Good day, my dear readers.
I've bought a new game some weeks ago and saw some to none reviews over the net, so decided to post mine. :)
Shattered Haven is a retro-styled game about fighting zombies (they called Grays) by solving environmental puzzles by moving small char over the screen in top-down perspective. One has to find inventory items and apply or place them to the right places in order to vanish all the Grays and move on. Action field is divided in screens. Player starts in the Overworld where he or she can visit any screen (s)he want and pick any portal (puzzle) he decide. Some puzzles require logic or trial-and-faliure approach, though some of them are action field, so if I had a friend to play the game had turned for me to the likeliness of Nintendo-like Left 4 Dead for two players. Though I had none so I won't discribe that part of the game.
The part I really liked was a story. Simple, strange and artificial, but filled with touching moments. Narratives are performed by one voice actor during a series of hand-drawn pictures (one picture per each "cut-scene"). While acting might be below the mark or up to par, the pictures are the reason why I had beaten all the puzzles just to look what I will see in the next episode (another reason was my thorough attitude and some other personal motives).
Though the story might be described in as short as one paragrapgh of plain text, and all NPCs and players are drawn as just tiny figures over the screen, I enjoyed the game a lot. Either it's just my personal traits like my love to different brain excercises and being a gamer since 1991 or just for the game's quality, I enjoyed playing a lot. I liked crawling in the bushes with a sickle and some iron spikes searching for new and efficient ways of eliminating patrolling Grays or laying traps to kill most hard enemies. I enjoyed hack-and-slash type of missions but some Bomber Manish puzzles delighted me as well. I was pleased to shoot my way through the hoards of zombies (bullets has no iron so they just stop them for a while), but I was happy when I found a baloon just to fly over them.
...Well, I liked the game. Really. But I don't think everyone will. Though you may try give it a shot, maybe you'll like it just like I did :)
