Indie development studio, Akupara Games, released a mind-boggling new puzzle-horror VR game at the beginning of August. Hello Cruel World is a first-person escape room game based in an abandoned facility beneath the facade of a closed restaurant. We play as a streamer broadcasting their exploration of the restaurant in question. Egged on by their fans to explore further, they find themselves far deeper down the rabbit hole than they ever expected to be. Sound interesting? There’s so much more. Let’s dive in and discuss the dystopic landscape of Hello Cruel World.
What’s the Gameplay Like?
Hello Cruel World is very exploratory in nature. It’s a lot like a real-life escape room. You aren’t given any instructions or hand-holding at first. You just walk in and start opening doors and pushing buttons. Pretty straightforward, right? The story progresses steadily, leading our character through a labyrinthian series of mysterious events. They encounter their first puzzle to open a door, easily solvable by placing generators on the tutorial-friendly X’s on the floor. After this, the circuit puzzles get gradually harder, but the story gets infinitely more fascinating.
After our protagonist presses a very unfortunately placed button, they lose their hand to a slamming metal door. Rapidly losing blood and stumbling around trying to find a way out, they’re guided by a robotic voice to a surgical bay. The voice, whoever they are, performs emergency surgery, replacing the protagonist’s hand and saving their life. Something funny of note here is that this game adds the element of a stream chat being present at all times. So, even as our protagonist is severely injured, the chat is just going on and on like it’s all for show. It’s a pretty interesting mechanic and it makes for a fun meta-commentary as the game goes on.
Our protagonist’s new hand has some unusual properties. For one, they can now hear the robot’s voice telepathically alongside other sounds beyond the human hearing range. How convenient. The hand can also detect electricity, allowing us as players to find pieces of the puzzles more easily. As they traverse the facility, more and more lore is revealed. With the mysterious robot voice as our only companion, it’s up to us to escape and find out what’s going on along the way.
How is the Game Being Received?
Being a relatively new game from an indie developer, Hello Cruel World hasn’t seen as much attention as other popular VR titles, only having six reviews on Steam at the time of writing this. However, the majority of those reviews are positive, with the largest of the complaints being a distinct lack of horror. The game seems to have a great story and extremely challenging puzzles but actually isn’t very scary despite being labeled halfway in the horror genre. The game presents itself similarly to Portal, very mysterious as though something is lurking around the corner, but that scare never really comes.
Some players are overwhelmingly pleased with the game, though, praising the atmosphere and ability to explore freely. They enjoy being able to wander the facility without distractions or big, flashing arrows pointing them where to go. Players are also quite happy with how the game is controlled in VR. This game was built from the ground up for VR platforms, which makes it smoother to play than games ported to VR from other systems. The mixed opinions on Hello Cruel World seem to come down to expectations versus the final product. If you’re going into it hoping for the next Dead Space clone, this isn’t the game for you. On the contrary, if you’re a fan of games like Portal, Myst, or The Witness, you should definitely give this one a try.
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