1 
0 Nowhere is a horror game with detective and survival horror elements. Developed and published Midnight Forge LTD, Nowhere features Nordic aesthetics and lore. There is no release date yet, but the game is available to wishlist on Steam right now.
Someone In The Middle Of Nowhere
Your unnamed character is searching for a group of young adults that have gone missing in a forest in Norway. You begin near their abandoned campervan, and set off to follow a series of notes, polaroids and other disturbing clues to unravel what happened to them.
Gameplay
At its core Nowhere has the player exploring areas and collecting evidence to add to a Case Board. This Case Board holds all the information on the missing group and their whereabouts you have collected thus far. During exploration you can find polaroid pictures laying around. You can also take photos using your own Polaroid camera. On top of the abandoned pictures, you can discover notes left by the missing people themselves. As well as eerie ritual items. I don’t know if the Case Board serves any purpose or how significant any gathered evidence is, as at the end of the game preview this wasn’t explained. Another thing to mention is that I would have liked an in-game map. I kept hitting the edge of the preview’s map trying to figure out where I should look next.
The only threat in Nowhere’s preview was a skinned man type zombie. It only pursues you after a specific point in the preview and isn’t all that fast. However, if it touches you, it’s an instant death. Once you die, you have a choice to either answer a question (if you want to continue from where you are), or restart the game. To answer the question you need to type your answer in a text box. I didn’t like this feature. Even when I answered correctly, the game glitched out and another text appeared over the top of the previous question. Meaning I had to restart no matter what. This becomes very impractical and frustrating. I hope they fix this issue if it’s to be a feature in the full game.
Graphics & Audio
Nowhere’s lighting and textures are great. The ambient music helps sell the eerie vibe of not quite being alone in the ancient Nordic forests. However, I had a lot of visual issues with the graphics. Some items took quite some time to load. Whilst I could look at them with no issues whilst standing still, once walking this changed. Walking around there were tonnes of stuttering and frame-rate issues, even after adjusting the frame-rate and v-synch settings.
Despite my PC being more than capable of running the game on ultra, the game still had minor issues. Even when playing on lower graphics settings. This lead me to believe that Nowhere’s preview may not have been properly optimised.
Final Thoughts
Nowhere has potential. The premise sounds interesting. However, the total experience felt run of the mill and the Nordic themes alone weren’t enough to hook my interest. A small nit-pick was looking down to see my character wearing a space suit (I later learned it was a model from Unreal Engine). It’s a minor detail, but it ruined the immersion for me amongst the settings of the game. More oddly enough, the image for the game features a man wearing ordinary clothes.
Most notably, though, the question answering upon death was an annoying feature to me, even more so since it didn’t work. Overall, Nowhere’s preview didn’t show or give me anything to remember it for. I found it underwhelming, and I doubt I’d pick up the full game.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this preview.
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