Strobophagia | Rave Horror

I realise that my complaints could easily be dismissed as an old man complaining about the whole rave experience but, if anything, I wanted Strobophagia to be more of a sensory overload than it turned out to be. Everything just feels like it’s been dialled down a few notches, and consequently it doesn’t engage you as much as it should. With some fine-tuning and, more crucially, some better music, this still has a lot of potential to offer up an original and effective horror experience. It just isn’t quite there yet.

Strobophagia is a game that looks cool and has an interesting premise, but it fails in successfully building and delivering on its narrative of horror. While the use of a cellphone and proximity-based chatting made for some fun detective-like segments, the run-from-the-monster gameplay is much more of a bore. While the visuals are generally good, the music is disappointingly bad for a game focused on a music festival, and I was left feeling little more about my time spent playing than “meh.”

Alas, poor Strobophagia. You look really good. You have some promise. But you are, at the end of the day, just lacking the meat you really need to be worth an unqualified recommendation. I don’t really dislike this game, on a whole. While it’s a wispy sort of thing, it’s clear that the developers had ambitions, and you can see the places at the corners where the ambition starts to creep in and almost promise to elevate the proceedings. It’s just that each time that happens, all you get is that hint, that idea faintly expressed until you just sigh and go about your business. So the score I’m giving this game is on the high end of that same number… but ultimately, it’s a game I can’t really recommend to a lot of people. For all the neat ideas at play and the interesting visuals, it never quite has enough meat on its bones. There’s just not enough to rave about here.

If I were to use a single word to describe Strobophagia, it would be “confusing.” With good music and puzzle mechanics, there’s a solid foundation for what the game is trying to be. It just feels too disconnected to stand on its own as a single cohesive unit.

Strobopahgia certainly has a lot of potential, with a strong aesthetic and some good core concepts, but it plays as an unfinished experience. With more polish in the later acts of the game, expansion on some of the weaker endings, and fleshing out of the music and ambient sound throughout, the game really could stand out. As it is now it would be hard pressed to impress more casual gamers, but for the more horror inclined player looking for something different it would be an interesting hour or two.