Abermore
Developer Four Circle Interactive
Publisher Fireshine Games
Format PC
Release Out now
HOUSE IN DISORDER
Levels are procedurally generated, presumably with the intention of encouraging multiple playthroughs. Which might be a good idea, if the resulting locations weren’t so lifeless and difficult to parse: identikit rooms that lead to one another with no obvious logic. This makes it difficult to guess where you might want to search for valuables and to remember where you’ve been, leaving us to rely on an in-game map that has its own set of problems. This is without mentioning the technical mishaps with rooms that don’t fit together properly, leaving gaps between them or invisible walls that block progress. Worse, though, is the sense that we’ve been denied the most basic pleasure of virtual burglary: a chance to nose around someone’s home.
Generally in stealth games, quiet is a good thing. But too often Abermore is eerily silent: no music, no ambient noise, just the occasional sound of your footsteps. It’s hard to escape the feeling that someone forgot to connect up the soundtrack. That would certainly be consistent with everything else. The achievements that unlock randomly when we launch the game; the guards who walk into, and occasionally partially through, walls; the cursor that lodges itself in the middle of our screen, blocking the reticule.