Wanting to spend time in the dark streets and forests of a Polish village in the early 2000s, Krypta FM takes you on an authentic crypto investigation in Gozdaly, Poland, taking photos, posting on forums, and listening to radio broadcasts.
Ostensibly a horror game, it's an atmospheric exploration game with a nostalgic setting and fun reads. Check out the sights and enjoy the blocky post-Soviet cars and buildings. One player review says, “Came for the horror, stayed for the people.”
The town is haunted by inexplicable events and people are buzzing about it. Your job is to work with your fellow investigators to explore your surroundings, often at night, and find out if the rumored “Beast of Ghozdari” is behind these events. I am deeply drawn to the atmosphere, especially the chunky world design and the fact that, like the weirdest kid in school in 2004, I like to take pictures of strange things with my blocky plastic early digital camera and share them on the Internet.
I always pay attention to the weird little effects in these indie games. For example, the assortment of things on the protagonist's corkboard: there's a sci-fi looking poster, a newspaper article with a UFO on it. There's also a three-section diagram of a mixer. But most of all, there's a huge space-destroying cabinet/shelf/closet/desk combination that fills the entire end of the room with PC stations. It's been everywhere for a long time, but what killed it is that the computer monitor is no longer a giant thing weighing as much as a three-year-old child.
So far, the game has been quite well received by those who have taken the time to play it, with 95% of Steam reviews positive at the time of publication. While this is no guarantee of quality, fans of the genre probably won't regret going out for this game; Krypta FM is available for free on Steam and itch.io.
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