Dreadout Preview; A Short Look Into The Promising Indonesian Horror Game

If you used to watched a movie in Indonesian movie theater, you might remember the time when you watched a  movie there and you saw a horrible trailer for an Indonesian horror movies before your movies start. You know, the kind of Horror movies which strangely shows more boobs and sex rather than scare as horror movie supposed to show. Personally, that kind of horror movies baffles me because if i want to see boobs and sex i will watch porn, not horror movie. It is just plain stupid and not entertaining.

It is a sad truth since Indonesia had a lot of great folklore and some ghosts that will scare you if they can execute it well but somehow they keep making shitty horror movies over shitty horror movies that nobody want to watch except horny teenager with no internet connection. But just when i'm going to give up with horror movie in Indonesia, a light of hope came through the door of video game world.

Meet Dreadout, an Indonesian indie horror game who used Indonesian local folklore and ghost to make a promising scary game that could scare the living ass out of you. The game is a third person survival horror where you play as Linda Melinda, a high school girl who trapped in a mysterious village full of supranatural events and ghost. To survive again the horror, you are armed with a smartphone, An SLR camera and handycam to exorcist them by taking their picture and post it in instagram to humiliate them by showing how they look when they are not using make up.

Eh, what is it? Did you think that i mistook fatal frame with Dreadout? No friendo, Dreadout is heavily inspired by fatal frame, as in 90% of the games so far really feels like fatal frame with Indonesian setting rather than Japanese settings. I didn't mind if they are ripping of Fatal frame because that game itself is one of the scariest game of all time and copying a good old idea with some fresh new spices is a welcome formula to me. Since they used Indonesian folklore for the ghost, you might know that some of Indonesian ghost just might look too silly or generic to scare you and using it for the game might actually hurt the experience for the global market, i meant look at how silly pocong is and how generic looking kuntilanak is.

Mostly looks like human sized weeds joints

Mostly looks like....any Asian girl who forgot to take bath in the morning.

Fortunately, the developer seems to realize this and they made some changes in the ghost design which somehow turned a generic and silly ghost into something original and frightening.

Yikes!

I cant judge too much about the game yet since its still in development stage and the game could always be better/worse than the demo the Developer show to us. But judging from the demo, This game strong point, compared to the fatal frame series, came from the ghost design, its variety and the overall control. I found that the fatal frame ghost tends to be...bland. They are mostly just a transparent human ghost. Well, yes some do crawl, had broken neck or another twisted Things that could happen to human body but they are mostly just transparent human and the control feels like an old survival horror game where it feels like the player is controlling someone who just had a terrible hangover with its fixed camera angle. Dreadout ghosts, in the other hands, tends to had more variety and the control feels more fluid where it used an over the shoulder third person camera which give us more control. The demo also shows a highly atmospheric game with genuine creeps and original looking ghost which explain why i heard a lot of girly scream came out from a man when i'm watching the Lets play video of this game demo in youtube.

Since the game is still in development stage, i do had some wishlist regarding the game that hopefully the developer team will address. you know, since i'm not making this article just so nobody can read it and it disappears into the unknown dark side of Pluto. I do really Hope that they read my article and it might somehow improve the game. So, here's my wish list for the game:

1. Pace the game well. Please don't get too excited by showing too many jump scare since it might kill the overall experience.
2. Explain the game mechanic better. One major problem in the demo that i played is the lack of information about the things that i should do in the game. Seriously, how did i suppose to know that a cockroach is vulnerable again smartphone camera?
3. Add some depth to the camera and combat mechanic. The camera and combat mechanic, so far, is a lil bit too simple where we can mash the 'take a picture' button with no restriction and limitation, almost like playing call of duty with ghost. A mechanic where the player had to manage the focus and the zoom level for the SLR camera or aiming at some specific part of the ghost to add extra damage might be nice.
4. Make sidequest feels rewarding. Nobody will do a sidequest if it doesn't had any satisfying rewards so its important to let the player know that doing sidequest will help them improve the game experience. Maybe it can be rewarded with bonus skill perks or alternative endings.
5. Explain the ghost origin story through gameplay. An old style survival horror notes or audio diary would be nice and it will add the immersion of the game.
6. And for my final wish, i really hopes this game will be a success and open the path for Indonesian game industry to shine.

Hopefully this might help the game to be better and more immersive

Digital happiness, the developer behind Dreadout, is the first Indonesian indie developer who succeeded in a global crowd funding campaign by collecting 29.000$ of its 25.000$ estimated target. From the demo and the number of money they got from the donation, we can all see that peoples love this game and the hype is rather big for an unknown Indonesian indie game which really surprise me. 

The best compliment that i could give to Dreadout so far is that the game had some good promising things about it. Great atmosphere, original looking ghost, and whats most important, its scary. Since the games crowd funding is already succeed through the indiegogo.com campaign, their next target is to hit the global market via steamgreenlight.com. If you are a horror fans, its your chance to support this game by voting yes so this game could be released globally via steam service. you are welcome to try the demo there and give it a nice thumbs up if you like it and i'm always open for discussion and opinion about the game. This game might be one of the scariest game that came up this year so do your part to support this game, friendos!

Dreadout indiegogo page: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dreadout
Dreadout steam greenlight page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=114109333&searchtext=dreadout