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Games that are designed to give people a scare remain quite popular as a whole, but more often than not (at least on the Switch) it feels like developers exploit that audience rather than reward them, with Frightence being a somewhat sad example of this joining many others. In terms of what you actually do most of the time working out far more as a walking simulator than anything else, Frightence leans heavily on what’s implied to be a dark and creepy atmosphere while pretty much ignoring simple game design fundamentals and structure. You’ll wander, try to open everything you can, wander some more, see things that may be clues or simply dead ends, wander some more, and then eventually a minor number of weird and at-best unsettling things begin to happen before it ends. What “game” there is ends up simply being in service of stretching out your “play time” before delivering what you came for, but even then it doesn’t feel like the juice was worth the squeeze. As I said, this title isn’t alone in over-promising and under-delivering on the promise of a satisfyingly scary time, but that doesn’t forgive the general disappointment in what it brings to the table.
Justin Nation, Score:Fair [6.1]