Review | CLOSER – anagnorisis

Good day to ya’ll! Today we will be looking at a game called CLOSER – anagnorisis, developed and published by Eysium. CLOSER – anagnorisis is a stealth game with very minimal graphics. It’s all about outplaying the enemy without harming them. So unlike all my other games with lazers and bombs and everything, this was a new twist for me. Are you able to put all your weapons down and give it a try? Find out below!

We played CLOSER – anagnorisis for 2,5 hours on PC.

What we liked!

• Music | The music is an absolute joy to listen to. It’s really calm, and this starts from the moment you open the game. In the first chapter, the music is kind of cute and playful, but it starts to get different the further you get. It might sound weird, calm and joyful music while possibly being chased by a monster that wants to kill you, but I think it’s really great, especially for those moments where you are just thinking: how do I do this? It doesn’t bother you while thinking. And is still very pleasant in the background.
• Gameplay | Let’s talk about the first three chapters in CLOSER – anagnorisis. It is your basic stealth game at the start. However, you need to pick up three items (they look like balls) in every level to complete it fully. If you don’t, you’ll have to replay it, in the end, to be able to go to the next chapter. When you pick up a ball, there is this text on the top of your screen with a little part of the story and sometimes it gives you tips about what is to come. I loved this in the start, even though it was mostly just one sentence. I wanted to know more, which made me want to get all the balls in the level. However, this did change, and I will explain in the did not like part of this review.
• Enemies | In CLOSER – anagnorisis, there are multiple kinds of enemies. You start with the normal guys that walk around and run and kill you when they see you. Then there are the ones that run at you and then start exploding. Sounds easy since you have a lot of time to run from him when he starts doing his boom boom thing, but most of the time, you need to make a normal monster walk into the explosion, or the mist that keeps being there for a while, to kill him. And, that is not that easy, I can tell you. It is fun, though. And then my favorite enemy: the green bottle-men. Sounds confusing, I know, haha, but I will explain! They are enemies filled with green poison and a little cork in their back you can pull out, making all the poison spill on the floor slowly. You will die by the poison if you stand in it, but so will the other enemies. I loved the depth to this, killing one enemy with another, and I hope by writing this, you can see the complexity in this “simple” stealth game.

Somewhere between

• CLOSER – anagnorisis didn’t have anything that would fit in this section.

What we disliked

• Chapter 4 | This is where CLOSER – anagnorisis changed for me. You get different enemies that I don’t understand. And the tips I got didn’t do it for me. There are eyes on the floor, and somehow they kill you. Your chest seems to get red when you are close to death, and there are INVISIBLE enemies… Who thinks invisible enemies are a good idea in a stealth game? You get ways of seeing them, but, yeah, I didn’t find this fitting at all. I didn’t know what to do; I replayed levels to read all the tips again, and I played the level until I just thought I tried everything. It’s hard to know what to do when they don’t tell you exactly what is going on. I get that you want to be mysterious in telling a good story and barely give a tutorial, but I haven’t played a hell of a lot of these stealth games. I just played games where it was an option. What I can recommend to the devs: make a journal of every tip you get and every enemy you encounter. And then include what they do to you and what you can do to counter that. I get that this is a puzzle, but no info at all seems a little… meh.
• Minimal Cutscenes | The cutscenes in CLOSER – anagnorisis are SO minimal. Did they use the walking animation for a little boy that is turning? It doesn’t look good, and then there are the text parts. They have their own screens… Why? Why not just make it a text bubble in the actual cutscene? I think this is a missed opportunity, and I was not too fond of this part of CLOSER – anagnorisis.

CONCLUSION

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