How Far Demo

It’s not the most difficult thing in the world to scare someone, especially if you have his eyes and his ears to play tricks on. Movies are doing it for almost a century, while video games already have a few decades of experience as well. However, modern technology makes it easier to get into the player’s head, thanks to sharp graphic effects and positional sound algorithms.

How Far is a first-person survival horror in which you play the role of a pregnant woman who wakes up in what appears to be an abandoned and deserted hospital. There is no one around and everything is shrouded in darkness, which makes it difficult to navigate the corridors. Some kind of creature is roaming the building, and it doesn’t seem to be friendly either.

That’s about the entire story, although can probably guess a bit more by paying attention to the intro sequence, although even that is incredibly short and meaningless. The hospital barely resembles one, and you probably wouldn’t even guess that’s the case if it weren’t for the introduction. In essence, that’s because the level design is very rudimentary, and there are barely any objects decorating the corridors.

Gameplay-wise, you do not have to do much, other than walk around and hope for the best. It is impossible to interact with other objects, including doors, so you are pretty much hopeless. On one hand, feeling powerless is a good thing in horror games, but on the other, it just makes everything a bit dull. Thankfully, at least you do not have to deal with awful gameplay mechanics.

The visual quality is not bad, although there is not much to see anyway. However, the few objects you do stumble upon are quite detailed and nicely modeled. The game uses Blender as its graphics engine, and it is, in fact, a project developed entirely in Blender, which is nice. However, the best part is the sound design, because you are constantly haunted by weird noises and the atmosphere picks up whenever something awful is nearby.

In the end, How Far is still in development and there is much work left to be done, so it would be unfair to judge the game too harshly. However, without proper level design and a more intriguing story, the horror element is lost in translation and the experience gets boring rather quickly.