Platforms: PC
Developer: 3D2 Entertainment
Publisher: Nkidu Games Inc.
MSRP: $14.99
Introduction:
The moment you enter the world of The Crow’s Eye, it’s easy to think that you’ve got this game pegged. With only the darkness ahead and a lighter in hand, you’re likely to expect a few scares alongside some traditional exploration gameplay. That only ends up being partially right as The Crow’s Eye ends up becoming a puzzle game about halfway through with mechanics that borrow from Portal. The Crow’s Eye doesn’t end up being all that of a scary game, so it’d be more accurate to dub this game as a Psychological Puzzler. What you encounter in the game is more along the lines of weird and a little trippy, but there isn’t anything here that will scare you to your wit's end.
The game starts by dropping you into the dark and abandoned Crowswood University with only the maniacal Mark Hamill Joker-esque voice of William Holtwick guiding you and providing context to the situation you are finding yourself in. Holtwick pops in and out and primarily serves as the vessel that dangles the nugget of freedom over your head, while most of the time you will be gathering scattered documents and audio logs to piece together what happened in the years leading up to the events of the game.
Gameplay-wise, things are relatively straightforward yet broad for a game of this price point. It does more than you think it would, albeit at the cost of depth. I will also say that in my experience, I encountered a progress-halting bug during one of the game’s puzzles. As a whole, The Crow’s Eye is relatively clean, but it’s worth noting as it’s possible not to be able to progress at all past a certain point.
As usual, let’s take a look at what you need to know about The Crow’s Eye.
The Crow’s Eye has a very intriguing premise, but it’s a bit bogged down by hit or miss execution.
Taking a step back and looking at the big picture, The Crow’s Eye carries as much promise as any horror game in the genre based purely on its premise. It’s a giant mystery wrapped in murder and deception as you carefully walk through the halls of a long thought abandoned university, not knowing whether you will make it out alive or not. Sounds great, right?
The problems start popping up when some of its documents try developing characters that aren’t all that central to the plot. Perhaps it’s a stab at trying to create a better sense of empathy for their current state of affairs? I don’t know. Maybe it would have worked had I not been constantly referring to William Holtwick as “Mister J” in my head. I get what they’re going for, and The Joker is a fine reference if “insane” is the characteristic you want in your antagonist. But it just didn’t seem to fit an elderly scientist with a finely trimmed white beard that at one time, was trying to run an entire university, a very public position.
The point is that none of the characters end up feeling fully established, and all you can do is take them at face value. Perhaps if the character development had been more focused, it would have worked out.
The Crow’s Eye feels like it has a bit of an identity crisis.
As mentioned above, The Crow’s Eye evolves into seemingly an entirely different kind of game past a certain point when you construct an Electromagnet tool. Whatever feeling of unease you may have gotten by the dim luminescence of your lighter amidst the darkness, vanish almost instantly the moment you get the new tool and realize it comes packed with a beefy flashlight. Instead of carefully treading through the halls, making sure you don’t miss a thing, your movements become aggressive and deliberate as you try to find neon-lit objects that can be placed on oversized buttons on the floor or warp you to locations you can't reach by ordinary means.
Traversal mechanics completely get turned on their head as well. Eventually, you’ll unlock an ability called Adrenaline, which slows down time Max Payne-style. This becomes important as the narrow hallways give way to industrial 1st-person platforming sections. Adrenaline gives your character a jumping boost across longer chasms to give a little depth to the platforming mechanics. For the most part, it works just fine; it’s just not something you would have expected The Crow’s Eye to throw at you.
The Crow’s Eye comes with a very basic crafting system that you’ll mostly use to make First Aid items. The thing is, you won’t be using these items to recover damage on things that attack you (mostly), it’ll be more for patching up the bumps and bruises you accrue when you miss time a platforming jump or get too close to a hot steam pipe. In many respects, the presence of a health bar doesn’t feel like it offers anything substantial to the game’s mechanics and may have been better off going the auto-recovery route.
Verdict:
Being the debut game from indie developer, 3D2 Entertainment, The Crow’s Eye is a decent first effort. It doesn’t quite capitalize on its intriguing premise mainly due to its lack of focus, but what is here works for the most part. Despite how much it didn’t seem to fit, I rather enjoyed the basic platforming and puzzle solving once I accepted the game for what it was.
In many respects, it feels like the developers had two ideas for a game in mind and tried to mash them together into The Crow’s Eye. There are some nice ideas here, even if they do borrow a bit liberally from other sources at times and it would have been good not to have to read some very avoidable typos in the game’s scattered documents.
If you are a fan of psychological games with puzzle elements, you should find enough in The Crow’s Eye to feel like your investment was worthwhile. However, if you’re looking for jump scares or anything actually horror related, The Crow’s Eye is not that kind of game, even though it advertises itself to be.