I Hate This Place Review

I’m no stranger to scouring cursed lands for ammo and weapons while dealing with monsters stalking about. In videogames, of course, not real life… thankfully. My most recent foray into the strange, resource-limited world of Darkwood prepared me well for Rock Square Thunder’s similar, yet far more vibrant, craft-based survival horror title: I Hate This Place.

This story begins with a summoning ritual, setting a high baseline for occult activity from the get-go. Our protagonist, Elena, and her friend, Lou, are conducting the “prayer” to call The Horned Man, “a god, not a demon” (Lou’s words). Immediately, I was hooked, because if you have to specify that it’s absolutely not an evil being, then of course it is. Things go awry as expected; Elena wakes alone and, in an effort to reunite with her missing friend, finds herself exploring abandoned underground bunkers, dodging twisted creatures, and navigating forests above ground, which are also full of ghosts, spiders, and other monstrosities.

This world is packed with every weird thing imaginable, from nonchalant cultists, suspicious goats, alien abductions, and more. I love it when a world and its narrative are so odd that your curiosity is running on overdrive, as it’s usually pretty easy for me to get invested. So, it’s a surprise that I didn’t enjoy I Hate This Place’s flavour of weird/camp. It’s a game overflowing with cool ideas and strange concepts, but there’s so much going on that it becomes undigestible and unfocused.

Elena is a difficult protagonist to connect with, as her motivations, history, and even her paranormal abilities are difficult to parse, and her reactions to the horrible things around her are overly subdued. I had to laugh when I entered a cabin where the walls suddenly started closing in from all sides, and Elena simply said, “What is this place?” in an amused tone. From her dialogue to her actions, she rarely felt like a real character to me. I kept waiting to get a better grasp of her, but I couldn’t ground myself in her interactions or in her world. The flat voice acting from most of the cast added to the detachment I felt towards Elena and others, as well.

Quest-wise, Elena gets to play a lot of roles, including ghost detective, cult investigator, and base builder, whilst also tracking Lou and searching for the truth behind her mother’s disappearance. I really enjoyed the variety of quests, but the surrealism and mystery that came with them felt disjointed at times and overwhelming at others. Typically, I don’t mind when you can do quests in a nonlinear fashion, but this is a rare moment where I think I Hate This Place could’ve benefited from a little more structure, especially given that you’re usually offered more questions than answers as you progress. Unfortunately, when you do get answers, they’re pretty predictable.

If you’ve played Darkwood, the isometric camera and craft-heavy gameplay on offer here will feel familiar. You pick up resources, combine them into useful items, and use those tools to explore while defending yourself from any threats that arise. As for maintaining Elena’s well-being, you need to manage her Health, Stamina, and Hunger. A hungry character causes depleted Stamina, which then means you can’t run from the monsters, so food is absolutely a must. Thankfully, Soup is just one of the many items you can make.

I Hate This Place’s crafting system is exactly what I want from a craft-based title. You can make one item or stacks of 10; your inventory space is generous (a big win for fellow loot gremlins), and crafting pulls from storage. I was pleasantly surprised that the water and food I placed in Elena’s base were accessible from a Stove station all the way across the map.

The base in question is the haunted ranch owned by Elena’s aunt and uncle. It serves as your main point of operations, letting you build a variety of structures that will produce resources. A Scrapyard produces Scrap and Rags, a Chopping Block makes Wood, a Water Pump generates Water, and so on. As long as you’ve found the Blueprints across your travels, you can build the structure in an open space.

I feel mixed on the base-management mechanic. On its own, it’s a cool concept, but it was out of place in I Hate This Place and tedious to use. I wasn’t a fan of having to wait for the structure to be built (as it’s not instant); then, manually queuing up items to be processed was a bit annoying, especially since there are few moments in the gameplay loop that lead you back to the ranch. You have to break off from your questing to go back, managing what’s being made and taking crafted items to storage, which upsets the flow.

You end up with so many resources, which may sound like a good thing, but it turns I Hate This Place into It’s Not Too Bad Here, as the tension of limited resources disappears. There’s simply not a lot to be scared of when you have numerous Molotovs, Grenades, and multiple guns with excessive ammo. Additionally, the atmosphere isn’t that foreboding or horrific. There are some jump scares, but unfortunately, they trigger every time you revisit their spot; for instance, a ghostly body running across a path every time you walk by it or a paranormal train zooming by every time you’re near. These quickly lose their scare factor.

Combat offers plenty of weapon variety, and it's mostly seamless control-wise. Throwables are easy to use, but aiming to shoot your gun can be difficult with the isometric camera. Hitting an enemy in melee range was where the game suffered the most, though, as the hit boxes weren’t great and depending on where you click, Elena can turn in the completely opposite direction, which was clunky. Plus, damage didn’t add up, at times; it made little sense why an enemy could die in three hits with a baseball bat, but not go down with four shots from a shotgun, for example.

I also had a few technical issues, some of which are already known ones to the developer, such as stuttering/frame drops when exploring, black screens when fast travelling, and missing voice lines. Some problems seemed unique to me, though. More than once, Elena got stuck on her back after a debuffed enemy died after jumping on top of her, requiring a full reload of the game (and lost progress).

Though it’s not as annoying as having to restart, I did get tired of my crafting log always listing blueprints as “New” even after I clicked on them, made them, etc; I tried everything to get them to unmark as New. Additionally, a ghost encounter that should’ve happened during the Night cycle allowed me to do it during the Day when I stumbled upon it, but afterwards the quest didn’t progress in my journal as it should’ve (a rest fixed it, though).

The game's visual design is excellent. Bright, comic-style art adds so much punch and vibrancy to a grotesque world. I was somehow in awe of the monster's gross bodies and guttural sounds rather than scared. That said, while the art looks great, Elena’s animations felt stiff, and the NPCs hardly had any movement, which was disappointing.

The sound design makes up for a lot. Distant growls, squeals, and squelches populate the soundscape with an amazing variety of gross sounds. I also loved the comic-style text that appears when you’re crouching, walking, or running, and even better, they serve as a hint that you’re being too loud, changing colours based on the level of noise you’re making.

There’s so much about I Hate This Place that feels promising, but the build I got felt unfinished and unfocused. It had many cool story and gameplay ideas, but the end product feels overloaded with them to the point where things are disjointed. It ultimately feels like the game needed more time in the oven.