Astray Review

Puzzle-Horror games; one of my favourite genres. Outlast, Amnesia, Doorways (only the first one, though). More and more devs are picking up on this small corner of games that hit big. The most recent in the line of these games is Astray. After being disappointed, however, with my recent time with similar games (Daylight and Doorways Chapter 3: The Underworld), I approached Astray with skeptical thoughts in mind, believing it would follow the same fate as them.

The story in Astray is very similar to that in Penumbra, even using the typewriter to introduce the game like Penumbra: Overture. The protagonist (who isn’t given a name) is looking for his Uncle, who went into a Museum several weeks prior to the game start and hasn’t come out since. The player decides to finally find out for himself what has happened to his uncle.

Not long after getting inside the Museum, it is evident that something is a foot. Just small things; slight whispers and disembodied voices echoing through the halls. Creepy things happening, with no explanation. That is the game’s strong-point: eeriness. Probably a big highlight for me was when I had to find a key to open a door, and as I was looking for this key, I saw a picture of what looked like some kind of Queen/Princess. As I got the key and came back through the hallway with this painting, I gave it another look, only to notice a distinct difference: she was gone. The chair behind her was in place, but she was missing. I proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes terrified that she was walking around the hallways in pursuit of stabbing me, but in reality, she wasn’t anywhere. She simply disappeared, nothing too dramatic.

As the game progresses, you discover through notes found lying that something is definitely wrong. It is not made clear if any of these notes were left by the player’s uncle, as both of these characters are not given any names.

Being a puzzle-horror game, the puzzles are a big portion of the game (besides the horror), so how well does it do? The puzzles themselves are good, and perplexing. They give you hints where necessary, but not enough to make them stupidly obvious. Following Amnesia: The Dark Descent, many puzzles are finding objects to place somewhere, such as a cog, or finding a key or a crowbar to get a door open. However some puzzles need to be done in an exact manner; even if there is more than one way to accomplish them.

There was one segment at the start in which you need to get past a bolted gate. After looking around and finding nothing, I decided to stack boxes at the side of the gate to jump over. The boxes were higher than the gate itself, but I was physically stopped when I tried to jump over. The game wanted me to find a way to cut open the gate. There was another instance where I was trying to jump over a stack of tall boxes (too tall for me to move out of the way), but again, an invisible force stopped me moving forward when I should have easily been able to scale them. Turns out you’re meant to go under them. The small, pushy things like that are quite annoying and can make you feel a bit stupid, especially when what you’re doing should theoretically work 100%

As I said earlier, the game was exceptionally good at being creepy; spooking the player out with unsettling, small events. What the game fails to do properly is make you jump. There was only one point in which I actually screamed, and that was because I was asked a question at the same time an enemy saw me (I didn’t realise) and as I turned round to the game he attacked me, catching me completely off-guard. On the subject of enemies, they aren’t too bright; there was one point where I was crouch-walking about 2 feet behind one whilst repeatedly bashing it with a vent-cover in order to pass the time. Once it reached the end of its path, it stopped and I sprinted past it (as the monsters run slower than the player), reached a door, and closed it right in his dumb face. Being the simple-minded grunt he is, he was unable to open the door and proceeded with his duties of shuffling around making raspy breathing sounds for all eternity.

Overall, Astray isn’t a bad game. Whilst the story is quite disjointed, the ending is actually different and, honestly, nothing you would expect. If you love games of the horror-puzzle genre, you’ll love Astray, but if you want a game to introduce you to the genre, go for a different game.