This macabre horror-puzzle-platformer is a strange nightmare with great atmosphere and motivating play.
Macabre Puzzle-Platformer: Great atmosphere like a strange nightmare is remarkable
Propels the player forward with haunting visuals and metaphysical happenings: you'll want to see everything though
Puzzles on the easy side: but you won't really care
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Freeware horror-puzzle game suteF (yes, that's Fetus backwards), by rottentater, brings the macabre to the more standard puzzle-platformer. It's much stranger that the obvious comparison (being LIMBO), however, and squeezes all the horror it can out of it's retro-pixelated aesthetics. Relying heavily on atmosphere and an eerie experience, though, doesn't mean that the puzzles are always easy. suteF does a fine job of introducing new elements as you play, but the highlights here are clearly the aesthetics as well as it's metaphysical leanings.
As a puzzle-platformer, suteF is a thought-provoking game. Giving the player an infinite amount of time to proceed at their own pace, suteF allows you to experiment (infinite lives) at will in order to pass to the next level. Typically, in any level you need to hit a button to turn on a static-filled TV screen, which you then need to reach to pass. As you'd expect, the puzzle part of the game involves figuring out how to get to the spot to turn on the TV and then reach it. Using numerous parameters (and introducing them at a steady pace) like gravity switches, blocks, duplicates or ghosts of yourself, etc, the puzzle play does a fine job of keeping you busy from level to level. Additionally, many of the complications that arise are rather unique (like the fore-mentioned "ghost of yourself") and keep the play from getting stale through obviousness. Furthermore, the rules of the game continue to change up on you, such that even death isn't always what you're expecting.
As a horror game, suteF does more with pixels to imbibe you with a sense of weird and experimental macabre than i've ever seen before. The sound design is also very capable of keeping you in the world you've been drawn into. The initial scene of your blue character vomiting blood is a good indication of what to expect. As you meander though the industrial-like levels which seem to realize a deeply black nightmare, you'll encounter a variety of denziens who seem far more at home here than you do. In fact, the sense of being lost and of trying to escape (another theme from LIMBO) is very palpable here, and is well executed on the whole. But more than anything, it's the sense of not knowing what to expect, and what you might encounter next that's so good here.
Freeware games are often sites of experimentation, though rarely are such experiments as well-executed as they are here. suteF tends to explore the metaphysical world, and does a solid job of representing those objects through specific events in the game. The singular focus on the atmosphere has paid off dividends, and though the puzzles are generally on the easier side, you'll be rewarded by the chance to explore this macabre world.
8.8/10