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Decay: The Mare (2015, Windows) Review


RANDOM GAME # 3


Also for: Blacknut, Linux, Macintosh, Xbox One


When I first started my Random Games initiative, I wasn't expecting anything genuinely good to come out of it. I did it mostly in the hopes of finding hilariously bad video games; stuff that could make me laugh, cringe and remind me to appreciate the quality of the good ones even more. All I wanted was to fill the bottom half of my review scale with titles.

Decay: The Mare, from developer Shining Gate Software, surprised me by belonging to the top half. It's a short horror adventure, disturbing and atmospheric, and easily winnable in a couple of late evening sessions. Presented like old school, slideshow puzzlers in the vein of Myst, it takes place entirely within a mental asylum. You, in the role of Sam Eldrich, travel there to seek rehabilitation for drug abuse and general anxiety issues. But already on the first night something bad happens, and you get trapped in a nightmare.


The game begins with a cinematic (which is also the trailer) that owes a lot to Silent Hill. A somber piano track plays over a string of lightly disturbing images that don't make a lot of sense until you've finished the game. The few, disjointed text pop-ups convey that the asylum is called Reaching Dreams, and someone in there needs your help. That's all the foreknowledge you need, and the rest will become clear before the ensuing, three chapters of this nightmare are over.

The dreamscape is skillfully depicted; although it hardly ever breaks any rules of physics or logics, it is clearly a dream from the first frame (almost) to the last (also almost). The asylum is in decay, as if it hasn't been used in a long time; its wallpapers are crumbling, the doors rusting, the lights keep flickering or are non-functional. The furnishing is in disarray, and sometimes blocks your way forward. Bloodstains are everywhere.


But rather than being downright scary, Decay: The Mare settles for a drowsy mood, established by the low-key ambience and a strange location design that makes little architectural sense. The gameplay is a similarly benzo-fuelled affair, with a simple, context-based mouse interface and surroundings viewed from the eye of the protagonist. The PC-version can easily be played with just one hand. The other you can use to effortlessly write down important clues discovered in various writings, newspaper clips or wall sketches found throughout the game. Keep a notepad and a pen at hand.

With atmosphere handled in such a skillful, minimalistic manner, it tricks you into letting your guard down. And yet, the gameplay, consisting of careful examination of your surroundings, requires you to remain observant throughout. This combination makes the few jump scares scattered across the game highly effective. I screamed out loud in terror a record-breaking three times before the end, where the writer even had the good taste of explaining, through one of their characters, the reasoning behind these cheap thrills. And without spoiling anything, it actually makes sense.


The puzzles are quite easy and, due to the helpful visual design, also quite logical. A few challenges consist of simple puzzle boxes, where you need to figure out the right combination of numbers or icons. But most of them require you to find and pick up items, combining some of them and using them in the right spot. Even though the game takes place in a dream, their usefulness is quite straightforward; a shovel is for digging, a knife is for stabbing, and a polaroid camera equipped with a flash can have multiple uses, especially in a pitch black room...

Even the story - as told through character interactions, hidden documents and the occasional cutscene - eventually gets quite good and tragic. The low-key, methodical gameplay provides you with a lot of room to process it as you go along, and when all the puzzle pieces fall into place in chapter three I felt satisfied with the conclusion. The game offers two different endings; one is good, the other deeply unsatisfactory.


My only gripe comes with a few moments of poor communication, where simply watching a cutscene or solving a puzzle unlocks a previously sealed door at a different location, without letting the player know. This causes some moments of deep confusion, as you are at a loss of obvious things to do. The built-in help system allows you to sidestep that issue, but a proud adventure game veteran will feel bad about resorting to that.

Decay: The Mare is still a solid recommendation for fans of both horror and adventure games. It reminds me of the classic movie The Blair Witch Project in that it accomplishes a lot with a little. The game only consists of a few slideshow stills, a few jump scares, a few synthesizer tones on an infinite loop and some puzzles related to a tragic storyline. This combines to create an effective tale of the macabre; of regret, despair and the claustrophobic sense of being caught within someone else's nightmare. It is a perfect game to pick up and play over a dark and dreary weekend in the fall.

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