The Tape is a short horror experience crafted in Unity. While that sentence will put off many people, including myself, I must say that this game is the very first Unity horror title that has run at a stable 60 FPS with no frame drops on my high-end rig. I should also mention that the developer also brought us Putrefaction, which was well received in general.
The story line within The Tape is perplexing and mild at best, you're a detective out to solve a murder. Your investigation takes you through two "haunted" houses, a cultist infested dungeon, a strange water level and a forest. I must say, the only part that I found at all intriguing was when blood began dripping from the walls. The entire experience will last about 30-40 minutes at best, and there are two endings to choose from. Luckily, there's a save point at the last part of the game, so you can replay the area and get the other ending if you wish.
The Tape's main graphic feature, which is a heavy "camera" filter setting, actually bothered my eyes more than it did to help my experience within the game. I turned it off, and what I was left with was a black and white game. While I'm not adverse to black and white movies and such, I must say I just do not feel that a pure black and white setting works here. Sure, it helps the faint shadows that are cast to stand out a little more, but other than that the title could stand to have some color added.
Aside from the extremely short main game, the player will have the chance to play three "bonus levels", which act a bit as challenge maps. The Forest mode is basically a Slenderman simulator; you walk around a forest until you've found 8 pages. I didn't run into any foes in this area, it seems to be just tedious walking. Dark Waters is a recreation of the water level within the main story, where you simply turn from left to right, gather up light and survive as long as you can against the demon head. Lastly, during Dungeons of Terror you will flip between 4 cameras with the aim to gather 20 pages and collect fuel to keep torches lit to keep the demon at bay. The pages show up randomly over time. All of these levels are rather easy and generic, and will not tack much time on to the overall game.
Though the game originally sold for $4.49 CAD, the new asking price of $1.09 CAD is more justified for the half hour of gameplay that one may get out of it. I ended up getting this on sale for around $1.50, but you can luck out and grab it for around $0.65 CAD now, which is a price I can recommend this game at, if I were to recommend it at all. Alas, I do not, as a seasoned horror veteran The Tape will flee from the vaults of my mind by the time I wake from my next sleep.
Rating: 1.5/5.0 - It's bad.The Horror Network
Steam Group:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thehorrornetworkSteam Curator:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thehorrornetwork#curation 1.5