Separated by Nightmares: Where Duty dies (PC) Review

 

‘Separated by Nightmares: Where Duty dies’ has an intriguing concept. You play as a police officer with memory loss, who has to solve one last case to find out what let to his downfall. You are alone at night in a police precinct, which is definitely an interesting setup. Unfortunately it only goes downhill from here. 

The presentation and gameplay are really underwhelming. There are a couple of sequences, where the protagonist is telling the story through monologues, but those are just written in front of a blank black background. Not every game needs to have fancy cutscenes, but even an Indie developer could have at least included a couple of picture slides in the background, while the story unfolds. The lightswitches in the precinct also don’t seem to work, so that you just have to stumble around in the dark with a flashlight. In other games this might have been intriguing or atmospheric, but here it was just cumbersome. It only made finding items more difficult without actually enhancing the atmosphere.

The gameplay isn’t really much better. Separated by Nightmares is a Walking Simulator, but there is barely anything to do. Every room you enter has pretty much only the next “clue” to discover and nothing else. You just pick up a few objects and that’s it.

The game also lacks Horror elements. The setup in the precinct is decent, but the game doesn’t really have anything that could scare you. The only really “frightening” moment was a jumpscare by a Ghost Woman, but even that was underutilized. It was unclear whether she was supposed to be the protagonists wife or a random Ghost. The character model itself wasn’t actually intimidating or interesting.

The Ending of the game is pretty terrible as well. I don’t want to give anything away, but nothing really happens and the great reveal was unbelievably banal. It was like you were trying to hype up a great mystery, only to end up with a very generic and normal explanation for everything.

The game only has 1 Ending and no Steam Achievements, which means there is also not much replay value here.

 

Result:

A good idea is often not enough. The setting of Separated by Nightmares: Where Duty Dies with an abandoned police precinct is actually quite interesting, but you can tell that this is one of the first games of an amateur developer. The gameplay and presentation are way too bland and there simply isn’t much happening during the game. The blank backgrounds also don’t give the players any chance to be immersed. A few pictures supporting the story, more objects to interact with or actual things going on in the precinct and this could have probably become at least a mediocre game. The way it turned out, I can’t recommend the game, however.

 

3.5/10