Game Review: DISTRAINT- A psychological horror experience

The game that I will be reviewing today is one of the most interesting games I have played lately, DISTRAINT. This game was released back in 2015, and came out on Steam for the PC. Since then, it's also been developed into a game for the android platform so you can play it on the go on your phone. DISTRAINT is a 2D psychological horror game developed and published by a man named Jesse Makkonen. Something quite interesting is that Jesse made this game entirely on his own over the course of a short 3 months. Considering the quality of the game, and the excellent story I find it pretty surprising that he was able to do this all on his own in such a short time.  

As I said previously, this game relies on giving you a psychological horror experience. There are a few jump scares scattered throughout, but not too many where it detracts from the quality of the game. Most of the horror aspect comes from the bizarre and messed up situations your character ends up in. While also having a fairly dark story to it though, it happens to be quite touching which just makes it even better. 

The game is centered around our protagonist named Brice. Brice is a younger, ambitious man who has just gotten his start with a new company. Hoping to be able to join the higher ranks within this company and get a partnership, Brice begins his tasks of seizing the property/homes of their customers who have defaulted on money that they owe to the company, most of it being due to rent past due. This is how the title of the game comes into play, since you're doing the process of distraint. 

You'll visit various residences throughout your playthrough seizing the property of the individuals that you meet. The journey centers around Brice's thoughts and feelings of guilt on what he's doing and the choices he has been making. The game has quite a few disturbing instances throughout as you try to sort out your thoughts, and you'll encounter some very grim things while you play. The game will definitely shock you at certain points with each level. 

The controls of the game and how you play it is fairly simple for the most part. For each level you'll have to solve puzzles to get through certain areas and collect objects while you look around. While none of the puzzles ever got to the point of being rage inducing, at times you'll have to take a breather and try to think on how you'll get the puzzle done, or think of how which item needs to be used in the appropriate spot. Wandering around hoping you'll get lucky definitely isn't how you'll get through this game, as it does require some logical thought. 

An issue however with the puzzles that does get slightly frustrating is that sometimes objects can be hard to detect/find due to the system implemented to let you know when you're interacting with something useful. When you approach something that is a useable item you'll get an exclamation point popping up over your head. Sometimes however, this doesn't happen for some reason so you'll have to kinda click around until you find what you need. Again, nothing too horrible that breaks the game but it is a bit annoying at times. 

The graphics while being 2D and pixelated are quite pleasing to the eye overall. Everything is quite detailed and has a very individual look to it so nothing looks quite the same. I honestly especially loved the color pallete that was chosen for this game, as the darker tones are somewhat soothing to me personally. Another nice thing about this game being a 2D game is that it'll run smoothly and everything will look crisp pretty much no matter what kind of PC you're using. I've tried this game on 3 different PC's before and never had a single issue having it run. 

In spite of the graphics being pixelated, the horror parts of the game definitely stand out and are very noticeable for how gruesome/messed up it gets to be. There are a few moments that stuck with me due to how started I was due to not expecting something so screwed up to pop up all of a sudden. The darker colors they've used also aid these scenes, as they make them stand out quite a bit more. 

I also believe that the solemn musical score helps elevate the game up a bit, as it really can make the horror sections a lot more tense and make you feel uneasy. The sound design is quite simplistic as well, and never gets to be annoying or ridiculous. I think the sound work and musical score really tie into the game quite well and help to make it a much better horror experience overall. 

Perhaps the worst thing about this game is the fact of how short it is. I believe I beat it in just around 2 and a half hours on my first run through, and then right around 2 hours my second playthrough. Now, I'll say this. The game does a wonderful job of telling a very heartfelt story in that short amount of time, and you'll really enjoy those 2 hours of gaming that you get. For the price point of $5, I also can't say I was expecting a 20 hour play time or anything. I think maybe had the game been flushed out a bit more into 3-4 hours I would have been 100 percent happy with it. 

In conclusion, DISTRAINT is by far one of the best psychological horror games which I've ever played. It's certainly worked it's way into being one of the games I'll probably play with my girlfriend throughout the month of October. It does an amazing job at looking at how terrifying guilt can be and what it can do to you through adding it into a horror pretense. The twist you get was definitely not expected when I first started playing, and I think the creator did a great job on the story and gameplay for this. For $5, I think you'll have a very hard time finding a better horror game story. I would definitely recommend anyone to check this out. 

Something else which I should mention is that Jesse is currently working on a sequel to the game, though details haven't really been shared yet on what it will have in common with the first game. Either way, I'm really looking forward to seeing what he does with it and I'll be expecting it to be just as good at least as this game. 

Thanks for checking out my review, hope you've enjoyed it and that maybe it's helped you get interested in checking this game out!