Has potential to be a truly scary game but once you complete it you realize most of the horror was in your head.

User Rating: 6.5 | Penumbra: Overture PC
A decent attempt at an independent horror game, but there is lots of room for improvement.

Gameplay: 2/5
+ An interesting control scheme was used for this 3D adventure game. A unique physics engine let you actually control the motion of opening doors and boxes with your mouse by clicking and then dragging a certain direction. This sounds creative, but the result wasn't as great as you would think. At times it would get finicky and you wish you could just press a button to perform certain actions. Also, forget about combat. The enemies you encounter will be cumbersome to attack because you have to press the mouse button, then swing the mouse from left to right in order to land a hit. Perhaps this was intentional and made so that you aren't supposed to face foes directly but rather escape and sneak around them, but it sort of takes the fun out of having weapons and being chased by an enemy.

Story/Presentation: 3/5
+ It's not hard for this mysterious story to suck you in and lead you to wonder what happened to your father many years ago. In fact, the story is one of the stronger points to this game. Unfortunately, I only played this episode in the series and by the end nothing really gets answered. Perhaps the story has a strong ending in later games, but thus is the down side of episodic content.

Graphics: 3/5
+ For an indie game, the graphics are decent. Some objects clearly have more detail than others, but the graphics are gritty and decent for the horror genre.

Value: 2/5
+ Somewhat short because of the nature of the episodic game. And no lasting appeal to make you want to play through it again. It's a decent game to explore once but other than that it lacks depth.