Ad Infinitum Review

Ad Infinitum is an indie horror game published by Nacon and developed by a new German game studio called Hekate. It takes place during the Great War (World War I). The game follows the story of a German soldier haunted by the horrors of the war who changes places between the frontline and his family home.

The story of the game delves a lot into psychology and what warfare does not only to the soldiers fighting but also to their families and friends. Ad Infinitum starts at a decoding base right on the trenches, with our protagonist getting the order to storm the French lines, which is clearly a death sentence. There aren’t a lot of interesting things happening during that part, as it’s just a prologue, but it shows some basic gameplay functions and sets the scene for the rest of the game.

Once that’s done, you are transported to your family manor, and the real game starts; it’s great, honestly. There are notes you can find that reveal what happened while you were at war left around the house by different characters, and you can learn the protagonist’s and his family’s history through them and other objects around the map. The historical accuracy of the game is genuinely impressive, and it’s clear the developers did their research before creating the models and designs of weapons, as well as the feel of the era. There are multiple endings to Ad Infinitum depending on some of the choices you make, which is great for the game.

The game feels scary almost all the time, and everything makes you uneasy. Something that takes away from it, though, is the heavy reliance on jump scares in certain parts. While jump scares aren’t a problem in and of themselves, reliance on them isn’t a good design for a horror game, as they only make it scary to move through areas because you don’t want to lose. The majority of the game, though, is not dependent on them, even if featuring them in some way. 

The protagonist’s hands aren’t modelled well — they look too long and small. This problem is further emphasised by the bad and unchangeable FOV. Overall, though, the graphics don’t look bad, and the performance is stellar. As for when I played it, there is a small bug that causes the graphics settings to always reset to defaults when the game is launched and when opening the menu again — having to turn motion blur off every time I slightly want to change other options is super annoying. 

Now, the sound design keeps the environment always scary, and the different effects add so much to the feel of the game. There is one caveat, though — the voice acting. The game features three possible languages for Full Audio: English, German, and French. The setting that most people are likely to use is the English one, which is honestly awful. Everyone sounded so unemotional that I almost immediately changed it to German, which is amazingly better. I don’t know how good the French setting is as I don’t speak French, so I stuck with the one I understand. The text is available in a lot more languages, and it affects the subtitles, so I’d still recommend playing with the German version, as you’ll be able to read in your preferred language and experience better voice acting. It could be a problem for some players, but it should be fine and not break the immersion for most people.

Ad Infinitum’s music fits everything that is happening perfectly and sets a spooky scene. There aren’t any bad tracks, and it’s just amazing. Sometimes, there is just generic scary music, and sometimes, there are even military themes, which breaks the horror feel of the OST and makes it even scarier somehow. It’s great in every aspect and even plays a pivotal role in the storytelling.

All in all, the game is definitely good: the horror is amazing, and the concept of the story is a really original idea that I definitely would like to see more of. Telling the psychological aspects of war through a horror game is very interesting. The biggest issue I had with it is the annoying bug I’ve talked about, although the problems with the English voice acting might be an issue for some players. I’d definitely recommend the game to fans of horror, especially if you like history and know a little about the Great War.