Nightmare Of Decay Review

Nightmare of Decay is a first-person survival-horror game from indie developer Checkmaty. Clearly inspired by the early days of Resident Evil, Nightmare of Decay sees the player stranded in a mysterious, monster-ridden, and puzzle-filled mansion.

To begin with, I want to reassure all those reading that the game is well balanced; I feel this is an integral aspect within the survival horror genre. On its regular "Normal" difficulty the game is neither too hard nor is it a walk in the park. Enemies are tough and supplies are scarce, so make your shots and your use of healing supplies count. I'm confident harder difficulties tip the favour even further against the player, and while that sounds like hell to me, I'm sure it's music to the ears of any survival horror connoisseurs out there.

Nightmare of Decay is also an aesthetically pleasing game; lovingly crafted by someone familiar with old-school original PlayStation. Though it still looks better than anything ever released for the PlayStation — mainly due to the modern technology used to create it — it still captures the same spirit... that grainy, nostalgia-inducing spirit. Everything is deliberately clunky in all the right places, I love it!

The game world is also beautiful, and it connects together so well. Checkmaty shows understanding of the techniques necessary to piece together a survival horror. There is a lot of back-and-forth (as expected) as you progress through the mansion, down into its basement, and then into the tunnels; even with all the constant backtracking, progress never seems stunted and you always feel you're one step closer to the end. Throw in the numerous, visually different areas throughout the game — complete with their own unique puzzles and wicked enemies — and you have an experience that is certainly stressful, but never, ever boring.

That's not to say the game is perfect, and even though it's a fabulous effort to recapture the old days of survival horror, there are a couple of points I think could be improved. Firstly, I don't like the floating guns. Maybe it's trying to further immerse the player by not representing gender or skin tone, but I personally would've preferred the character to have gloved hands if that's the case — no hands at all is oddly distracting. Another complaint is the user interface, which screams free-to-play mobile game. Sure, everything is well organised across the available tabs in the menus, meaning it's easy for the player to utilise, however, I just think visually it detracts from the experience.

I also wish the game had voice acting rather than the Animal Crossing-style talking. All speech is represented as a short, unintelligible, looping sound, with a text box at the bottom of the screen so you can see what is actually being said. I completely appreciate that getting together a cast and doing some high-quality voice acting is nigh on impossible for a small, one-man-band developer, and that is why I'm not strictly treating it as a negative. However, I think a better approach may have been to either leave it silent or use the Undertale method of having the words themselves create the sound as they are written out.

Another thing to be aware of — which is a second point that I'm not considering a downside — is the game’s very short length. My final first run time was just over two hours, but just know that it was a very fun two hours. In a world encumbered by 50-plus-hour, open-world epics it was nice to just sit down and enjoy something short and sweet instead. However, if two to three hours of playtime seems a bit short to you, do not worry, as there are other modes and difficulties to tackle. You could even try your hand at speedrunning it with practise, as not only is there an achievement that encourages you to do so, but survival horrors are known for their lively speedrunning communities. It's safe to say that there is more content here than may initially meet the eye.

I ultimately like how this game is one big salute to horror, most notably the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series. While it bears the recognisable aesthetic of Resident Evil, including the mansion setting, zombies, and much more that I won’t spoil here, the overall angle is more supernatural, something that Silent Hill has always portrayed. But it doesn't stop there either; though I'm sure I may have missed plenty of others, I did notice references to both Dark Souls and Dead Space too.

Though it has its flaws — most of which are purely aesthetic decisions that I feel could have been handled better — Nightmare of Decay is still a brilliant game. It knows exactly what it wants to be and ticks off the list of necessary requirements with ease. It's a fabulous slice of retro-themed action-horror, and I urge anyone interested in survival horrors to give it a try immediately.