Project 13 is another entry in the rapidly-growing 3D spot the difference genre.
If you consume much gaming content on YouTube, you’ve probably seen The Exit 8 crop up here and there. If you aren’t familiar, it’s a game in which you walk along the hallway towards the exit of a subway station, only to find that you’re stuck in a loop. You need to spot if there are any inconsistencies in the loop, and take appropriate action, and if you manage to complete eight loops, you escape! There have been a few imitators appearing, with knock-offs like Exit 9 and quite good twists such as Chilla’s Art’s Shinkansen 0. Project 13 tries to follow the mould, but seems to miss the point by adding a more direct horror twist to the proceedings.
Much like in other games of this genre, there’s no real story. Apparently you play as someone being forced to find anomalies in these corridors in the hopes of escaping your captors. Nothing is made clear and it’s probably best to just ignore that. In real terms, you are sent down a hallway in a mental health clinic, and you need to find if anything is different to the ordinary. If there’s an anomaly, you need to report it and head to the exit, and if not you simply leave and head into the next corridor. If you can do this correctly thirteen times consecutively, you win! If you make a mistake, you head back to the start and try again.
This is why I’ve taken to describing these as 3D spot the difference games, as that’s almost exactly what you’re doing. The only additional factor is that you need to remember what the original version looks like, rather than having one to refer to. You’ll need to check everything, from posters and people, to floor tiles and fixtures. Some differences are very obvious, whilst others are incredibly subtle.
Initially, it’s quite enjoyable to find some of the more bizarre differences that are there. More overt ones like a wheelchair bound lady seemingly eating a budgie are quite amusing, whilst subtly creepy changes in a wall painting are satisfying to spot. It quickly becomes a drag though when you’re trawling through the hallway counting the light fixtures or the orientation of drinks cans.
And this is really the problem with Project 13. The games it has taken inspiration from are quite sparsely decorated, with a few posters to check and a couple of character models spread along a short hallway. This game has a lot more clutter, including several characters, lots of wall decoration, and specific sound effects to listen out for. Considering you need to complete thirteen runs through, this makes the game a bit of a slog. Once you’ve seen the scary moments in a few of the anomalies, you’ll be almost grateful to see them again as they mean it’s at least a quick pass through without needing to check every detail.
More than that though, this game somewhat misses the point. The unsettling nature of The Exit 8 and Shinkansen 0 are significantly aided by the sheer mundanity of their locations. You’ve been on a train carriage. You’ve walked along a subway station corridor. They are basic places you’d see every day that you are now trapped in until you’ve memorised the things you’ll have passed a hundred times in real life. Project 13 being set in a mental institution misses this point in the pursuit of a horror version of games that are so popular right now. The creepiness of the other games isn’t in the possibility of monsters. It’s in the sheer drabness of reality taken to an endless extreme, with the occasional levity of a frightening moment. Walking down the jumpscare hallway loses all this.
It doesn’t help that the game’s camera is utterly nauseating too. I don’t get motion sickness, but the way your character’s vision moves and sways, even when standing perfectly still made my stomach turn more than a little. For some reason the camera insists on gradually panning down and to the left as well. I checked my controller thoroughly and couldn’t find any stick drift causing it, so the developers actively chose to make this a feature, which seems insane. At least there are achievements now, which weren’t there when I initially played the game.
I’ll give a little bit of credit for the inclusion of a Hardcore mode. It’s a neat idea as you are pursued along the corridor by a wall that continually moves you forward and won’t allow you to go back and check anything behind you. It does a lot to increase the pace, but you really need to know the hallway inside and out to have a chance of completing this.
But a neat inclusion like that can’t save Project 13 from the dull gameplay, painful camera, and slew of visual glitches. I’m sure we’ll see a lot more games inspired by this popular new genre, so it won’t be long before you can play things a lot more enjoyable than Project 13.
Project 13 is available now on PC, Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch.
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