Disturbed Review by The Horror Network

Disturbed is a fairly short visual novel that takes on a slight horror atmosphere. You play as a farmer in a decaying land that is cursed by a spreading plague which is wiping out not only crops, but livestock as well. You will need to proceed through the story, solve a few small puzzles, and return the land to its once inhabitable form. The title uses the Ren'py Engine, which is the current standard for most visual novel games, so if you've played any previously the interface will be familiar to you.

I'm going to say right off the bat that the story here is lacking pretty severely; there's nothing interesting or fun about being a depressed farmer who wants to restore the fertility of his land. With that being said, where Disturbed really excels is its dark atmosphere, morose mood, and raw graphics. All of the scenes are hand drawn in black and white, and honestly they look completely untouched by Photoshop or other image editing software; rather they look like they went straight from the paper to the scanner, in to the game. Another fun thing to do in this title is to find out all of the ways that you can possibly die, and there are about a dozen different ways.

Another lacking feature here is the audio. You can play for minutes at a time without hearing anything whatsoever, and music is virtually nonexistent. The only sounds are the ones that indicate when you're on a death screen, and effects such as doors shutting or keys jingling. Even just a slight dark ambient soundtrack would suffice, it certainly wouldn't take away from the corroded atmosphere of the game; in fact, it would enhance it. Most players get mind-numbingly bored without any background audio to listen to. There are also quite a few spelling and grammatical errors throughout the dialogue, but some of these have been patched out.

So you may be wondering why I'm recommending Disturbed even though I listed off more cons than pros. Simply put, the game has an impenetrable depressive atmosphere that should be experienced by any horror and black metal fans. It's also easy to tell that a lot of time and passion went in to drawing all of the scenes, and there are quite a lot of them. Disturbed is best saved for a rainy fall day, when you have an hour or two to kill (or to be killed).

Rating: 3.0/5.0 - Average, can take it or leave it.
The Horror Network
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