The year is 1965, and you are journalist Patricia Gable; a young woman who is seeking to make her big break from being a small time reporter. What better way than to investigate the suspicious, recent death of a reclusive professor named Harris Bullard? Although his death was classified as natural causes due to hypothermia, your intuition tells you that foul play was afoot; it's up to you to find out who murdered Bullard, what secrets he was hiding, and live to tell the tale.
In terms of genres, Dead Secret is almost set in its own due to its unique gameplay. The title is most certainly set up with virtual reality first and foremost in mind, as the game is nearly an on-rails, 3D point and click. You must find the footsteps icon to interact with when you wish to move somewhere, and your character will then automatically walk to the destination; there are a limited number of pre-determined destinations, so there is no free walking. Likewise, any time that you see a hand or magnifying glass icon, you can interact with objects in the environment. The game is very linear and limiting in this way, and Patricia walks exceptionally slow.
What the title lacks in actual gameplay is made up for with a rich, immersive story that pays extra attention to detail. There are notes scattered about that, if you choose to collect and read them, will give a lot of background information to the four murder suspects at hand. There is also a lot of interesting information regarding the victim, and the many secrets that he kept. As well, there are newspapers with articles from the early 1960's that really keep you sucked in to the time period, as they point to the advancement of then-current events, entertainment, and lack of medical knowledge that we have now.
Throughout Dead Secret, you will encounter a masked killer in a raincoat. Their presence isn't exactly intense or scary, since you will have ample time to run away before you are potentially killed; there is a possibility that the area that you choose to move to is the wrong one, and you may end up being murdered anyway. If this happens, the game is extremely forgiving and starts you back at the sequence that you died during. Even though the appearance of the killer isn't frightening, the game does have a number of jump scares that will catch you off guard. This being said, I feel that the term "psychological horror", or even "horror" in general, does not suit this title in the least. The game is a murder mystery at best, there is only one minor scene that will mess with your head, and it's very tame.
The graphics are just okay, although since this title is set up for VR it's understandable why they're so limited. Taking in to account that VR is in its very early stages, the graphics are actually quite decent; you even have a body, and mirrors that emit reflections. This is impressive given that if you're running it in VR, everything has to be rendered twice. As for a desktop game, it's somewhat lackluster and plain, especially outside of the confines of the house and corridors. The sound could also use a bit of tweaking, as the music is either too soft, too loud, or disappears completely. These are of course minor complaints, the game itself runs great at a stable 60 FPS and I personally did not experience any crashing or glitches.
Clocking in at around 3 hours of gameplay, if you take the time to read all of the documents/newspaper articles and experience all five endings, it's hard to recommend Dead Secret at the price of $16.99 CAD. There's little replayability once you've accomplished everything, and the game will most likely end up sitting in the recesses of your library afterwards. However, for the time that it lasts, Dead Secret is a very immersive murder mystery that has a unique flair to it. I went in expecting a "psychological horror" game, since that's what the store page set me up to expect, and I came out a little disappointed. Reflecting back on the title with the understanding of it being a murder mystery, I can say that I deeply enjoyed it for what it actually is. It's just the short play time that holds back Dead Secret. If you grab it for $10 or less, you will be pleasantly surprised.
Rating: 4.0/5.0 - Excellent, highly worth playing.The Horror Network
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