Genesis

The survival horror genre is not easy to approach by developers, given the fact that they must be designed to take many elements into account. Atmosphere is very important in such situations, because it’s not enough to scare the players with cheap tricks or loud sounds. A good story helps too, although this can be easily overlooked if you are too scared to care about plot holes.

Genesis is a first-person survival game with horror elements, in which you have to explore a spaceship and avoid the dangers that await you along the way. The demo at hand does not feature too many original ideas, unfortunately, but things are bound to change by the time the full version rolls out. Hence, at this point it’s merely a walking simulator with dark environments, which is not particularly exciting.   The whole thing takes place on a colony spaceship tasked with finding a new planet for the human race to survive on, given the fact that the Earth’s surface has been destroyed. Your character is the captain of this ship, and her name is Andrea Winter. The ship is also full of thousands of people in cryogenic sleep, which makes the whole thing feel very eerie and spooky, at least in theory.

Most of your time in the demo is spent walking and exploring corridors, as well as opening doors and picking up a few objects. It would appear that there are puzzles waiting for you along the way too, but they are not very well implemented at this point. The horror elements are not that exciting either, given the fact that the atmosphere is far from scary, but you can still get a tad uneasy every now and again.   Lastly, the graphics are not bad, at least in terms of texture quality and lighting, but the level design leaves to be desired. Almost every corridor looks the same, and the rooms are not that different either, which makes it difficult to enjoy yourself. The sound effects are decent as well, but at least the controls are spot on in terms of movement and camera, since it’s fairly easy to move around and interact with the game world.

In the end, Genesis lacks the required elements to properly scare the players, not to mention the fact that the tech demo at hand is far from engaging. However, you can support the developers and help them improve their product by participating in their Kickstarter campaign.