“I’m all alone and lost in the woods!” my beloved Hot Rod Frankie sang pitifully. And there is something to be afraid of: everything is found in the forests. Even if they have been upgraded to national parks, which are looked after by rangers in funny hats, it is still an unbridled element. And these rangers themselves are most likely trembling with fear in their forest cabins and prefer to do paperwork, finishing their fourth cup of coffee a night. Today we will take a look at Last Report, an indie horror game about how important it is not to violate reporting.
The park ranger, the main character of this little pixel adventure, goes to work after his vacation. The situation itself is stressful, and then there’s an impenetrable rainy night, periodic power outages, and some strange knocks and rustles outside the front door. But all this is just a distraction, because Their Majesties’ Reports are waiting for us!
A warrior of bureaucracy
Mechanically, this is literally a game about shuffling papers. We have a stack of camera reports on the table. Apparently, the reports were generated by AI, because our task is to find discrepancies in the description and photos from the cameras. Yes, everything is like in Papers, Please!, only much simpler. Reports with downed encoding must be sent to a shredder, but all the rest must be uploaded to a computer and sent by e-mail, recording violations of public order. This is a common set of forest crimes: hunting and fishing in the wrong places, making bonfires anywhere, abandoned cars away from permitted parking lots. And also, in the spirit of the times, drone flights are prohibited. Supposedly, the noise of the propellers scares the animals.
This is the first time I've seen captcha as an element of game mechanics
But more and more often, surveillance cameras come across things that go beyond the list of standard instructions. Negligent tourists are increasingly appearing in the form of red construction kits. Dark inhuman silhouettes in the treetops do not bode well. Even my native computer crashes periodically, producing completely inexplicable glitches.
In addition to shuffling papers, we have a walkie-talkie in our arsenal to communicate with colleagues. Unlike us, not all the mighty wearers of funny hats are sitting in their cozy houses. Some people quite come to visit us, revealing the murky ent of strange events of the past and present. And sometimes they help to get rid of other guests, by word and deed helping to survive the events of this rainy night.
Black and red comfort
The vast majority of people will cite observing bad weather from a warm home as an example of a cozy situation. An equally common scarecrow is the prospect of being left alone in the unknown at night. It is these two states that the game masterfully juggles, gradually becoming more threatening. Pixel art is unsightly in places (pixels are too large on large monitors), but it has an easily recognizable style of its own, which is most noticeable through the images of monsters. These shapeless black creatures resemble oil, which is known to smell forever. And their red eyes and blood look more like a forest fire.
Oh, those heartwarming moments
On the screen of a gaming PC, the style changes somewhat. Using all kinds of glitches, she resembles Doki Doki – the alarming blows here are just as unexpected and seem just as unpredictable, although the scale is many times smaller.
The sound design is also chosen as well as possible. This unfriendly rain outside the window, creepy knocking on the door from uninvited guests, creaks and rustles. All this, together with the aforementioned design techniques, gives the most powerful suspense, which is the fruit of the creator’s great love. Lonely, just like the main character.
Well, voicing dialogues with wordless squeaking sounds very nice.
The would-be creator, the hopeful
Unfortunately, the advantages end there, because the timing of the Last Report is just under two hours. And it wouldn’t be a big problem if the plot and gameplay didn’t stumble so fatally. The main problem with the gameplay is that it’s not really a game. In any case, if you call the lack of the possibility of victory or defeat a game. That is, our paperwork, which needs to be dealt with, does not affect anything. Seriously. For the first half hour, I didn’t figure out how to check the reports correctly, and that’s all it turned out to be: imperfect statistics! This fact kills the excitement completely, because it is impossible to lose. Yes, in narrative games, gameplay is an optional thing, but then why give it the illusion. The icing on the cake of meaninglessness: at the moment, the game has one ending. Yes, the final fateful choice does not matter.
January rain
The plot in the finale is so crumpled that, with all my desire, I will not be able to retell it clearly. All these Chekhov guns are firing at the same time, along the way a carpet bombing of deep meaning begins, leaving behind a scorched earth of bewilderment. Perhaps you can figure out what kind of red creature it is in the finale and why the main character is a puppet.
B-videogame
This game is not a demo, not a creative experiment, but definitely the fruit of its creator’s love. At the moment, this naive igrodel is pleasantly surprised by the positive feedback and promises to add many more endings and other content to the game. Oh, this zeitgeist, where there is nothing permanent, but everything is only promised. Nevertheless, the game has its own value in this wet, like grass in the rain, iteration: one evening it will be very warm, and the nerves will be pleasantly tickled. Like those category B horror films from the car cinema, this interactive is better to take place in the company of a loved one in order to snuggle closer to each other from a comfortable horror movie. And in a small forest hut, it will finally be possible to close the curtains from prying red eyes.
