Game Review: Deluded
Deluded -Keymailer
*SPOILER ALERT*
After playing Full Motion Video (FMV) point-and-click games like At Dead of Night and Contradiction: Spot the Liar! (both made by Tim Follin & Baggy Cat), I knew I was hooked on that style of game - no matter the genre. Any time I find a game created in that style, I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame; it’s ridicules. Big shout out to New Idea Games for sending me a key! <3
According to its Keymailer description, Deluded is “a ‘classic’ hit ‘n run case or at least it seems like. Play the detective’s role and try to solve the case with your assistant, Susan. Pay attention to the details during your investigation, find the clues and evidence, complete the puzzle and be sure you are ready to face your demons and answer all the questions, since your life depends on it…” It features cinematic videos, redesigned and simplified controls, improved sound design, quick time events (QTEs) hidden clues to find, and alternatives endings.
Immediately upon playing it, I noticed it lacked the option to adjust my volume, which would have been helpful to have during the awkward bursts of sounds and yelling that seemed to overpower my and my audience’s eardrums. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: just because a game is loud doesn’t make it more thrilling or scary. It often times makes it unplayable and annoying. The sound was all over the place during my playthrough - instances where characters were unnecessarily yelling or whispering and the background noise drowning them out. There were moments (ex. during the interrogation) where it sounded like the whole room was in a glass bottle or a giant tin room. The sound shifted so much that it really took me and the audience out of the immersive atmosphere, especially when I had to keep adjusting the volume for the stream.
Another point of criticism that I has was regarding the plot. After playing through the game 3 times, I still had many unanswered questions. What was Susan’s motivation to do all of this? Why help the detective in his investigation? If he wasn’t going to take the fall, what was going to be her backup? Why was there such an abrupt transition from him discovering the truth to now being in a (supposedly) mental hospital? What happened to Susan after that? What the heck was the dream ending?? Talking through some of my other unanswered questions with my stream chat helped out but there were still glaring plotholes that weren’t addressed. Perhaps it was my fault for not uncovering those answers during my playthrough, but then how do you get those answers? I tried so hard to go through and change my choices but they all ended with the same 2 endings. I never got a chance to “face my demons” (I’m assuming coming to peace with the fact that the detective’s wife is dead) and fight Susan despite going back and changing things, so I may not answer those questions if I don’t know what I did wrong.
Finally, I will commend New Idea Games for doing something that’s rarely done in the gaming industry - have a unique concept interwoven with a underutilized game genre and turn it into an enjoyable game. Playing Deluded compelled me to check out the rest of the developer’s collection of projects, simply because they grabbed my attention. Storytelling in a game can get repetitive (think about all the times you’ve heard about a game where you play as a detective and you solve a crime) but if you can tell that story in a new and refreshing way, you set yourself apart from the herd and stand out. No one knew a game like At Dead of Night would get as massive as it did, where huge creators like CoryxKenshin, Markiplier or Jacksepticeye would be screaming at the top of their lungs, but these types of games are amazing. They bring such a uniqueness to the gaming industry, and I’d love to see more games like this in the future. Deluded was a fun game to play, but overall I would have loved to see more accessibility settings in its menu. That would have been the pièce de résistance.
New Idea Games is a “tiny independent game studio from Hungary - creator of Hijacker Jack”.
You can watch the full 2.5 hrs playthrough here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1307210069
