I do like a good sneaky, sneaky-stealth game. Developer Tessera Studios and publisher Daedalic Entertainment have a new-ish sneaky, sneaky-stealth game out at the moment, Intruders: Hide And Seek. But, is it any good?
Intruders: Hide and Seek is a first-person stealth game, an intense thriller combining intense psychological terror with the point of view of a defenseless boy.
Well, to answer my query of whether Intruders: Hide And Seek is any good? Honestly, is all rather ‘meh’. A quick rundown of the plot. You play as 13-year-old Ben, who moves into a new home with his family. Mom, Dad and younger sister, Irene. One dark and stormy night, three people break into your home, tie up Mom and Dad and put them in the cellar. You and Irene discover a safe room and hole up… for a while. Irene is ill and needs medication, so you (as Ben) have to go and get that medication from somewhere in the house. Do your best to sneak, hide and evade the intruders as you reveal more about Irene’s illness, her medication and exactly what your Dad has been up to and why these three people have invaded your home.
The story is probably the best thing about this game and even then, it’s not that great. Very predictable and it leads to an ending that you’ll see coming about 10 minutes in. Speaking of time, this is a very, very, very short game. I didn’t time myself, as I really wasn’t expecting this to be over as soon as it was. But I’ll guesstimate that I finished this in a little over 2 hours. I first thought that I have just played through a long introduction when the end credits rolled. Just to double-check, I looked up a walkthrough on YouTube and found someone finish the game in 1 hour and 16 minutes. Bearing in mind that walkthrough was by someone who’d already completed the game and knew what they were doing. So yeah, for someone playing for the first time, I reckon about 2 hours.
Now, there is nothing wrong with a short game, but that shortness needs to be put into perspective. A short game crammed with great gameplay and repeatability is fantastic. A short game that has none of that though? A very different story. Intruders: Hide And Seek is just lacking in every aspect. The graphics look about 15 years out of date, even for a small indie title. The voice acting is atrocious. But the real letdown is the gameplay, it’s just woefully dull.
There’s a basic tutorial to get you used to the controls and the basic gameplay is very reminiscent of Alien: Isolation. You know, you’re pretty much alone with a menace stalking you. You can hide in cabinets and under beds to avoid being seen and so on. As I say, very Alien: Isolation. But, unlike Alien: Isolation, there’s no sense of suspense or dread because the gameplay is not there. Just going back to that tutorial for a second, there is a part where you have to hide and you’re introduced to a mini-game where you have to control your heart rate as one of the intruders looks for you. Do you know how many times I had to do that in the game (outside of the tutorial)? Never, not once.
I never had to do it because I never had to hide (with the exception of one or two scripted parts). I never had to hide as the AI threat is pretty much non-existent. Even though there are three intruders looking for you, they are incredibly stupid and you can get away from them just by running away a bit. Run down a hallway and around a corner and they just stop looking for you. The only time I had to hide in this game was when the story forced me to. Even then, I had to question the stupidity of the intruders.
For instance, there is one point in the game where you use your Dad’s laptop to try and contact the police. The intruders have put some software (or something) on the Internet to track when and where you do use that laptop, So, (slight spoilers) when you do try to contact the police, a message pops up from the intruders letting you that they know where you are and are coming for you… and they do. You’re in your Dad’s study with no way out other than the door you came in, and the intruders are on the other side of that door coming into the study. You have only a few seconds to hide. So you do, in one of the cabinets. The intruders come in, and a quick reminder, they know you are in the study and were there just 5 seconds ago with no other way out. So, the intruders come into the study, spend a grand total of 0.3 seconds looking for you, conclude that you’ve escaped (even though there is no way out), never bother to check any hiding places, deliver some exposition and then leave the room.
The core gameplay is just you running from one room of the house to another and basically doing fetch quests. Before you can use your (aforementioned) Dad’s laptop, you need the password. The password is in the library. Run to the library, get the password and run back to the laptop. Everything that you do in this game is just ‘run here grab this and run back’. As the intruders are piss-easy to avoid and outsmart, the sneaky, sneaky-stealth gameplay is pretty much pointless.
Intruders: Hide And Seek is too simple, too forgiving and offers up no challenge. There’s no suspense or tension. Hiding (in a game with hide and seek in the title) is irrelevant. The AI is shockingly bad. Then, you’ll see the end credits in around 2 hours. There is a collectable jigsaw thing to find if you really want to, so add another 20-30 minutes to the game’s length.
Around £18 is how much this will set you back and that is way, way too high a price tag for the game you get. As I write this, Intruders: Hide And Seek is on sale (until the 23rd of March) on Steam for £1.74 and that is a much fairer price. Now, I do have to say how this was originally released for VR on both PC and PlayStation. I’ve been playing the more recent Xbox release. I think that maybe playing in VR could raise this up in the gameplay stakes a very small amount. But for these latest Xbox and Switch non-VR releases, I really don’t see the point.
Intruders: Hide And Seek isn’t a particularly terrible game, it’s just a very, very mundane game with very little to do. It plays more like an unfinished beta over a full release. Coming with that hefty £18 price tag, I say avoid this and grab it in a sale down the road for around £5 or less.
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