The Starship Damrey (3DS eshop)

"This game contains no tutorials or explanations. Part of the experience is to discover things for yourself."
                                             ~bold words which may or may not, ring true in all the wrong ways.

The Starship Damrey starts out so well and does so many things right. I lay in bed with a smile on my face for the first 5 minutes of the game, genuinely excited to see what would happen.

Shortly after, I lost all interest.

There are simply too many inconsistencies in the game. Sound, or rather the lack of it,  is one such problem. The game asks you to wear earphones for greater immersion and then punishes you with monotonous and boring bleeps and bloops. Where is the atmosphere and unnerving ambiance this game begs for? All I could find was an empty silence, which fell flatly on my ears.

The graphics are decent but hampered by controls that feel clunky to the point of bordering on the annoying. Why the developers limited your movements to 90 degree increments during  first-person segments is beyond me. This stilted movement impedes your main objective, exploring a deserted spaceship.

The elephant in the room

There was a moment during my investigation of a darkened room where I could see the figure of a slumped crew member in the beam of my light. I decided to wait on investigating the body until I had searched the entire room first. I turned to my left to move away when suddenly I was given a very lame horror movie close-up of the same damned crew member I had just been looking at. This moment of anxiety was accompanied by the old '"dan daaaaaan!" soundbite classic. And just to as an add bonus on top of all this, the camera jerked me around so fiercely that for a moment I encountered real terror and confusion.

It just felt.. incredibly disappointing, and it is right about here where I stopped playing.

The Starship Damrey could have been amazing but instead feels unfinished. What should have been a fantastic experience, ended up as something which feels like it wants to be Snatcher or Policenauts-like. Perhaps that is just me wanting it to be more than it is.

I will still finish it one day simply to see where the story goes, but right now I'm in the mood for fun, not irritation.