Hysteria Project

Category: games, horror, choose your own adventure
Price: $1.99
App Store Link: [Full] / No lite version

Review: Adequate (with lots of potential)
Replay Value: Very Low
Recommendation: If you're interested in this app, I'd recommend trying it, despite the adequate review; just be sure you know what you're getting (see below).

Hysteria Project is the evolution of the classic "choose your own adventure" books. Of course, instead of books, we're now dealing with "an entirely filmed adventure." This particular app is the first in a series of episodes planned to be released (with no specified schedule), which means Hysteria Project, by itself, does not provide a complete story. In this reviewer's opinion, Hysteria Projects, in many respects, is both a failure and success (hence the adequate rating).

Before getting in to the pros and cons of the app, let's take a look at storyline and gameplay: Players are put behind the eyes of a kidnap victim (assumingly abducted by the mysterious and frightening serial killer that becomes the antagonist of the first episode). When the story begins, you awake finding yourself tied up, trapped within a wooden shack in the middle of a forest with only two things on your mind: escape and survival. Once you manage to spring yourself from the shed, you find yourself racing through the forest chased by a frightening and mysterious hooded figure brandishing an axe. What happens next is up to the player.

Much like players might expect from a choose your own adventure game, gameplay isn't anything overly complicated. Essentially, it consists of watching a video clip then making a choice (such as "try to run" or "find a hiding spot") from a selection menu. Occasionally during a video, the game will also ask players to touch a target on the screen to complete an action, such as moving a branch (failing to do so typically results in death). Should a choice result in death, players are not forced to start from the beginning, but rather, gameplay picks up from the video prior to the choice resulting in death.

Now that we've established that the premise and control system are fairly well designed, we can take a look at the pros and cons.

The Pros:
Hysteria Project sets out to create unique and frightening gameplay experience and does an excellent job of doing so. The foggy and shaky video, suspenseful storyline, and terrifying characters create a horrific atmosphere (and we mean that in a good way). Additionally, the soundtrack is exceptionally well made and playing Hysteria Project in the dark with headphones definitely adds to the experience. In fact, if your into suspense thrillers or horror films, playing this app for the experience alone is almost worth it.

The Cons:
Unfortunately, Hysteria Project has its share of setbacks. The game play lasts for only about 20-40 minutes (about 30 on average) and has very little replay value. The majority of this episode seems to be a lengthy forest chase, creating a very repetitive play experience; Honestly I could have been seeing the same video over and over for all I know. Additionally, more than anything else, it felt like the majority of my choices were based on which direction I should run (not the type of choices one typically looks for in choose your own adventure games).

I would have definitely like to had more strategical choices than "turn left or continue straight," the overall importance of these decisions seems rather arbitrary. In a choose your own adventure game, players should make important decisions based mostly on strategy, intuition, and a little bit of luck; in Hysteria Project, it felt like a lot of pointless decisions with a lot of luck and little strategy. Further, a good choose your own adventure game should have several paths and several outcomes, not all leading to death, and (though it's hard to be certain), I felt like my decisions were strongly forced in a specific direction.

While the overarching story seems strong, actual plot development is very slow, by the end of the game, players will know little more than what they started with. Rather than a 20 minute long chase, I would have much rather gotten more into the main plot. And even though the atmosphere of the game was creepy and scary, I very rarely (if ever) found myself jumping or startled. In a game like this, the developers need to make better use of the suspense they create. They should make better use of cheep tactics; for example: when you think you've safely hidden behind a tree, something should burst out and run across the screen (like a deer).

Overall, Hysteria Project does a great job setting up the horror movie environment, but is very much lacking in plot, depth, overall excitement (i.e. too much run, hide, run, hide), and storyline choices (they seem to force players down a specific path). Among other problems, gameplay feels very repetitive. If you like horror movies, the game might be worth trying just for the experience it creates, but if you're looking for an engaging plot with gameplay and strategic decision making depth, you'll probably be let down. All that said, the game and series both have a lot of future potential and we're not ready to give up on it yet.

Click to Enlarge

Developer Video:

What we'd like to see in future updates (or episodes): Skip button for video clips you've already played; bigger focus on storyline; multiple correct paths; more important/strategical choices as opposed to direction making decisions; A visual storyline map accessible at the main menu to show which paths you've chosen and missed (that allows you to explore alternate decisions after completing the game)--doing so would greatly increase replay value.

~M@