Unreal Engine - Deluded [v0.3.5 Cheats ] [SRT]

Dunno if I'll be able to review again, or I might update this one
Good game. Smooth and ambicious, but with something going on for now
Seems very professional and promissing
Didn't like how lost we get, but it also brings a Naked Silent Hill vibes, so it's nice, I think

Giving 4 Stars because the potential this game has since if development goes well on this it could be an amazing game! But i also have to say in its current state i cant reccomend downloading it.

Pros:
- Very nice Art and Graphic.
- Already good framework for what could be a great game.
- Nice looking UI and Menu.
- Beautiful female MC (I loved her instantly).
- Interesting Story Setup.
- The content that is in the game is great.

Cons:
- Performance is a big issue, I have a 3080 RTX and a AMD 5800X and still had 2 crashes, one system freeze and several frame issues. From my POV this should be worked on asap.
- Bugs and Glitches, several clipping errors, items with not use etc.
- No tutorial for stats and how they work, bad way of quest tracking.
- Not much content so far.

As i said before i dont reccomend downloading it if you expect a game you can actually enjoy playing, if you interested in experiencing the potential this game has for yourself and your not expecting a finished product i can reccomend it. Just keep in mind if you are downloading it you should have a good PC standing at your side and probably not mess with the graphic settings if you dont. Hav ing high hopes in that in general keep it going devs, good job so far!

Pretty good graphics, but the control is clunky, all stats are hidden, nothing is explained, a few of the maps are so dark you can't see anything, actual gameply is boring af (you're just wandering around checking boxes and repeating dialogues), the plot is all over the place, random invisible blockers everywhere, I have no idea what this game is aiming to do, and bugs everywhere.

Until it's tidied up a lot this game is unplayable.

Foreword: This review will NOT be updated as this thing progresses along. I think I've had enough bugs, glitches and oddities to last a lifetime.

Reviewed version: v0.1

In no particular order:

1. Why's there grass growing through the corner of the house (near the fireplace)?
2. When you first talk to Stuart and he demands you take what I assume is drugs so he'll give you your birthday gift back, if you refuse the protagonist decides to head back indoors-- only the lighting stays as it was outside, so everything is eye-bleedingly bright and hideous. It can be fixed by heading back outside then back inside, but this shouldn't happen in the first place.
3. So you can infinitely grind stats (which is dumb!) by going through the conversation options. The time of day will slothfully progress, and after one night your girl can go from 10 in strength to 100 in strength. Nevertheless, when looking at herself in the mirror she'll claim her "arms are weak" and she "has no abs at all". Funny thing to comment on a 100 strength behemoth, that.
4. Speaking of the mirror, the opened birthday package remains visible even after it was cleaned away. That's something that should've been spotted in perhaps three minutes of playtesting flat, which begs the question: was this playtested at all?
5. You can climb out of your bedroom window. What you do there is a mystery to me, except marvel at the fact the chimney is blocked by a mix of the roof texture and the red brick wall texture.
6. Conversations - whether internal or external - behave as though you are permanently in one of the "backtalk" segments of Life is Strange: Before the Storm, putting you on an invisible clock to read and pick an answer before an arbitrary timer expires and you get shafted with a conversation option you didn't want. This is most aggravating when you have a lot of options (like the canvas interaction) and the timer barely lets you read them all before it expires.
7. Everyone in the house wants the protagonist to find her old clothes. They are "in one of the boxes". That's nice, except I clocked three full circles in the house, checked every single interactable box I could find (each of which contained at most one item) and there were no clothes to find. There was a thong in the parents' room which I purposefully ignored, but that was the only (presumably) wearable I found.
8. I found the beauty kit and makeup items, but there doesn't appear to be anywhere to use them. Like the letter, they seem to just... Exist.

I could go on and on. There's clipping issues in the graveyard, there's typos and missing words. There's a million and one other issues like invisible walls in random locations and if you run you can get stuck under the roof outside the bedroom window and why on earth is the basement locked and the key used as a clock hand by the father and why would he get upset if you took it to access the basement and every single character you can interact with acts like they're from space (father, mother) or are such an arse they may just take the arsehole of the year award from the many, many characters in games on this site (Stuart). Oh, and you can use the dialogue to infinitely grind stats. And--

You get the picture.
This is a very firm 1/5 from me. If this seemed to have any redeeming qualities, I might've been tempted to give it a charity 2/5 and pledge to return with updates. It doesn't.

Updated review (7/10): Version 0.1

Without getting too much into the story it starts off pretty interesting. I'm not usually a fan of this genre but I will try to be as objective as possible. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Story (8/10):

At first glance it looks like a psycho/mental themed story with elements of supernatural (or vice versa). We start of with a prologue/prequel story of the MC moving into a village close to a big town. The first choice - to remember said prologue - is very oddly placed. It's shows when talking to a man who will drive you back home. But the prologue actually starts when you get there. So for now at least that choice is pointless, confirmed by not being able to select the other option. Unfortunately this type of decision-making is common in the current version. But since this is the first release I'm willing to look over it. Once we start the actual prologue we quickly find out about the loss the family has suffered and their poor mental state because of it. This also explains the drug and alcohol abuse mentioned by some of the characters. Even the MC is on medication as we find out in one of the quests. In another quest her brother gives her some drugs and she has a lewd hallucination. I find it weird that tentacles is what she hallucinates but taking into account her mental state and the drugs possibly reacting with her medication I'd say it's plausible. There's not much more to be revealed in the story so far but I think it's a good start.

