Breathing Fear

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Horror

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Dark Theme Bundle, along with Dark Burial, Don’t Be Afraid, Diabolic, and Swordbreaker)

Breathing Fear, released on PC in 2016 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2019, is a Graphic Adventure Horror game that puts players in the role of an escaped prison convict who finds himself searching through an abandoned house. Just his luck, it looks like the place is haunted.

The presentation here is apparently a point of pride for the developer, as this game won a Games Jam event by tackling a challenge to see whether a game with pixel art graphics could be scary. In my own view, this venture was not entirely successful, with the game’s extremely low-quality pixel art visuals not exactly making my pulse race. And despite the game description’s declaration of “no jumpscares here”, I felt like there didn’t seem to be much else, save for the tension caused by the rapidly depleting batteries in the player’s flashlight. The sound design in this game is pulling a lot of weight, with tense music playing and with the occasional use of that cliche high-pitch horror movie noise… but there’s little here that feels truly inspired.

A part of the flaw here is also undoubtedly due to this game’s story, or lack thereof. You’ll be investigating the abandoned house, reading letters, diary entries, and notes left behind by the former residents, which will gradually build up to give a vague idea what previously happened in this place. However, from the start you’re given very little indication of just what your character’s story is, or why he’s rifling around such a creepy house. You only know he’s an escaped inmate.

That just leaves the gameplay, which is fairly simple. Players will be moving around the house looking for items of interest, armed only with a flashlight. Your character’s heartbeat will be constantly monitored, with time spent in the dark and scary events causing it to rise, and calming events causing it to lower. Players must investigate the house and presumably uncover its secrets before their heart rate gets too high and they die of fright.

Of course, you’ll be looking for extra batteries for your flashlight and other ways to keep the lights on, but after a few deaths and having to restart from the beginning, you’ll end up doing things through rote memorization before long – check a note in one location which lets your character know where this item is, get the item and use it in that location… the lack of scares becomes even more pronounced when you’re just going through the motions.

I actually do think that a game with pixel art can be scary. But as someone with a spine made of Jello, it’s telling that I barely felt the slightest twinge of fear when playing this game. I don’t know if that’s the fault of the low-quality visuals, the tiresome use of horror film tropes, the lack of strong storytelling, or the tedious gameplay, but the result is a game that just didn’t bring the scares for me, and didn’t provide enough entertaining gameplay to make it worth playing absent those scares. As such, I can’t recommend this game, even for its low $5 price tag.

tl;dr – Breathing Fear is a game that has players playing as an escaped convict investigating an abandoned (and apparently haunted) house for reasons that aren’t clear. The low-quality pixel art visuals don’t exactly inspire fear, nor does the weak storytelling, tedious gameplay, or overuse of horror film cliches. As such, it’s hard for me to recommend this game. Get your scares somewhere else instead, because you won’t find them here.

Grade: D

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