A masterful piece of storytelling that delves deep into the murky waters of PTSD, the unquenchable thirst of power and the uncompromising expectations of following in your families footsteps.

Set around the events of the first world war, the story focuses on a German brother who has returned from war in a mind that is different to the one he left with. As he walks through the halls of his family home, it becomes clear that the things that he is seeing aren't necessarily what he should be seeing. Initially presumed dead during combat, the story unravels events that detail his life both before and during his military service as well as the fate of his other family members namely his brother, father and grandfather. His mother is wracked with melancholy and whilst you never see her, you hear her distorted cries in various parts of the mansion, almost as if she is in the room with you and yet your psyche just cannot manifest or process the image.

As the protagonists grasp of reality becomes less certain, you begin to experience flashbacks to the trenches and no man's land of Flanders Field. Again, these memories present themselves as real as possible at first but slowly become more and more twisted as you progress through the story and you have to face twisted nightmarish manifestations that reflect the emotional state of the protagonist as they stalk you through the nightmarish hellscape that he has conjured. The emotions and feelings covered are hunger, rage, mayhem, despair, corruption and pain.

Much of the storytelling is done through reading letters that you find on your journey, and occasionally you will get some narration after interacting with an object as your character remembers a specific situation. There are a number of puzzles throughout the game too, though nothing too taxing. It is usually the standard work out a code for this door, reroute power to this gate or mix these chemicals type of thing.

There are three endings that you can obtain during play, though I have currently only seen one but it has left me with a desire to see the other endings too.

Graphically the game is beautiful and I managed to play it on epic quality with no issues on a PC that is almost 10 years old at this point. I have seen some people comment on discussions and other reviews about the flashlight/torch being useless and yet personally I liked the fact that they opted to use a technology that was actually used during the Great War. the flashlight is a kinetic one that requires winding up before use, and the light it produces lasts around 5-10 seconds at most. Honestly, it is more than enough light for all aspects of the game and adds to the tension that the environment tries to create. They wouldn't have had constant portable light back then, and so it makes a lot of sense to not have it in this game.

All in all, I have really enjoyed the experience and I am looking forward to playing it again at some point. If I have one criticism of the game, it is purely that having some sort of map when in the house would have proved helpful purely because each time you go to the house different doors are open or locked and so it can be easy to get lost when trying to find your way around. That being said though, it was by no means a large frustration of any sort.

I really do recommend playing this game if you enjoy history, puzzle games or horror walking simulators. I do think though that it is fair to warn you that it deals heavily with the subject of PTSD and poor mental health as well as some other mental health conditions like melancholia and sociopathy. If any of those are triggering for you then it would likely be wise to avoid the game.