The Library Demo

Abandoned places are never something fun, since it’s always asylums, tunnels, or bunkers. On the other hand, it probably wouldn’t be as scary to explore a haunted strip club, so it’s only natural that ghosts stick with the creepy locations. Video games take full advantage of this, and with the right soundtrack, you sometimes don’t even need too many monsters to scare the players.

The Library is a first-person horror game in which you play the role of a thief looking to score some treasure. He’s chosen an old library as his target, mainly because of all the stories about the riches that supposedly await inside. It’s not exactly gold and emeralds, but there should be some kind of powerful knowledge in there, which is certainly worth a lot to the right buyer.

The similarities with Thief are quite striking, but don’t expect the same experience in this case. Thief was all about being stealthy and staying hidden in the shadows, while The Library is more about jump scares and avoiding the evil ghost. Speaking of which, it turns out that the location is still being inhabited by some stubborn spirit, and your task is to avoid him and keep searching for the treasure.

The game tries to distract you with puzzles in the meantime, such as finding keys to unlock the way further, or exploring a maze without meeting with the spirit in question. They are not complicated puzzles, but there’s at least something to do in between the jump scares. It’s also pretty hard to see most of the time, even if you have a lantern to light the way.

Visually, the game runs on Unity, so it certainly looks decent. On the other hand, the textures and the level design leave to be desired, because each room looks almost the same. It’s difficult to get excited about exploration when there’s nothing special waiting for you behind the next door. Not only that, but considering the game’s looks, it runs pretty poorly as well, which is a sign of bad optimization.

The Library is not very polished as of right now, but you have to remember that this is still an early version of the game. As long as the developers keep improving it and adding more content, this should turn into something interesting, even if the whole idea is a bit dull and unoriginal.