The Childs Sight

Genre: First-Person “Clicker” Horror

Players: 1

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Review:

The Childs Sight is a “Clicker”-style First-Person Horror game released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2019, then ported to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2021. This game, much like Bedtime Blues, puts players in the role of a very young child trying to sleep while also responding to the threats lurking in the bedroom.

The visuals in this game are largely sepia-toned simple 3D visuals that get the job done, but aren’t especially impressive, and the game uses a Vaseline-like smearing effect to make everything look over-exposed and blurry. The result isn’t especially impressive, but I suppose the way it obscures the already poorly-lit environment of your room is mean to heighten the game’s Horror elements.

The idea of this game is that you’re mainly responding to sounds – when you hear the closet open, you’re supposed to turn the light near the bed on. Hear a knocking at your door and you need to turn it off. Hear the little carousel toy near your bed shut off and you need to turn it back on. That sort of thing. There’s definitely a “Simon Says” style call and response thing going on here, and it makes you feel like you’re just doing what the game is telling you rather than actually playing it.

Making things worse, it’s not really clear what sound means what. The closet sound and the door sound both sound like knocking, as an example. Another problem is that the game sometimes has multiple sounds going on at once, and it’s not clear what you’re meant to do when the instructions for those things conflict. I died many, many times when I just couldn’t figure out what the game wanted me to do, which made the game go from scary to infuriatingly annoying.

In the end, I just cannot recommend The Childs Sight. There’s nothing this game does well, and the core gameplay is either a dull exercise in doing what the game tells you, or an exercise in frustration when you’re trying to figure out just what the heck the game wants you to do. Just do what I want you to do and don’t buy this game in the first place.

tl;dr – The Childs Sight is a “Clicker”-style First-Person Horror game where players take the role of a very young child trying to sleep while doing various things to fend off the monsters hiding in their bedroom. Even at this game’s best, it is a tedious exercise in just following directions. At its worst, it is pure frustration as you repeatedly die while trying to figure out what the game wants you to do. Do yourself a favor and just don’t bother playing this.

Grade: D-

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