Gameplay (6/10):

Basic mechanics of a 3rd person game. Even though the key bindings are not complicated, the schema it's not as intuitive as it could be. You have a circular crosshair that fills with an icon indicating an action (white if possible, red if blocked somehow) so you would expect it to be trigger by left click. It's actually the E key. This could be improved by either making it LMB or removing the crosshair and making the action icon visible when close to an object you can interact with. The second might not be a good idea since I found a place where two interactable objects are above one another so the crosshair was useful there (boxes in MC's room and the candles above them). Checked the road map - it looks like improvements/expansions are planned for version 0.6. The camera angle and distance while walking are okay. I personally would make it a bit higher and further away. When sprinting however is a different story. The camera goes very low and the lens perspective changes making the camera more tunnel vision. Not ideal when running in the house. Some dialogue options and actions are based on character stats which is fine and understandable. However, in the very beginning of the game you have one such option that requires 40 points in a certain stat. You start of with 20 and is possible to get 5 more making that option impossible to select. Why was it made like that is beyond me. If it's possible to get more points in a future version maybe remove if for now and add it later. When you get to the house you can actually grind some of the stats and there are a few different outcomes based on these choices. But other than that the stats don't affect anything yet. According to the road map that should be in the next update. There is an exhibitionist system in place, or more precisely prepared, but so far the only thing that happens is if the MC talks to someone whiles nude she'll go back to her room. That should be implemented in version 0.7 completely according to the road map.

Quests (8/10):

Okay, right off the bat, the clothes quest - guys, learn how to read and use common sense. Everything you need to know about that quest is mentioned by the characters. If you skip dialogues that's your problem. But this only proves that handholding mechanics are needed by most people. I've already done a walkthrough of this quest in the thread. Most of my opinion on the quests is based on this one specifically. It uses logic that you would use IRL, little to no handholding. Another quest worth mentioning is the console one. That one I didn't like so much since different choices lead to different dialogue options but the end result is the same. Kind of like the ending of Mass Effect 3. Since we don't have a complete walkthrough with everything there is to do as of writing this it's possible I've missed an activity. But for the most part the devs have left us to explore in a mini sandbox demo. Don't leave the houses grounds

Sound and graphics (6/10):

There are quite a lot of visual glitches that need polishing but for now it's nothing game breaking (at least on my system) except for one crash that I might have triggered. I was clicking to skip the dialogue too fast in the beginning and some animation was not trigger which made the MC not leave the casket, and I was stuck there. Had to start a new game. One more such occurrence was when leaving the car before going to the house - the game crashed. When inside the car and when leaving it the camera angles are weird. In some cases I can barely see the MC or the man and in others I can't see them at all, only the hill in the background. The intro is quite long and there is a choice to stay awake or pass out - they both do the same thing and have no effect on the game. Not sure if I missed it but I don't remember anywhere in the intro to have seen the title of the game. The lighting I think is the main issue visually. The art style is not my cup of tea, so I can't really base the review on it. But the lighting is quite poor. In the cemetery there are places that are basically black. Guess the moon light is not enough. Somewhat realistic but this is a game after all, we need to see. Same thing when it gets dark outside the house. Someone in the thread mentioned this and I checked too. When talking to the brother outside and the MC is teleported in the house the outdoor lighting is transferred inside making the house super bright. The devs need to rework the light sources I guess. And make sure there are no plant from outside penetrating the walls of the house and being visible inside. I played the censored version and the censorship is a bit broken. The mosaic is visible through the clothes. As for the sound design - the only complaint I have is the environment sounds are much higher than the character voices. Well, the MC's voice since I didn't hear anyone else speak. Speaking of the MC's voice - the voice acting is not good... at all. In the title sequence she does not sound like someone who is confused or concerned of her situation one bit. The immersion breaking point was when she says "Never mind..." and continues talking calmly. And in the scene with the tentacles - you have a virgin girl that is raped in all holes by giant tentacles and her moans are so light you'd think she's just touching herself. Still, better to have it than not but there are many games that have hired a lot better voice actors. Maybe this one was cheaper.

Performance (6/10):

Based on RTX 2070 super, Ryzen 2 2600, 16GB RAM: average. Compared to AAA games that also use UE and those who don't for the amount of usable content this version has I'd say it's using way too much power. I know it's hard to optimize UE but it's kind of a bummer that a game so small (content wise) is so demanding. The fact that it's 5.6GB doesn't help either. Since you have the whole 3x3 km. map available in this early version I understand the size. So I would expect it to remain relatively the same for future versions as all the resources are probably here and unused. If I base this review on the previous game that they started I'd say it's bit better. And if I base it on other UE game here - it's about the same when it comes to performance with some and better than others. There are some Unity 3rd person games that are far worse than this. So basically, it's not the best but at least it's far from the worst.

Pretty good, controls are a tad annoying, its a shame theres no save and that it ends after 1 day. If theres a lot of random events, then just let us explore until we're done instead of forcing us to start over