Suspense: Madman's Dreams Review – Brief and buggy, with a pinch of originality

I think it’s safe to say I’ve played my fair share of indie games, particularly ones in the horror category – whether it was something I had to review, or maybe a demo I tried during one of Steam’s many Next Fest events, I’ve dipped my toe into the pool of small-dev horror on countless occasions. Occasionally, you discover some true gems, but of course, you also cross paths with, uh... less than pleasant titles. In the case of Suspense: Madman’s Dreams, I’m feeling endlessly torn, because the game is both intriguing and disappointing – I most certainly respect it for trying something slightly different, but everything it did could’ve been done so much better, if I’m being honest.

The mind is a curious place

Let’s backpedal a bit, though. What is this game even about? Well, it’s essentially an attempt at representing mental disorders in video game format, while trying to inform the player about the severe – and often terrifying – nature of such conditions. Specifically, schizophrenia is at the center of attention here, with the protagonist exploring a variety of locations – some more surreal than others – seeped in symbolism and absurdity. It’s a respectable attempt with some solid presentation, I’ll give it that – there are brief flashes of intriguing design here and there, with the game constantly having you question what’s real and what’s not. That, combined with the absurd, out-of-left-field snippets of dialogue you occasionally hear from the protagonist, really cements that whole “what the hell is going on in this game” vibe the developer was likely going for.

There are problems, though. Quite a few of them, in fact. For starters (and this became apparent after just a few minutes), the game is disastrously buggy. UI elements get stuck on the screen, never to fade away. Dialogue scenes freeze up, essentially forcing you to relaunch the entire game and start over from the beginning. Interactable objects bug out and start floating mid-air if you try to rotate them too much. I could go on. At first, I thought these were funny little quirks meant to tie into the whole mental disorder aspect of the game, but no, they’re just really sloppy, silly bugs. Which is a shame, because I really, really would’ve liked to talk to that one table fan. Oh well.

Use your voice – or don’t

Another potentially interesting gameplay element that barely gets any time to shine is the microphone integration – that is, being able to perform actions by saying them out loud. Sadly, this comes into play only twice, and only very briefly: once when you need to keep the lights on in a corridor by continuing to say the word “light” every few seconds, and then when you need to say a specific phrase to trigger a cutscene. After that, the game kind of just drops this mechanic and never uses it again. There are a handful of puzzles, but the vast majority of them consist of finding number combinations for padlocks. And that’s it. The game also hints at gunplay potentially becoming a thing later on, but as far as I’m aware, this doesn’t really happen, aside from that one scene where you get to pick up a pistol for like five seconds. The entire thing feels terribly unfinished.

At best, Suspense: Madman's Dreams takes an hour to beat at a very leisurely pace, so I wasn’t really expecting too much complexity, but still. There are a few genuinely impressive bits that will make you go “what the...” on several occasions (the screenshots in this review, basically), and overall, the project is certainly more original than the average jump scare-riddled mess you can find on Steam, but... it feels more like a tech demo. A proof of concept. An extremely brief experience with some good ideas that could make for a potentially compelling game if it was longer and more fleshed out – but in its present state, it offers disappointingly little. It’s also worth noting that the free demo contains a good 70% of the whole game, so if you feel like giving it a shot, maybe download that first and then decide if you want to drop some cash for the remaining 15-20 minutes.