I was very intrigued when I saw a press release announcing a game that claimed to be based on SAW and aimed to be something created by Jigsaw himself. What I ended up experiencing was a rather lackluster point and click adventure that had the potential to be so much more.
Play With Me is a horror puzzle adventure created by indie developer Airem, a one man studio. The game puts you in the shoes of Robert, an investigative journalist who has been closely following the events surrounding the Illusion killer. After an accident, Robert finds himself chained in a room in an unknown location. Your job is to look around finding clues to help you get to the exit.
I guess in a way, Play With Me is a series of escape rooms packed into a point and click adventure. Each room has its owns puzzles which must be solved in order to find the solution for the keypad. At first, the point and click style fit pretty well, and at times was like playing a hidden object game, using a magnifying glass or a UV light to uncover things that were initially hidden. It’s a rather exploratory experience that requires a lot of attention to detail and a bit of creativity. On the plus side, Play With Me thinks outside the box by making you interact with the game in ways that are outside the game. There was a particular moment where I required a mirror to solve something, my own hand to cover parts of a message, and on another occasion I actually took a print screen of what I was seeing, then flipped and rotated it in an imaging program to find a clue.
Robert doesn’t have much in his inventory to start, and the items will change according to your exploration, much like in every point-and-click adventure. The only constant is his phone, and being the one item that never changes, you’d figure it would be used a lot more than it actually is. I found that the cellphone could have had a bit more to it in terms of puzzle solving, and since you can play a couple of games on it, maybe having an added mechanic where if you beat a certain score more of the story or a clue would be revealed, instead of just receiving calls or messages.
I think being able to text the detective would have immersed the player a bit more. There is one moment when you are tasked with finding a code in the room you’re in for another person to use, and you must communicate that over the phone, which was brilliant and reminiscent of a co-op game. I also did quite like exploring the computers, which are a somewhat repetitive and tedious necessary task, but actually offer mini-games to distract you from the plot.
Unlike SAW, Play With Me doesn’t really convey any sense of urgency, with the exception of a few rooms where death is imminent. There are a few attempts at jump scares, but they aren’t really successful. The atmosphere is almost there, in terms of art and environment, and some of the sounds and rather good, while others, such as cutting a rope or using a cloth to wipe something, are just awkward and seem out of place. There is no sound track so to speak, but what little music exists is actually quite good and helps set the mood.
Where the game truly shines is on the few moments where it makes you interact with it in original ways. Play With Me thinks outside the box by making you interact with the game in ways that are outside the game. There was a particular moment where I required a mirror to solve something, my own hand to cover parts of a message, and on another occasion I actually took a print screen of what I was seeing, then flipped and rotated it in an imaging program to find a clue. These moments are rather good exploratory experiences that require attention to detail and a bit of creativity, and it’s a shame there aren’t more of them.
The voice acting has got to be the worst feature. If the characters speak as if they don’t seem to be taking this situation seriously, why should I? How can that sense of urgency be passed on to me if they don’t sound panicked? The anxiety that should be created by a game like this just wasn’t there. The main character does have a “headache” meter, and you do find some syringes laying around with a mysterious green liquid that could be (or maybe not) a health recovery item. I think Robert’s anxiety would have been best represented with an increasingly faster and irregular heartbeat and breathing rate, maybe the use of a tranquilizer pill or even just playing a game on his cellphone could be used to calm him down. Phantasmal did the insanity/anxiety meter fairly well
To take away from it all, there’s repetitiveness. You will soon enough see that a keypad blocks your exit in every room, so you’ll find yourself doing the same type of things everywhere: use the flashlight, use the matches, use the UV light, find codes, piece them together, open doors. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The SAW inspiration is clearly there, but it’s not as obvious as one would expect. The game really throws you off right from the start with the unexpected beginning, but it’s easy to get into the rhythm of things as we progress. With a bit more oomph on the narrative and voice acting, and more of those great “outside the box” moments, Play With Me could have done a much better job in terms of making players belong to the story. For a single person game, this is an excellent effort, and with proper funding, I’m sure Airem could do great things.