Don’t Let Him In Review

Don’t Let Him In tells the story of three friends on their way to see their favorite band. On their drive on a highway, they come across a hitchhiker. After debating whether or not to pick him up, they opt to pick him up; as good samaritans. Unfortunately, the longer the mysterious passenger is in the car, the more things start to get loopy. Can you survive the night?

Don’t Let Him In is a third person psychological horror game where players will have to roam around and explore specific areas and find hints and clues in order to somehow survive this nightmare. You’ll get to visit and explore a handful of locations and discover clues about the mystery shrouding the town.

When you’re walking around, instead of a health meter, you have a sanity meter. As it drops, you’ll briefly see things and hear strange sounds; to reflect the character losing his sanity in these nightmarish circumstances. Finding coffees will replenish your sanity meter.

In the latter part of the game, you’ll find a few weapons (two to be exact) to defend yourself. The baseball bat is awkward to use but the shotgun is efficient to use (the situation you use it however makes is clunky a bit).

The game features a PS1 visual style as nice throwback to older, classic survival horror games from the good ol’ 32 bits era of gaming. Each area is designed pretty straight forward and easy to explore. They are also properly creepy despite the old school visual style (and also given it’s a small/short indie game). The voice acting is surprisingly solid; great delivery and emotion through their characters. The soundtrack is pretty barebone and forgettable.

Another indie game that was released too soon. I saw in the credits that people QA’ed it, but you wouldn’t believe it as you play it. One of the characters’ head and a car at some point were full on purple. If you accidentally switch languages (it will happen, more on that shortly), you can’t revert to English without resetting the game. The pause menu navigation is clunky; hard to tell which option is highlighted. So much so that the first time I used pause, I thought it was impossible to leave the pause menu without resetting. And also for some reason the Achievement for game completion unlocked at 50% of the game.

Don’t Let Him In is an enjoyable, if not short, psychological horror gaming experience. There’s a lot of potential; loved the PS1 style visuals. This could’ve made a great AAA/grander scale game. It gave me The Chant vibes, but if you ordered from Wish (and a more twisted storyline). It’s hard to recommend due to the bugs and shortness of it, but if you see it on sale, there are worst ways to spend 30 minutes.