Reviews for 1-BIT HALLOWEEN

[TharosTheDragon]

Treasure Hunt review!

### Aesthetics: 9 / 10

So crisp, clean, and professional looking.

### Originality: 1 / 10

I've definitely seen stories like this before.

### Challenge: 3 / 10

I do have to admit there's more challenge than one would expect from a visual novel. The challenge comes from finding all the endings of course. When I was only missing endings 4 and 5, I was able to figure out that the endings must be between the point where you talk to the mom after talking to the son (because that's where you get ending 3) and the point where you read the letters (because that's where you get ending 6). I then strategized that it would be best to pick a point in the middle to try next rather than a point right after ending 3 or right before ending 6, so I left the house after talking to the demon mom and got ending 5, which let me deduce that I could get ending 4 by leaving the house before that point but still after ending 3.

### Fun factor: 3 / 10

It's not terribly fun to read through the dialogue, and while the interface lets you proceed through the dialogue smoothly it still needs a way to skip ahead faster or do some kind of chapter select so you can get all the endings more easily. Still, the retro RPG engine you've created feels great to play with. I like moving diagonally to get ahead of the mom when she's leading me into the dining room.

### Content: 7 / 10

Short game, but lots of endings. Since I have no audio category I'll mention here that I love the title song, which I remember from 2-bit Adventure. The sound effects like the knocking and door opening and closing were also done really well. And it's great that you've included both English and Portuguese, though there's a bug where if you select Portuguese once the menu will still be in Portuguese even after you pick English later.

### Total: 23 / 50

(The Treasure Hunt review score is different from the standard Newgrounds review score because it uses different criteria.)

[mrdorkus]

Short game with 8 endings. Explore the dialogue and story yourself but if you want to read about the endings, here's the spoiler warning.

1. Ending 1 - The Bad Guest (leave right away when you can right after the dialogue ends, confirm to leave)
2. Ending 2 - Unhelpful spiritual guide (not sure why spiritual guide is not capital like Bad Guest is, but there's multiple ways to get this ending, by basically answering in a non-caring manner)
3. Ending 3 - Blindness (choose "Just kids stuff..." when ask what her son said)
4. Ending 4 - Abandoned (leave the house once the boy disappears, basically it's a big NOOOPE)
5. Ending 5 - Into the Rain (multiple ways to trigger it, as long as you leave once you start talking to one of the 3 possessed people or after reading only one of the letters)
6. Ending 6 - Coward (Leave after reading the two letters)
7. Ending 7 - Taken by Darkness (Do nothing after reading the letters or say no at the end)
8. Ending 8 - The Faithful (Keep praying at the end)

[Swordser15]

I really love you 2-bit Adventure Game, so I decided to see what else you got. Of you did not disappoint, good work as usual, and I can see that you improved from there.

[tdanew]

Very disturbing... and I love it! Very original too.

[FutureCopLGF]

Decent little short story game! In general the game feels well-made and polished, and I like the way it's all presented like a play where it's all on one screen with all rooms and elements visible: makes for some fun moments like seeing the kid interact with Eyezy while you're occupied talking with the mother still. Some of the visuals and interactions are quite creepy too.

I gotta admit, however, that I found the story rather unsatisfying. Once I got past all of the ways you can get kicked out before the story even starts by saying some rather innocuous things, it just didn't lead to a good payoff. It was also annoying for replays that you have the correct answer to the child's intro question about the rain as the second response: this means that, despite being able to mash through every other response to get back to where you were, you have to slow down there lest you get an immediate game over and start all over again. As a huge fan of CYOA books who enjoys finding all of the unique endings, this felt like a quantity over quality situation where all the bad endings are just insubstantial, purposeless filler and even the good ending fails to satisfy, so much that I wouldn't even be sure if it was the good ending despite it being the case.