After seemingly being taken against your will to what looks to be a creepy asylum, brought into the facility by wheelchair, you find yourself in a dimly-lit room, apparently trapped. While some of the details may change, people who’ve played quite a lot of horror games before will likely be quite familiar with the nature of the setting, the somewhat frantic state of your character, and the ever-present threat that appears to be waiting for you outside your door… but there’s always hope that something will still manage to help this particular experience stand out from the rest.

The objective in Scholar’s Mate, unsurprisingly, is first simply to try to survive, and then to ultimately escape. I’ll bet you won’t be able to guess what you’ll need to do in order to succeed in this effort! Wait, you knew that you’d need to carefully avoid making noise or drawing the attention of a relentless and deadly pursuer, while also trying to solve a series of odd and oftentimes seemingly random puzzles?!? No fair, you must have cheated!

My sarcasm aside, yes, these sorts of horror games seem to have gotten to the point where they halfway design themselves, sticking to familiar tropes while just changing up some details. All that said, to the game’s credit there are some areas where it at least manages to be a step above some of its competition. In particular, the sound design just really works here, helping the tension rise and accentuating the moments where everything is going to hell, at least boosting the odds of a good adrenaline hit when things get dicey. One concern was that even after following the calibration screens, my initial darkness setting really still felt far too dark most of the time, making it a struggle to make out critical elements in the environment. Perhaps err on the side of things being too bright and then dial it down if need be, rather than struggling pointlessly with it being too murky. Honestly, without giving away details there really isn’t much more to say here. Either you know and still enjoy this style of game or you don’t, though I’d at least say that this is one of the better options in the space out there.