Find Me Review (PC)

Slender: The Eight Pages was gaming’s smoking gun for a short period of time. Yet, it just so happened to linger on the tip of the barrel long enough to brith hundreds—no, thousands, of iterations, all of which somehow paid tribute to the beating heart of one of the most critically acclaimed cult classics of all time in one form or another. The woodland biome became iconic, as did the thundering sound of a drum. And the remainder of its components, of course, inspired countless works of art, with the suited foe becoming the poster child of browser gaming.

Find Me falls into the aforementioned category—the same pocket that conceived Slender and all its ilk so long ago. With a similar graphical design and stepping stone format, Find Me doesn’t exactly beat around the bush with its blatant infatuation with the cult classic. But the good news is that, similarities aside, Find Me also harbors its own strengths and challenges, which essentially come in the form of a relatively sizable woodland locale and a nail-biting banquet of tender jump scares and sensory effects. Maybe there’s a bit more to it than that, and maybe I’m just being overly judgmental about what is, quite frankly, an excellent indie horror at heart.

If you’re curious to hear more about Find Me and its deep ties with independent canon fodder, then be sure to whip out your magnifying glass and join us on this terrifying hunt for the truth and, more importantly, the girl.

Following Breadcrumbs

It begins with an echo—a fickle voice that pulls you into the mysterious depths of a cluttered woodland. You aren’t sure why you’re there, or even what lurks around the next corner. But you do know, at least deep down, that the whispers of a girl are important, and that the closer you get to the voice, the clearer the image will eventually become, for better or worse. That, in short, is where Find Me sends you: on a short phishing expedition to uncover the truth behind a voice and the world around it. There isn’t much context, but there is an objective that’s more or less written in black and white. Find the girl, and decipher the echoes.

Find Me invites you to explore the inner sanctum of a dark and grainy world—a decrepit void of overhanging trees and shadowy crevices, ominous noises and deadly echoes. From there, it tasks you with observing your surroundings, paying attention to specific beats, and gradually tiptoeing through a series of disturbing events that play on your psyche. Much like your usual psychological horror that adopts various elements from traditional walking simulators, it then carefully unravels its contents with short bouts of intense and graphical scenery and harrowing visual cues. Again, like Slender, but without the suited foe and with a few more ambient features.

Any Way the Wind Blows

Find Me is definitely a game that relies on its abilities to weave a compelling atmosphere over an ironclad narrative. By that I mean, it doesn’t delve into too much detail with its story, though it does devote its attention into establishing a memorable labyrinthine experience that substitutes plot points for shock horror and palpable imagery of a grotesque nature. It also does just enough to whet your mood and leave you on tenterhooks for the short while that it hogs the stage. The only issue with that is that it ends a little too quickly, which makes you feel that there’s still a lot more to be done before the climax comes to pay a visit.

Thankfully, there is a silver lining to the above: Find Me doesn’t leave you clutching at straws, or even on the precipice of an unsolvable cliff-hanger. Well, it does, but as it turns out, the game also makes it clear that it has the intent of birthing a sequel in the near future to tie a few leftover knots. And that’s great, because honestly, there are a lot of bridges that need to be given an extra pinch of attention here.

On a side note, Find Me does manage to present a gameplay experience that feels both seamless and immersive. Granted, it does foster a couple of issues—a poor representation of a flashlight, weirdly. But other than the usual litter of graphical bugs, the game itself flows in a sufficient manner, which means, frankly, there isn’t too much to complain about here. Of course, it’s still an indie project at heart, so with all of the above said, it’s better to not expect a perfect composition with masterful execution techniques. A few loose screws are to be expected, naturally.

Verdict

Find Me effectively establishes itself as a good tribute to one of the most streamable browser games of all time, with its familiar yet timelessly captivating locale and daringly ominous audiovisual aspects attributing to a genuinely thrilling indie horror that yearns for a similar demographic. With that, Find Me lays the groundwork for a solid, albeit disappointingly short experience that has all of the potential to spawn a second homecoming. Heck, I only wish that it lasted a bit longer, if only for the sake of satisfying my morbid curiosity. But then, you can’t win ‘em all, I suppose.

Although Find Me does frequently stumble at a couple of hurdles—its poor lighting and finicky flashlight, for example—the game as a whole still has a lot of great features of its own. To echo, it’s a short game, and rather annoyingly, it doesn’t tell you that there’s a second part in the headlights until after you’ve already mopped up the first. I suppose with that, it almost feels like false advertising; it presents itself as a full-fledged game, but then proceeds to inform you that, while the story itself is firing on all cylinders, the full experience is still somewhere behind a locked door. It doesn’t change my mind about romping through the sequel, though I have to admit, I sort of wish I knew what I was receiving before digging my claws into it.

To cut a long story short, yes, you should give Find Me a chance, but only if you’re willing to spend your cash on an experience that leaves you on tenterhooks and in the dark after a handful of minutes. Perhaps, with that, it might be a better option to wait for the next sequence to bury itself into the mainframe to avoid disappointment.