Donald: The Return Demo

For a horror game to have the desired effect on the audience, it must feature a lot more than just a scary-looking monsters, because such strategies only work for a few moments in the beginning. After people get accustomed to the sight of a monster, the encounters become routine and the entire experience turns dull and repetitive.

Donald: The Return is a survival-horror game that supposedly features shooter mechanics at some point as well, although it is pretty difficult to figure out when that happens. As the genre clearly states, this is more about survival, so don’t expect a Doom-like experience, but more of a Penumbra atmosphere. Unfortunately, there are too many flaws with the game to think of it as anything else than someone’s side project.

To begin with, the entire story is very sketchy and unclear, but one thing’s for certain: You have to beware of Donald. This Donald is something of a Slenderman, except that he can do much more than just appear before you at random intervals. Instead, you can get viciously attacked by him and killed, at least as long as you do not take the proper precautions and run when you happen to cross paths with him.

There’s not much of an environment you can explore, on the other hand, because the so-called house is rather small and there are only a few corridors you get to waltz around. Darkness is prevalent as well, but since you do not have a way to illuminate the way ahead, you just have to use intuition to get by. In some cases, doors are hidden in dark corners, which is both frustrating and infuriating when you stumble into them.

Even if the level design were to be heavily improved, the visual quality would still make it very difficult to enjoy the sights, because the engine looks really old and rudimentary. The same goes for the sound, given the fact that the effects are quite annoying and uninspired in most cases.

When it’s all said and done, Donald: The Return fails to scare anyone and it even fails to be a proper video game, what with all the problems that plague it. Hence, there are no clear reasons to give it a try unless you really have nothing else to play instead.