightning.
The keys usually appear after a scary event takes place, the key will then drop at the location where it happened. Sometimes when you don’t know what to do and don’t have any keys, the game will guide you with something bashing on a closet, footsteps or a ringing phone. Most scary events are triggered and can’t be missed but a few of them lurk outside of the house so you can’t see them if you’re not focusing. There’s also a creepy clown sitting on a bench which will randomly turn its head to you when you’re not looking at it, making you very paranoid as you’ll be scared that it will charge at you.
The game doesn’t have any monsters or threats that come after you but it monitors your behavior and movement when something scary happens and deducts hp accordingly. Being shaky with you mouse when something happens will result in a lot of hp loss, as to where being calm and simply running away will deduct significantly less hp.
Every night ends when you find a note that you’ve left for yourself 20 years ago so you can’t just wait until morning to continue. Daylight fades quickly and the nights are endless. Once you get to the last day, you’ll see a very weird cinematic which doesn’t even explain what happened to your wife. According to the devs, they wanted you to make up your own endings first. Shortly after the hype train finished the game, they posted the intended ending.
Conclusion
Pineview Drive is a horror game that will have you on the edge of your seat and glued to the computer screen because of its dark and scary atmosphere. Most of the gameplay consists of running around and finding keys but if you can ignore that fact it’s pretty scary. The game concept might not appeal to everyone because of the vague story and repetitive gameplay, but it features quite a bit of game time and a lot of scares!
Pineview Drive - Review,
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