Okay, this game is a bit of a handful. There's a few good aspects, then a few not-the-best" aspects. Let's start off with the "not-the-best" parts, so anyone who wants to do a quick skim can see what they need to. 1. Level design feels slightly lazy. The levels seem to be made using an RNG generator type of mechanic, so each time you load into a round, random rooms are generated and connected to other rooms, meaning there is a chance you'll see the same room multiple times over multiple games, (or even multiple times in the same game!) This becomes especially apparent during the "Artist's Retreat" level, (if that is what it's called) where it seems like the same room copy and pasted multiple times to create a very repetitive map. Yes, it does a good job of reminding you about the other bendy games at first, but eventually it starts to do a good job of reminding you of the room you were in 2 rounds ago. 2. Enemies have no variation. So far, after an hour of playing, I've found that every time I fight an enemy, it's always the same one. And yes, while unlocking new levels also gives you new enemies, (it seems), they're still always the same, there's no variation between them, not even different hats, which makes the combat aspect of the game, once again, repetitive. 3rd. The objective just isn't there. The whole objective of the game is to go into different levels using the elevator, search for about 7 "supplies" (random objects), and then run from the ink demon back to the elevator to safety. Except, as with the last 2 parts, it's still repetitive. (In case you couldn't tell by now, it's a VERY repetitive game.) The only thing that really changes between rounds is the scraps you look for, but more in a way of quantity, rather than object variation... as in, one game you might need to find 3 bones, 2 books, a cog, and a wrench, and the next game it's 2 wrenches, a cog, 2 books, and 2 bones. 4. The "Customisability (Yes, I know I spelt that wrong.)" The game gives you options to unlock new weapons, and new songs to play in the safehouse, and new rooms to unlock to expand your safehouse, except, these things don't do much. (I haven't gotten any new rooms or music yet, so I am going to skip past those, and just talk about the weapons for now, as I have unlocked a new weapon.) The weapons are all the same, to put it simply. The first enemy takes 2 hits from the pan (starting weapon) to die, the enemy also takes 2 hits from the plunger, the second weapon. I read in another review that all the weapons are the same, just "reskins" There's probably a few extra things, like not being able to adjust the slightly weird keybinds, but they're not as major, so I'll leave them out. Now, onto the good bits. 1. Nostalgia... I guess. The game does a really good job of giving off the same feeling that BATIM gave. It's not the exact same feeling, (BATIM is better), but it has the right atmosphere, and overall vibe of the creepy, inky, "bendy" world we've come to love. The game feels very much like Chapter 3 of BATIM, where Alice sends you out to do chores for her, specifically the part where you need to gather items for her, as that's pretty much the whole premise of LW. -Venture out into new levels, gather items scattered across the maps, hide from the ink demon, run back to safety and deposit your items.- That's the game. (Also, to save your progress, you have to use save stations that are the exact same as BATIM, which is cool.) 2. Scare factor. So.... it's a bit of both good, and bad on this aspect. The game, like BATIM, isn't that scary, and where it tries to be scary, it's more just either stressful, or funny. The game really tries to put all it's "scary" eggs into one basket with the ink demon, the main villain who randomly comes after you as you search for scraps, with the only way to survive him being to either hide in a locker, or just keep running. Except, being the 3rd person game that it is, the ink demon isn't as scary in this game, as he was in the originals. As you probably know, in the original games, being in first person did make ink demon chase scenes kinda scary, not being able to see behind you, to see how close he was, and randomly having your whole screen go dark as the walls got stained with ink when he appeared... But in this game, it can't really do that as well, so when he starts chasing you in this, the game tries to put a black ring around your screen, except it doesn't really work for the scare factor, because you can still see over the walls to see his, slightly choppy AI, chase you. The game does a not bad job of being stressful when this happens, as dying causes you to lose all of your progress from that level, (if you're playing on normal or easy mode), so when he appears it becomes a feeling of "I can't die, I have stuff to lose." The other feeling that you'll get from his appearances is a sense of humour, watching his AI try to account for where the doorways are in the wall can sometimes lead to him turning too early, thus walking into walls, and door-frames, which takes him from being this "big scary demon" to much more of a "silly lil' guy" I guess that was more bad, than good. 3. Game Design The UI is cool, but simple, but, as I said, cool. The UI is really well made, feeling like it belongs in a bendy game. It's really simple, you press "ESC" and a little pop-up appears in the centre of your screen with 3 options. "Resume, Options, and Exit" (In-game.) This sounds bad, but it's got a good design that makes it look right, for this game. Lastly, 4th. Unlockables. The game does a not-bad job of giving you different things to work for to unlock, needing things like keys, and fuses to unlock different parts of the safehouse... But it feels very looked over, like the devs have gone "here's all the things you can unlock, here's what you need, go find it" Where each thing is unlocked, say for example, the arcade door, it'll have a little white icon above it, with the number of that item you need to unlock, which, for the arcade door is "0/1" above a key icon, except that's all you get. The game doesn't really tell you where to get these things, or what they even are, which causes half the icons to look like random white things, which makes it hard to tell. So yes, there is a lot to work for, but it's very looked over. To summarise it all, the game is new, there's no denying that, but with it being less than a week old (I believe) at the time of writing this, it really shows, and yes, while that means there's room for improvement, right now, I'd say to save your money, and wait for a special. If you really want to buy something right now, try getting something that's been around for a while, and is more refined, like bendy and the ink machine, or bendy and the dark revival, which are both excellent games. If I had to rate this game out of 10, here's what I'd rate it. Current state: 6/10 Potential: 9.5/10 Overall: Should you buy it? As I mentioned, wait for a sale, save a few bucks. Would I recommend it? Yeah... if you can spare the cash, and just want a fun and simple game to play to fill some time.
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