REVIEW – This game feels old-school, which means it was taking a risky swing. You could even say it didn’t quite pull it off, since in several areas it only manages to be average at best – and that naturally raises the question of what the point of playing it is. The answer is: not much, although we can at least say it ended up being somewhat distinctive… but that alone isn’t enough.

Two friends, a ritual, and then only one friend left – it is a pretty weak starting point.

Isometric survival horror

This lead is not a joke or a typo: IHTP is an isometric-view survival horror that does not give much context after the intro. The acting is also roughly on the level of Barátok közt. We try to figure out what even happened, everything is pitch-dark, and we are left with crafting. We control Elena, we have to find Lout, and along the way we will also get a few more quests. As we move forward, we run into more people and more obstacles. And sooner or later we will more or less get lost in the whole thing, with no clue what is actually going on. IHTP will not tell us what to do. We have to rely on our own instincts, and on the quest log, which can provide a very small hint about what we should be doing at any given moment. On top of that, we also get a map that gradually fills up with more drawings, because that is how Elena lets out her creativity. And it is not only in this way that IHTP leaves the player alone, because I cannot really recall it ever telling us, for example, that you can set spiders on fire with torches. Our home base – where we can build things – also feels a bit neglected.

This is the location where we will create most of our resources, and over time we will be upgrading them. This is where crafting comes into the picture, because in IHTP it is what determines progression: the more new areas we want to explore, the more new items we need to find. It helps a lot that many of these can be found scattered throughout the world. For example, if there is a mine, we will open it by finding a stick of dynamite somewhere. And for crafting, logic will often not be enough, because we will also need blueprints – so in that sense IHTP delivers exactly what we have seen many times in other games. In the end, everything will come down to gameplay. Unfortunately, in this area too the game is only average at best, because the controls are crap. You can get used to the DualSense all you want, but in combat, when we try to use an item that requires throwing, it feels so unnatural that we mess it up a lot. Our weapons do not seem particularly powerful either, and sometimes you genuinely get the feeling of to hell with all of this, because once again what we are using is just a bit weaker than what we would actually need. Even so, you still cannot call it one of the worst games of the year (and let us be honest: at this level, that would still be too early…).

You see it, you do not see it, you see that you do not see it

So yes, we did say the game uses an isometric perspective. There is a small catch: we will not see everything in every situation, and that is especially annoying – or at the very least a major hindrance – during fights, because sometimes our success may depend precisely on whether we survive something or not. And let us not forget that this is a survival horror, so crafting will not always help us out here. And yet we still have to say that this game is not that bad.

You could call it distinctive, and its visual style is also acceptable (slightly comic-book-like, and that can grab your attention, so that is definitely a good decision on the developers’ part). Despite that, that certain doctor around Elena’s mother is going to die quickly, because – no joke – the platinum trophy can be popped in 9-10 hours. That is laughably little. And if we only wanted to finish IHTP, half of that would be enough. There is also no replay value. And the near-mandatory patches we get these days will not help much with that. So how do you even rate this game? It can be very subjective who thinks what, and maybe it is not a coincidence that opinions are split.

The doctor is dead

We have heard this line many times before, and because of that it may sound a bit worn out, but I Hate This Place is not disastrously bad. It is not an outstanding work, but it might be worth one playthrough if you can get used to the isometric view. It is true that the controls are not perfect, it is also true that the narrative is forgettable and somewhat underdeveloped, and the game as a whole gives off an unfinished feeling, but solving its mysteries can still be exciting. Then you reach the end, and from that point on there is not much reason to pick it up again. This game is a one-off, and in the end it will sit there among the rest in our digital library. So a 6.5/10 is the rating it deserves. Could it have been better? Absolutely. But even then it still would not have been something we would call a must-buy.

-V-

Developer: Rock Square Thunder
Publisher: Feardemic
Release date: January 29, 2026.
Genre: isometric survival horror