Ad Infinitum

Quotation forthcoming.

Ad Infinitum wraps a deeply moving story of trauma, loss, fear, and self-discovery into a horror game that gets under your skin. The sound design is fantastic and provides numerous moments of suspense. However, the debut effort from German studio Hekate also suffers from gameplay flaws and clumsy animations. But if you can get into the story and overlook the aforementioned flaws, Ad Infinitum is an excellent horror game with depth.

While there are some impressive elements to like about Ad Infinitum it ultimately lacks a lot of polish and some more compelling gameplay. It's excellent score and use of audio is the stand out in this psychological horror.

Ad Infinitum doesn’t really offer anything new to the genre. Narratively, it simply drives home once again that war is hell and that families are complicated. On the gameplay front, there’s the usual mix of exploration, stealth and puzzles, and a lack of conventional combat. But while it lacks originality and innovation, there’s something somewhat compelling about it. It has some great creature designs, too. While it won’t blow you away, if you’re after a creepy game to waste eight or so hours with, you could do worse. Whether you’ll play through it again to reach another ending, however, is questionable.

The developers of Ad Infinitum seem to have spent too much time on developing the atmosphere and the game itself. It is a completely linear experience, with plenty of bugs that often make progress impossible, if things do not happen according to the script. Because of that, it becomes increasingly frustrating to explore the levels in order to puzzle together the story. Also, once you pique behind the curtains and understand the mechanisms that break down so often, the magic is gone. The plenty of bugs and concept errors ruin what could have been a memorable experience.