Distorted voices mock and obstruct Alex's conversations with her companion over the radio. Heavy items will tip over from a shelf with a loud clang behind you. A corridor will stretch on endlessly, hinting at the mansion's otherworldly nature. That said, occasionally you'll see some weird stuff happening. The penalty for not being able to solve the locked room puzzle is straightforward: you're just stuck in there until you figure something out. This can happen if you miss out on a vital clue, which has happened to me a couple of times - like in the game's very first locked room. But it's still frustrating at moments since there's no hint system if you do ever get stuck. Waking up in a musty room in a mansion does have its charm.Īnother issue is that since most of the puzzles are contained within each room, you aren't likely to get stuck just because you forgot to pick up an item from the other end of the mansion. All that's to say that you won't be solving puzzles under duress, but this doesn't quite make for a horrifying experience, either. You're also able to take your time to scour the scene - there's no malicious being imposing a time limit on your sleuthing - as Alex monologues about how freaky this entire scenario is (which isn't, really). These puzzle-solving stints are mundane, but to the game's credit, there is still some gratification in working out the answers, with the puzzles straddling the line between being somewhat easy and a tad punishing. The game maintains more or less the same sequence throughout: find a locked room, discover a keypad, decipher cryptic clues, key in the right code in a keypad, unlock the door, and then walk into another locked room. One of its biggest issues is that the stakes are small in The Tartarus Key. But I'm not sure if it's high praise to suggest that a horror game is tantamount to a relaxing puzzle box you can while away your lazy afternoons with. This isn't necessarily a fatal flaw, since The Tartarus Key does have some puzzles that serve as engaging brain teasers. It wears the PS1 horror aesthetics without delivering on the spooks. was able to instil a sense of creeping unease, but The Tartarus Key is just one giant escape room game, mostly devoid of the cloying dread of the horror games it takes inspiration from. By gradually introducing small changes to an increasingly familiar loop, P.T. This is unlike, say, a game like P.T., the demo for a Silent Hill game that never saw the light of day, which simply comprised of a single hallway you pace across over and over again. Unfortunately, this repetition - and eventually, familiarity - is largely what keeps The Tartarus Key pretty placid, its initially unsettling atmosphere never peaking beyond an unobtrusive level. Here's a story trailer for The Tartarus Key. Only when you do, you'll find yourself in yet another locked room. A security camera watches your every move, its lens fixed on you as you gather scraps and clues, unravel their meaning, and unlock the door. Amidst the radio static, a disembodied voice would tell you that they are in the same predicament, and your first step is to find a way out of the room. You spy a radio on a table, a postcard tucked away in the crevices of a sofa, a locked safe, and a door that's jammed shut. As a gig worker named Alex Young, you have woken up in an excessively baroque mansion, furnished with musky books and dusty furniture, rather than the familiar comforts of home. To that effect it's cloaked in the coarse, aliased graphics of a PS1 game, while its story is delivered within a tantalisingly spooky setting and a hefty dose of puzzles to crack. The Tartarus Key wants to conjure the same dreadful eeriness of these games, but without resorting to cheap jump scares.
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