Kraven Manor Review
Overview
Kraven Manor is extremely short, and beatable in under one hour. The puzzles are easy, with the enemy evoking a good sense of fear, and there is a slight alternate ending that nets a few extra achievements. It’s horror in the atmospheric, psychological kind, but it’s not the “terror experience” that some people have claimed it to be.
TL:DR
At its current price ($5.99 as of this review), it’s worth the purchase. I picked it up in a bundle myself many months back. At its full price, which I believe was $10 or just above, it would not be worth it, the value for your investment just wouldn’t be there.
The Good
+ Graphics. For a bunch of university students, it looks good for the amount of time they’ve put into it. Being university students, you wouldn’t think they’d have a lot of free time for this. But, the game looks fantastic. The mansion is nicely dark and dank, and the animations and lighting are terrific.
+ Sound. The sound and music work wonderfully, from letting you know if the enemy is nearby to the feeling of something bad is about to happen when the music crescendos.
+ Atmosphere. It’s not a jump scare game, and that’s a good thing. Not knowing where the enemy is while you’re running around a darkened room looking for something, it evokes a sense of fear while not relying on crap jumping out of doors to frighten you.
The Bad
- Length. This is extremely short. It’s almost more of a tech demo than an actual game, and you’ll be done in an hour, if that.
- Puzzles. They’re extremely easy. You will not need a walkthrough, or hints, or help of any kind.
- No replayability. For such a short game, that’s probably expected. There’s an alternate ending that really isn’t that good, that you can get by collecting three items during the normal play. There’s also a ‘Nightmare’ mode, which is slightly more difficult, but aside from an achievement for completing the harder mode, it’s all pretty much the same.
- Save stutter. For some reason, whenever the game autosaved, the game froze for a second or so. Which is odd. I’ve never had that happen in any games made in UE.
(This review was first written on February 5th, 2015, on the Steam store page for Kraven Manor)