Lakeview Cabin Collection Review (MystiQ)
Introduction
The Lakeview Cabin Collection developed and published by Roope Tamminen is a horror, puzzler anthology released all the way back in 2015. Despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews, the game has not aged gracefully in the past nine years. Much like many people who've played this (I imagine), I discovered this game all the way back when it came out, as some internet micro-celebrities (Let's Players) had covered it at the time.
Having recently seen it as a recommendation under some other indie game I was interested in, I was immediately transported back those nine years, and discovering the game's overwhelmingly positive review score on Steam, I decided to give it a shot. Much like any ranged weapon featured in this game, however, the ammo to my "shots" quicly ran out, which is to say I lost patience with the game.
Review
Roope Tamminen managed to give the game an excellent sense of identity, wrapping the central conceit of the piece around an incredibly novel and quaint conceptual framework: What if you were playing a Slasher movie, but as a video game? The goal of the puzzle being making it out alive of course. Great concept, the execution is full of love and exquisite campiness in some places and lacking luster behind most of that beginning facade.
In each of the game's four movies (yes, the levels are made to be part of an actual movie anthology in-universe) you will take control of four survivors and try your best to immersive-sim your way to victory by using miscellaneous items, doo-dads and peculiar techniques to outwit the killers, who range from superhuman to "haha, I hit them with a machete and their head exploded" without much in the way of forewarning as to their strength.
The game's first offering "Lakeview Cabin III" is undoubtedly the stronger of the two I played. In it, you will face off against a superhuman, adult baby-man thing creature (patent pending) and then its father (I think?), before it all comes to a head with a siren. Does it make sense? Zero, but it works well enough, save for the fact that you will not see the first killer and his unbelievably thick health bar coming... and then you won't see the second killer coming... and then you won't see the ending coming–and the levels happen to be fairly long, too!
So here is where the main problem with the game arises: The game could be renamed to "Padding City: The Paddening", because all of it relies on overly long and tedious levels with nothing but trial and error and fighting with the game's finnicky controls and inconsistent logic. Lakeview Cabin III, however, manages to be endearing and even somewhat scary.
It was with the game's second "movie", where I promptly lost my patience. Lakeview Cabin IV is a mess of RNG, rooms are randomized, as are their contents, making the level sometimes nigh on unbeatable (if not totally unbeatable), and enemies have the hitboxes of your average bullet hell protagonist–the game operating increasingly on a frustrating "rules for thee and not for me" principle. Much like most late outings of horror movie franchises, the joke wears itself thin and a conceptually interesting piece of entertainment, bordering on bizarre art, turns into an indulgent splatterfest, bundled together–in its gamified form–with RNG and frustration galore.
I will not be returning to Lakeview Cabin, as I believe my time can be spent better elsewhere, with a game that respects it.
Many Thanks To Roope Tamminen For This Indie Classic; Sorry It Didn't Age All Too Gracefully <3