Abscission is an atmospheric Lovecraftian murder mystery with the flavor of film noir detective elements sprinkled on top. Sounds good, right? Well, to a degree it is, at least in the beginning, but sadly the pacing of the game changes for the worse rather quickly. In its favor though, the mystery remains intriguing throughout. So, let’s get into it.
What is going on in Ashfield?
In this point-and-click adventure title, you play as the downtrodden detective Will Stanhope of the Ashfield police. You are called to a murder scene to help out your old partner. On-site, you soon discover that this is not an ordinary domestic homicide. Beyond the gruesome nature of the crime, the case has a feeling of wrongness that makes things not look as they seem – seemingly shrouded in something much more sinister and otherworldly.
Abscission is not a long game. It took me around five hours to complete – so, as you can see there isn’t that much time to develop stuff, which is the narrative’s biggest fault. Now, I don’t want to be too harsh on the developer here, since it seems to be a one-man show. But I think maybe the ambition was a little too big for the game’s pacing. You see, the first couple of hours are excellent, and it truly feels like you are invited into a slow burn of investigative horror adventuring. The characters are gradually being built up, and the background of the city is established with strange occurrences and other eerie things. All feels good and is suitable creepy, then rather suddenly Abscission has a brutal shift in pacing and proceeds to run the rest of the game at breakneck speed. The honeymoon, aka the investigation, is hereby sadly over.
Unfortunately, it is then intermixed with some weird parts, like the old abandoned building segment from a flashback the main character has. While the mystery is building up, you are now suddenly forced to do some rudimentary adventuring that feels more like padding than anything else. It comes off as a bit disjointed, especially compared to what the beginning was offering. As mentioned, the biggest problem is the pacing – what seemed so good (running an investigation) is soon over for a more typical point-and-click thing with weak and easy adventuring. It’s a missed opportunity because it could have been so cool if it stuck to what it established.
Regardless, the story isn’t bad, it is well-written, and is intriguing right up to the end (even if rushed). The game actually gave me a few chills, which doesn’t happen that often anymore, so I will give it major cred for that. As you can probably tell, I’m a bit split here, which makes this review much harder to write than if it was just a bad game. I was disappointed that it didn’t maintain what it set out to be from the start because it showed such promise…
Clicking & pointing
Gameplay consists of the usual – collecting items and combining them to progress. On the adventure scale that goes from makes-sense to moon logic, Abscission lands on the makes-sense spectrum. It’s actually very easy, as most of the stuff you need to do is basically telegraphed. Not that I minded, since some parts felt like padding as mentioned. Abscission also has a system of four “temperaments”, which translates to four choices to pick from when you talk to certain individuals. The four different choices represent your approach, and how you present your arguments – how nice or aggressive you will be doing so. The game makes a note of how you treat people, which they will remember later. This didn’t come up much in my playthrough, since most of the people I talked to, or interviewed just showed up once – except for a very few ones. I’m not sure how in-depth this system is, but it seems to affect the ending the most, as these four choices will transfer over to the four different endings you can pick. You can see where I’m going with this. I was allowed to pick from three of the four endings. The one I couldn’t pick told me that it “wasn’t me”, which I assumed was based on my choices during the playthrough.
Droning horror
I enjoyed the tunes in Abscission. I like droning dark ambient, so this was just right for me. It also set the atmosphere splendidly. You can feel bad stuff coming in your bones with this type of music. Top-notch stuff here. When it comes to sound and voice acting, I would say the game is rather silent on this front. While Abscission has a few sound effects and looping background noise, the game feels rather muted, except for the music that is. It has no voice acting, the only thing that your ears will be hearing is the music, so thank the Lord that it’s good.
Graphic-wise, the style is pixel art and it’s passable. It’s not the best I have seen, but it works and conveys a certain mood. The faces can look a bit odd, yet, it adds to the oddness of everything that goes on in Ashfield. Not great, but not bad either.
In conclusion
Abscission is not a bad game, not all at all, and considering the price (under ten euros), and that it was made by one guy, you have to keep your expectations in check. Beyond that, the story is interesting, and the game is Lovecraftian enough to surpass the typical “tribute & copy” threshold. Yet, once again, the issue is that it starts fantastically as a cop investigation game, but drops that part quickly for more rushed pacing, with a few padded areas that didn’t add much to the overall experience. Do I recommend it? Well, the story in combination with the music, and some very effective scenes got me to feel unsettled and creeped out cosmic-horror style. This is a big plus in my book. If you want something Lovecraftian (but on the easy side gameplay-wise), that has good dialogue writing, and a specific atmosphere that heavily implies impending doom – I say, go for it!
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Blog 