Now I would call this the first stage as you navigate the tight streets of this abandoned town trying to avoid the Matianak as she pursues you.

Moments such as these are terrifying as you’re unsure just how close you can get before anything could happen. Now we leave the room and this is where the uneasiness sets in as you see a girl your age standing at the top of the road. Now such scare tactics normally aren’t too effective on me yet there was an instance where rotating the camera to look over my shoulder, she appeared behind Linda screaming. You reply and the phone takes a life of its own before we’re introduced to our first antagonist – presumably Matianak, a thin faced draped in white woman who screams before vanishing. From the start we are plunged into a very dark world (the darkness works very well never allowing you to see enough to feel comfortable) and the creepy factor comes into play as we find ourselves, with no recollection how, in a small room with a bed and our smartphone ringing to the room opposite. Once you start the game, you realise just how much the developers wanted to immerse you in the game with no inventory or on screen info (besides when you use your smartphone which is inevitable) yet the feature of a tutorial summing up the key features and controls of the game was greatly appreciated, seeing as many indie games seemingly ‘forget’ to provide instructions on how to play their game, which can only lead to annoyance as you spend most of your time trying to get into the game.

The title screen has the option to connect Dreadout to our Facebook accounts to share our images we capture in game, which are stored in the Gallery on the main menu. So let’s start off from the beginning and a couple of points before going through the playthrough. The quality of controls, graphics, sound and other make this game now one of the most anticipated games this year and here is why. Now a lot of Indie games, due to a myriad of reasons, are normally short experiences which are fun nonetheless but this game feels like a big game and proper full fledged title. The demo isn’t to short and I think best shows what to expect from the game and acts as a prologue (look away if you don’t want to spoil the end of the demo but it ends with Linda waking up after having ‘lived’ through the events, sort of like Silent Hill.) Dreadout, a game coming from Indonesia and planning for release 2013, have released a demo that you can enjoy now.

Game dreadout demo