Notes: Only run when the monster is not yet in an area since 10 minutes has not expired or when the monster is relatively near you. This will attract the monster towards you, and even if you hide, it will find and kill you. Therefore, it is recommended that when the monster is in an area, walk or crouch walk to be as quiet as possible so the monster does not hear you. Inspired by true events, award winning Do Not Open is a tragic story about one man’s battle to retain sanity and fight to shut out the voices in his head.

Do Not Open Review - Gaming Respawn Do Not Open Review - Gaming Respawn

Whether you choose to play through in the game’s standard mode or the escape room mode, which includes a timer, at some point in each room, that malevolent being I mentioned earlier will barge in and start hunting you down, and this was my least favourite part of the game. I appreciated the added tension from a high-stake chase, but it was incredibly frustrating to complete the puzzles and have escape in sight, only to be caught at the last second, especially when the solutions to the puzzles change each time you die. Freed from the basement of the house after solving the first puzzle, you’re then free to enter numerous doors, though you’ll end up in the next puzzle room regardless – your door choice doesn’t really matter. While much of Do Not Open is randomised, the puzzles themselves remain fixed in each featured room. In the dance room, for example, you’ll be trying to work out which colour is associated with each symbol so you can play the correct notes on a piano, but each time you enter they’ll be randomised to keep you on your toes.It’s debateable whether most players will have the patience and persistence to see Do Not Open through until its end. It’s a shame, because the premise here is interesting, and the puzzles themselves are mostly clever and fun to solve. The entity is its downfall, an ill-conceived obstacle that’s relentless and a little bit broken. Rather than make Do Not Open scary, it makes it needlessly frustrating. Enter one of the side room doors, and in this area, you will go up the stairs and enter the room with a couch and TV. On the couch is a TV flyer with a Morse code decipher for the alphabet. When you interact with the TV, it will give a four-letter word code that is in Morse code. You will need to decipher what the four-letter word is. Go downstairs to the dog statue that is near the pool table. Interact with the dog’s collar to put in the four-letter word and get the first half part of the key. Dance Room (Press R2 when in this area to see how much time you have until the monster enters the area. It is only 10 minutes maximum. Break any barriers on any doors as you more than likely need these to be removed to be successful in this area.) Kitchen (Press R2 when in this area to see how much time you have until the monster enters the area. It is only 10 minutes maximum. Break any barriers on any doors as you more than likely need these to be removed to be successful in this area.) With interesting escape room mechanics and a degree of replayability, Do Not Open had the potential to be a great game, even with its buggy launch, but I was left feeling a little disappointed. I enjoyed the puzzles. There was a nice variety of simple and complex puzzles, and I enjoyed the added challenge of the solutions changing each time you die, but the relentlessness of the demonic entity was frustrating at times. It’s hard to solve puzzles when you’ve got this monster prowling about, after all. Perhaps Do Not Open tries too hard to fit into the categories of both escape room game and survival horror when it should have focused on and perfected one . That said, there is a lot of fun to be had if you have the patience to see the game through to its end, and the PS4 version of the game, which is due to release early in 2023, is planned to be fully compatible with PSVR, which will certainly make for an interesting experience.

Do Not Open - Metacritic Do Not Open - Metacritic

I enjoyed the music and sound effects though. They do a stellar job at creating tension as you make your way through Judith’s manor, especially the thumping that takes place whenever our demonic monster gets closer. There were certainly a few times when it had my heart racing. Guest Room (Press R2 when in this area to see how much time you have until the monster enters the area. It is only 10 minutes maximum. Break any barriers on any doors as you more than likely need these to be removed to be successful in this area.) When you think about it, survival horror games have always essentially been escape room experiences.

Old School Survival Horror: Designed around the true survival horror values of vulnerability and fear –with mechanics such as permadeath and an emphasis on hiding instead of fighting. I almost gave up entirely, but I decided to wait for the delayed day one patch to drop before passing judgement, and thankfully, it fixed all the problems I had been having. I even noticed a few extra cosmetic details, accessibility options, and the ability to skip cutscenes had all been added in. Below is a walkthrough of the game as mentioned in Stage 2: not seen, never caught, and always solve all puzzles. There’s a new wave of horror games that are truly embracing the escape room format, however, and the latest of them is Do Not Open. Trapping you inside a house, your house, it’s instantly clear that something isn’t quite right. And the only way to escape the nightmare you’ve been thrown into is to visit a sequence of rooms, solving the puzzles found in each so that you can escape. And did we mention there’s a giant paranormal entity pursuing you? Well, yeah, that. To me, the graphics were a bit of a mixed bag. The in-game graphics were solid, for the most part. The manor itself was fairly detailed, leaning heavily onto the stereotypical haunted house aesthetic with all the dirt, dust and ominous messages on the wall, but the character models and cutscene graphics looked more like they belonged to a PS2-era game rather than one launching straight on the PS5.