It’s not all that unusual for video game developers to make bold comments about their upcoming works. You’ll likely hear developers state just what they took inspirations from when crafting the game, so we took an interest when developers, Cheerdealers, made remarks that their Distrust video game was inspired by the instant classic film, John Carpenter’s The Thing.
To give a bit of insight regarding The Thing, this is a 1982 film directed by John Carpenter. The film overall follows a group of researchers who deal with an alien parasitic that takes control of various organisms. This resulted in a suspenseful science-fiction horror title where our protagonists fight over the paranoia of not knowing just who can be trusted.
Unfortunately, there’s not much to Distrust that really offers in terms of playing with paranoia for gamers. This is more of a resource management video game where players take on two survivors who must make their way around the map. Overall, players are tasked with exploring the map all the while keeping your survivors from dying.
Similar to The Thing, players are set in an arctic base which seemed to be used for purposes of alien activity. Being the only real survivors around, the game does offer a sense of being alone and having to survive using your own wits. Although, your survival is more or less is determined by normal elements.
Players will be spending plenty of time gathering supplies to keep warm, have their characters from going mad, and monitoring their stamina. All of these elements can be achieved by scavenging for supplies and being that the levels are randomly generated, you may find some playthroughs a bit easier than others which could lack on some crucial supplies.
Regardless, each time you go through the game, nothing changes up. You’re still managing resources so that means breaking into buildings, looking through various crates or shelves, and keeping track of your vital signs.
Unlike The Thing, players are fighting alien beings shaped as an orb and there are three variations of these orbs. Depending on the orb will determine how to kill it effectively such as an ice orb could be killed through the use of trapping it in a warm building.
Outside of these alien orbs and resource management, the game does offer a unique twist from time-to-time which is more of a gamble. These small little gambles could benefit our characters or harm them such as taking your chance on some slightly moldy food for its nutrition or dealing with food poisoning. You could chance it and be completely fine, but these little elements tossed into the game did make things a little more interesting.
Likewise, you could find yourself with some insanity issues for characters which may alter your reality, again this little addition makes it a bit more amusing to go through the game, though it’s nothing that really hits too much on the paranoia aspect that I would have expected from a title inspired by The Thing.
Furthermore, after you complete the game, players will be rewarded by adding three survivors to go through the game with up to fifteen characters that offer their own unique perk or attribute after completing various achievements or finding them on the map. Again, playing through the game really doesn’t change things up as you’ll still be managing your resources and hunting down the various building to scavenge. Instead, you could opt for a character that could deal with the cold better than the others.
All-in-all, Distrust is a decent title if you’re not expecting too much in terms of inspiration from The Thing. I think to go into the title as its own entity is a better idea because it’s still a nice resource management style video game.
Currently, you can pick a digital copy of Distrust up from the Steam marketplace for 20% off.
Full Disclosure: A copy of a video game was provided by the publisher for purposes of this review.
