Russian Horror Story is a visual novel put out by developer/publisher Dagestan Technology; a company known for putting out some of the worst titles on Steam. It should come as little surprise that this game in particular is no exception, and it's really considered scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as visual novels go. It's not even so much of a horror story rather than one persons random inner thought ramblings.
The story is told from the perspective of teacher Ivan Naumov, who recently moved from Finland to Russia. The entire tale is about how the neighbors that live below him keep their TV on too loud all throughout the night, keeping him awake. Rather than turning into anything interesting, his inner dialogue turns into a bunch of whining about sleep deprivation and jumbled, incoherent inner thoughts. I guess the latter is supposed to convey how your brain gets all screwed up without sleep, but it just comes off as a bunch of nonsensical rambling and doesn't pertain to anything that the actual story is trying to get across; it's distracting, confusing, and just plain bad.
You have the option of choosing between English and Russian for your language preference, and I really do hope this game is told better in Russian. The English version is horrid, and anyone who is a stickler for proper spelling will be driven insane. The devs got someone to translate the dialogue from Russian to English, but the translator didn't bother to use a spell check at all. Almost all of the errors are fixable by using a simple spell check in Word; it's free, it's easy, it's one button. Who am I kidding, some of the dialogue wasn't even translated! There are a few scenes that still have the Russian version, and not in a Date in the Park title way either (where the main character doesn't understand the language, therefore it didn't get translated), no. Just pure, simple laziness and inability to care about the finished product.
The art is okay, despite looking like it was done in MS Paint. Given the fact that there are only a handful of scenes and characters, it could be much better (especially taking into account the asking price of the game). The soundtrack is boring and repetitive. There's a hidden arcade game if you click on the computer in the bedroom, and its controls are god awful; you can move the spaceship by clicking or by using the arrow keys, but the only way to fire is by left clicking, so you might as well use just your mouse. Looks like even simple Space Invader mechanics elude this developer.
Look, I work overnights and I sleep during the day; if anyone understands sleep deprivation due to loud neighbors, it's me. I live my life in a mostly sleep deprived state, chuckling at my random and sometimes morbid inner monologue. I don't get REM sleep because I'm woken up about every hour of the whopping 4 hours I sleep. Could I relate to the "insanity" that Ivan experienced? No, sorry, I never found myself eating spoonfuls of coffee grounds and washing it down with a can of Coke. I've never thought my neighbors were out to kill me. And my inner thoughts have never been a series of rapid, unconnected sentences that make no sense at all. The only real horror here is how atrociously the English language has been butchered due to lack of simply spell checking; I'm not just being nitpicky, it really is THAT awful. Yet they're charging $8.79 CAD for this? It's not even worth the $1.05 CAD on sale.
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