INDIE GAME SPOTLIGHT: Kakushi Kamen

Have to admit, as a fan of Japanese folklore and Eastern horror in general, I was concerned as to how bad this would be.  'Kakushi Kamen' was built in a week as part of a game jam and was made by one person, which is typically a worry - making a game is a huge amount of work, even if it's a small development.  You typically need to delegate out different aspects to make sure it gets completed and is functional.  'Kakushi Kamen', for all it's faults, works and still does exactly what it sets out to do, which is a minor miracle.

You play as two of a group of teens investigating the home of a classmates uncle.  He and his family have disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances and you are going to sneak past the police to try and find out whatever you can.  Here's where it gets interesting to me - you have the barebones of a functional and creepy game in here.  BUT FIRST, the dull technical stuff!

Function-wise, 'Kakushi Kamen' is fine.  I had a crash but that was due to OBS deciding to memory leak all over the stream (link below), other than that there's a few things to improve.  The keyboard and mouse controls are a little too sensitive but useable.  Controller support is in and works very well.  There's portions of the game that require escorting a character who can, on occasion, take some work to get out of the way of a door.  So about the level of follower you'd get in a AAA game.  

There's combat, a little anyway, and it's a bit too imprecise.  This makes it hard to hit enemies, but they can hit each other which helps you survive once you realise this.  It's in very specific areas of the game and only occurs when the story is moving along.  Like the general feel of 'Kakushi Kamen', the slow build-up makes it nice and tense, which is more the point of Japanese horror.  There's more of the dread and typically less of the gore.  

So on to my favourite part - the story.  I'm not giving that away.  Sorry, you should go play it.  'Kakushi Kamen' is free, short and has 4 main endings and a joke one.  For a quick, 'Fatal Frame'-like fix, it's worth a play and your time.