Motte Island

Motte Island is a strange little game available on Steam for a mere £4 that was developed by Gamebell studio.  It's a game I knew absolutely nothing about but for that cheap price tag I felt it was a least worth a try. 

Motte Island is a top-down horror adventure game about a guy called Maxi trying to save his sister from a group of strange people who want her dead for some reason.  However, your rescue attempt goes wrong and the inhabitants of the island are transformed into these strange insect-like creatures and it is then up to you to find a way to save your sister and get the hell off the island.

Gameplay comes from a top down perspective so if you image Hotline Miami and Silent Hill had a baby then you'd have a good idea of how this game plays.  It's extremely simple controls means that there isn't much to talk about.  Everything functions as it should and you spend the whole game roaming the island looking for clues and fighting monsters.

The game felt a little weak in the sound design and with a style like this it really had to do well here to be successful as a horror game.  That's not to say it's completely terrible, they did a fairly competent job but it fails to create any of kind scary atmosphere and as a result the whole "horror" part of this "horror adventure" falls a bit flat.

My biggest problem with this game though is that it looks and plays like a fucking flash game lifted straight from Newgrounds back in the early 2000s or whenever it was.  That's not to say the game is bad, because it's not, but after dropping money on a title I want something with a little more production value than a flash game.

It's also quite clear to see that the game was designed by non English speakers and whoever it was who wrote the script needs to work on his/her English a little bit.  It doesn't ruin anything and it's not hilariously bad or anything like that but in certain places it's quite noticeable.

Overall though, I liked Motte Island, it's a short and satisfying little adventure that is fun to play despite it's flash-esque feel.  It also has some pretty cool monster design and sneaking up on a nightmare creature so you can replace it's brains with your axe blade is pretty fun.  I'm glad I spent £4 on it because I feel these guys have their heart in the right place and with some continued support they could probably move on to make something pretty good.  However, it would be understandable if that seems a bit much for this kind of game so if you're on that side of the fence, wait for a Steam sale and grab it for 1 or 2 pounds.