'STRANGE TOILET' ended up being worth what I paid for it. Which was a straight buck.
Honestly though, I feel that it may have been under-priced. Is it a good game? Not particularly. Does it at least have good voice acting? ABSOLUTELY NOT. What it does have, is a commitment to it's central premise, surprisingly good pacing and one of the most disgusting bowel movement sound-effects I have ever heard.
Made in two weeks by TheThill, it was built in Unity using primarily free assets and some basic ones made by the creator. It has no controller compatibility outside of mouse and keyboard and has almost zero replayabilty. Frankly, it barely even has a play-time. This is no 100 hours long epic. It takes about 15 minutes to run through it twice.
Next to no sound-effects. Next to no music. Unfortunately voice acting. That's a lot of what it isn't or that it hasn't got. What exactly does it have?
Pacing that many big budget games would kill for. This super-short indie follows the rulebook on true jump-scares and it shows. Start the game and everything is normal (apart from the protagonist and his worrying bowels - seriously my man, go see a doctor) - normal tv watching, normal partner whom if they had less romantic chemistry with the protagonist they'd drown them in the porcelain throne, a normal AND WELL-LIT apartment.
Following a frankly appallingly voice-acted watching-the-news-for-crucial-backstory segment (thankfully skippable), the partner goes for a shower and the player character starts to recieve ominous messages on the phone, the mirrors and through the apartment's letterbox. So starts the next part of the playbook - being alone and being a target. The apartment is well-lit - that doesn't last for long.
There's a couple of small, scattered jumpscares as you search around the house to fix the light situation and things start to get worse very quickly. Hints of bloody deeds in the basement, a terrified scream and a secret hiding place let you get to the end of the game. At which point, you find out that the INCREDIBLY LONG, POORLY ACTED and BORING news sequence is shown to not really matter in the slightest. Or maybe it does. This game needs more game.
The story, what there is of it, makes little to no sense but, with a few small tweaks, this could be easily turned into a fully-functioning and terrifying game. As it stands, it's a novelty and not much more.
You can buy 'STRANGE TOILET' here: Strange Toilet by TheThil (itch.io)
Watch Jo from LU2D Games play it here: twitch.tv/lu2dgames
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