Project: Mist Review | A Lovecraftian Sandbox Frozen in Jank

• Developer: Chicken Launcher
• Publisher: Chicken Launcher
• Platform: Steam

Project: Mist is an open-world survival horror set in a fictional Lovecraftian world. The premise sounds, at least, close to my alley: you roam a bizarre and spooky island filled with horrific entities, some of which fly, like the massive whale. But before I dive into my first impression, I’d like for you, the reader, to keep something in mind: this is a Steam Early Access title. So yes, it is very, very janky.

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from https://www.keymailer.co

Early Access Otherworldly Horrors

When I say jank, I’m talking about NPCs blindly ramming themselves against invisible walls, the same walls that protected them from my crossbow bolts. When I managed to kill a boss, it beautifully executed a t-posing backflip.

Models clipped through the environment constantly, even when they’re environment elements. In more ways than one, Project: Mist is a good example as to why some gamers believe every Early Access game on Steam is broken. While it’s true that Early Access games are unfinished by definition, people expect a certain amount of polish, or at least, a promise that they will improve, and a map to show the fixes and content.

What The Game Does Well

The Forest has shaped my experience with open-world survival horror, and while I’ve always liked the concept of the survival genre, there are very few games that managed to hook me. The reason why I gave Project: Mist a shot was because of its Lovecraftian background.

The first few minutes of the game gave me something that’s very welcomed, especially when compared to its peers: a clear objective and direction. You start in a decrepit room where a guiding voice directs you on where to go and what you’ll have to do. Even though the map is huge and you can go around and do your stuff, having a constant, obvious goal that restricts your progress felt comfortable for me. I will say though, the voice actor was clearly reading off a script, but besides the corny lines, it wasn’t enough to make my eyes roll.

Sadly, after the initial atmosphere, monsters, and introduction of “The Root Father,” it just becomes bland. The crafting system is bare bones, and forces you to hunt blueprints in random places (although, considerably not bad if you like to look through every corner), and there’s nothing in the crafting that makes the game shine or different.

And the fighting becomes repetitive, and as a person who enjoys idle games, me calling active gameplay repetitive is telling. Combat boils down to firing your weapons into bullet sponges. Every enemy is predictable, even the one that turns very invisible, and they all just feel like a bump on the road you can easily go over, but you just kind of don’t like that it’s there.

Conclusion

I strongly recommend giving Project: Mist more time in the oven before even considering picking it up. A recent update expanded the size of the map, but with how jank it is and the price, there’s nothing really there to validate it.

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