GamerEscape

I’ll admit, when I first saw Nowhere I got a bit excited. Sleuthing out a mystery in a terrifying forest and dealing with matters of old myths and legends? Sign me up for that ASAP. I was genuinely excited by what the trailer had promised and looked forward to checking out the demo. Unfortunately, as is often the case, there was a bit of a difference between what was promised and what was delivered.

So first off, the premise. You’re a detective tracking down what happened to four individuals who’d gone to check out the Norwegian forest of Forollhogna. You find their abandoned RV and uncover notes and photos they’ve left behind, as well as explore the abandoned nordic settlement that used to be there. All is not as it seems however, as every so often the sky goes red, a horn blares out, and monsters stalk the woods.

What we have in the demo so far is not much. You’re basically searching for clues and items when it’s safe, evading enemies when it’s not, and culminating in a puzzle to cap things off. The forest is easy to get lost in and it can lead to a “needle in a haystack” situation with some notes and items being far away from any noticeable landmarks. The items themselves can be easy to overlook, and while focus mode can help a little bit, it’s in a weird manner (A spotlight appears on a wall or something nearby but notably does not appear to originate from the item or point at it), and focus mode has its own bugs and issues as well.

You would think the enemies would spice things up, but in practice it just means pausing your exploration for a bit. First off, the enemies are incredibly slow, enough that you can outpace them with basic walking. You can also simply find a high area they can’t easily reach and wait them out. About the only risk of getting caught is if you get yourself stuck in a dead end, so you’re actively encouraged to just find a safe spot and go make a sandwich while you wait for the sky to stop bleeding.

Everything feels clunky and buggy. For example, you have a case board you can use to keep track of clues, but it’s something you summon in front of you by holding down B on the keyboard, but then you actually have to interact with it to use it and it spawns far enough in front of you that you have to walk up to it then interact, all while continuing to hold B or it’ll vanish. Why all this when you could have it pull up the menu in the first place? It didn’t even feel that useful since it’s one of those cork boards you use for tracking how things in a case are related to each other, but the only two groups are “four people who largely stayed together the whole time” and “The ancient history of the place.”

As for the bugs, several items feel unfinished or like they had the wrong description attached to them. One note I found had just a title and no text. The big puzzle you have to solve feels like two of the items should have been in different slots given the clues. And lastly there was the time I was exploring a cave and it just ran out of collision partway through so I fell through the floor and into the void. This is not even counting the myriad minor bugs that are part and parcel of an early access demo.

Lastly, I have some issues with how things end. So, after doing the puzzle you’re greeted with a screen asking you to write down the fate of each of the missing people, and it’ll tell you which ones you got right or wrong. I’m fairly certain I know the fate of at least two of them, and I’m honestly unsure if the demo has enough information to guess all four, but even if I did have enough information the fact that you have to write down the answer has a fundamental problem. There are SO many ways to phrase what happened.

For example, for a character that was sacrificed, do I just say “dead?” “Sacrificed?” Do I need to specify who they were sacrificed to? Do I need to mention who sacrificed them? In all these permutations did they want me to use the word “offered” instead? English is a complicated language, and I highly doubt the system is robust enough to parse the million different ways I can phrase their fates, even if I know precisely what happened. This is made all the more frustrating by the fact that you only get one shot at this; the game ends right after you make your choice. Sure you can speed through the game if you already know where everything is, but that still takes at least ten minutes, a lot of time to spend between brute force attempts.

I know we live in an era of early access and post-release patches, but I genuinely think this was far too early to ask for coverage. A demo should be a teaser of what to expect in the final game, a vertical slice that’s been polished to say “Aren’t you excited for when the rest looks like this?” What we have currently is barely a game. It’s dull and meticulous when it’s not downright broken. Perhaps in a few years they can polish this into a genuinely fun horror experience, and that’s the time to get some eyes on this. As it stands it’s simply a disappointment.

Preview copy provided by Midnight Forge for PC. Screenshots taken by writer.