What is Scholar Mate?
What is the scariest thing that can happen to you? Creepy mansions full of snakes and corpses? Dear? There’s a lot that can scare us, but being kidnapped and locked in a decaying psychiatric hospital full of traps and dead bodies is definitely on most people’s bucket list.
We play as a young woman named Judith who finds herself trapped within the walls of an abandoned hospital. Why is he here? Why are the dead bodies erected like statues? And why are there so many puzzles and closed doors? Judith is about to find out, as she explores the hospital, solving puzzles, finding keys to open the many different doors blocking her exit, and along the way she is ambushed by a deranged killer. Being hunted.
Scholar’s Mate does a great job of setting up a compelling mystery that gradually becomes more intriguing as the documents, handwritten notes, and blood stains increase. The plot is good, and I really liked Judith here, especially since she’s the main voice you’ll hear throughout the game. There are a lot of clichés here, and while they never seem burdensome or boring, they are still clichés.
I would have appreciated something, a story thread that was a little more innovative, highlighting some compelling themes or concepts that would have otherwise made me completely uncomfortable. Instead, we get all the bells and whistles of all the tropes in the horror genre, used extensively and none of them elevated to any interesting degree. I reviewed a game called Oxide: Room104 two years ago, and although it was entertaining and difficult, it had some interesting story and a neat twist.
Still, her journey to the end in the Scholar’s Met is quite engaging, providing a good scare here and there, with Judith’s voice actor doing a great job with the material available.
Checkmate my deranged serial killer friend
The thing that attracted me most about Scholar’s Mate was the really creepy vibes, a setting that vaguely resembled RE7 (a game I love), and cramming in a lot of puzzles that I could probably not get enough of. Provides the ultimate lateral workout in time.
It’s not a series of escape rooms, but rather one very large, spacious room, filled with small problem-solving tasks at hand, ranging from puzzles to finding key objects and deciphering codes. . All this while being stalked by a man who doesn’t look like the hugging type, and more like the murdering type.
If, like me, you like a good puzzle or a dozen, Scholar’s Mate will do the trick for you. I would say that most of the puzzles strike a good balance between head-scratching satisfaction and tiringly annoying. I never found myself stuck on any puzzle for very long, and the game does a great job of puzzling you without giving you the solution right away.
There is a huge variety of problems to solve, and while overall the game feels quite small in scale and complexity, the developers have done a good job in making the most of the limited resources they were working with. However, the main problem here and the thing that gets in the way of some puzzles and normal interaction is the presentation and poor UI.
There’s a fair amount of searching for code and looking around the scenes for clues, which would have been more enjoyable if the controls and UI had been improved. While wandering around the world and searching for some clues was a tough task, everything looked quite strange thanks to the poor UI. I understand that games don’t hold up, but there’s a difference between that and poor accessibility and controls. Older Resident Evil games were limited to tank controls and cues, but the design, camera angles, and controls were accessible and well thought out. And not even being allowed to remap the controls.
This is somewhat worsened with the chase gameplay, as the game has a stalker who hunts you throughout the hospital, and although not too much of a nuisance, they can interrupt the side component quite a bit. Are. And since you can’t do anything except run and hide, you’ll have to wait until your captor passes by. If you were able to set the trap or disarm him for a while, I’d say that would be something much more exciting than waiting, running, and trying to avoid panicking while solving the puzzle.
overall?
Scholars Mate has a lot of promise, with a great concept, a good story, and some good scares, but due to the limited, often frustrating UI and lack of chase gameplay, it sadly fails. .
With some updates and needed improvements, I can see The Scholar’s Mate becoming more accessible to horror fans new and old. While it may not go down as a classic, I would like to see the studio refine their efforts into a more gorgeous game, as they have a grasp on compelling concepts and lateral thinking.
++Interesting concept and gameplay ideas
+ Quite scary and intense
+ good leading performance
— Bad UI elements that become frustrating
– Stalker gameplay is a bit unbalanced
JanduSoft very kindly provided a review copy of Scholar’s Mate
