Uventa

It is a dark gloomy night; lightning distantly flashes. You're a security guard taking a cigarette break at a rest area on the grounds; the weather is turning bad and rain will be there soon. Time to make the rounds around the old abandoned school before the rain comes. You put out your smoke, get out your flashlight and walk up the path to the school's gate and enter. You're startled by a distant crashing sound - the local kids must be inside again, you had better scare them off the property! You begin looking around the school for their entry point. The school is decrepit and eerie with the dark stormy night adding to the effect. The rain has started and you hear a crash again; you move towards the sound and find a door ajar and enter. The door closes behind you. Now your adventure begins.
Uventa is the first release on Steam by developer Black Rat, released in late August 2018 and self-published; it is tagged as a Violent First Person Horror Indie with Gore. The game's story is built around real-life events, and some may find the story’s conclusion disturbing. Built with the Unreal 4 engine, the graphics are vibrant and sharp, with an original soundtrack from a lost era. You must explore the interactive environment and solve interesting puzzles while avoiding the ax-wielding maniac that roams the halls of the school. The game does not rely on cheap jump scares, it is exploration, puzzle-solving and hide and seek from a killer who is inside with you. There are collectibles scattered through the environment to gather, though I didn't see a real purpose for them besides adding some interactivity to the title. There are no achievements for collecting them, nor a way to view them once you have picked them up.
The game has a very nice visual style, as you can expect from the Unreal Engine. A lot of work went into setting the atmosphere. The voice acting is in Russian, but there are English subtitles. There are many settings to choose from in order to customize the game quality for the best performance on your pc, including reconfigurable key bindings. There have been some bugs, and the developers have released 2 patches already. I did find a couple of bugs myself; I will report to them to aid in getting the game to a polished state. The interior of the school is littered with various works of graffiti, which is a great distraction in the otherwise dark eerie building, along with posters and artwork from an era gone-by still clinging to the school's walls. The game has a couple of interesting mechanics that I really liked, but I will leave you to discover them for yourself. With an interesting mix of puzzles to solve, you have nothing but your flashlight and your wits to bring to the conclusion of the story. You must solve all of them while avoiding the entity that is roaming the halls.
I did have a couple of game-breaking bugs, and in some areas of the game, crouching will result in you falling into the game map and being unable to proceed, requiring that you restart your last save point. I also had issues with clipping into doors, resulting in being unable to move. You can also stand in a door, close it, and clip into it to see on both sides. These are being reported so they can patch the title as soon as possible. With practice, you can avoid these actions for the most part. I just try to avoid crouching unless I really have to, and try to open the doors with some distance between it and me.
Once these issues are fixed, the title will be a lot easier to enjoy; looking forward to a patch to address it soon. The gameplay was fun and I loved the atmosphere and the way it progresses. The cuts scenes are well done and add a great element to the title. I loved all the visual art also (I have a weakness for graffiti and lore, which is abundant throughout the game).
Are you prepared to find the Truth?
6/10
Uventa: A Creepy Horror with a Brutal Shocking Ending!
Pros
+Steam Achievements
+Creepy Atmosphere
+Great Art Style
Cons
-Few Bugs on Release
Key provided by developer/publisher for review purposes. Any opinions expressed are entirely my own!
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Another quick review appears!
Here are the simple reasons I give this game a yes, but only for hardcore fans of horror games... I cannot really recommend it to the common mortals due to the technical issues it has:
GOOD ASPECTS
Visuals are really, really excellent.
Some good puzzle ideas.
Story is ok although classic.
Voices.
No cheap jumpscares! Rare!
Discreet soundtrack... well, it fits.
Automatic checkpoints.
NOT-SO-GOOD ASPECTS
AI which can instant-kill you, frustrating. Sometimes it can be buggy.
It's easy to clip out of the map when you crouch near some objects.
Huge problem of optimization... memory leak? The more you play the slower the game is. Restart the game when it becomes unplayable.
You can hold only one special object, useful to know for puzzles requiring different parts to find. I thought there was a bug and restarted the game.
I don't really care about those but achievements are broken; no unlocks.
MISC. INFORMATION
Game is short (it took me one hour and a half to finish it).
For its current price it's fine.
Conclusion
If you are into horror games with a gameplay à la Amnesia, if you like Slavic environments (i.e. like in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise) and are not too exigent regarding collision/other bugs plus problematic optimization, looking at the cheap price... why not getting it? Careful though, some technical problems are degrading the gameplay. You can always get refunded if you did not like the experience anyway.
Recommended especially to the aficionados of the genre.

Uventa is a Russian horror game released by publisher/developer BlackRat. The story is vague and translucent, but you play as an unnamed night guard who is for whatever reason stationed at an abandoned school. Hearing glass breaking in the distance, he figures that a bunch of kids have broken in to trash the place and goes about investigating the commotion. He soon encounters ghostly whispers, entities that aren't really there, and a really angry dude hellbent on cleaving him to death. There are no notes to elaborate further on what's going on, but the ending does explain the "true story" that was the inspiration for the game.
For most of the gameplay, you'll find yourself running from the aforementioned cleaver man and trying to dodge him by breaking his line of sight, or hiding in closets. He's one of those annoying one-hit kill bosses, and he appears almost constantly. It adds more frustration than challenge, but he's also easily bypassed most of the time. The rest of what you'll be doing is needlessly collecting coins and stamps, finding keys, and also solving some pretty straight-forward puzzles; you know, the usual "we're out of ideas" horror schtick. There are also some technical problems, in that you can fall through the floor, see through objects, and actually cause the AI to get stuck through the floor. This is a Russian game, and the only element that has been translated are the subtitles, but generally everything is easy to figure out even for English players.
In the end, though, Uventa isn't bad for a first-time release. In fact, it's really not bad at all for a $1.19 CAD game, either. Very few titles at this price, especially ones that come out of Russia, aren't scams or asset flips; so that says something in itself. The campaign only lasts about an hour, but there is a very thick and tense atmosphere to be enjoyed here. The original (not free from Incompetech) soundtrack aids in creating these feelings. It's a good start, and a solid hotfix could iron out the few problems that invade the gameplay. If you don't like enemies that kill you in one hit, this will be a bane to you, but if you don't mind that kinda thing and have a buck burning a hole in your pocket, there are worse ways to spend your evening. Oh, and a word of warning to enthusiasts... the achievements are broken.
Rating: 3.0/5.0 - Average, can take it or leave it.
The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore
The developer provided a free copy of this game for review, through The Horror Network's Curation page.

It's okay. It's quite rough round the edges but it's just engaging enough to be passable, and for the price you can't really complain.
Basically you're a night watchman, looking after a school. You hear what you think are kids messing around and breaking windows and pretty soon you're knocked unconscious and dragged to the basement by a burly man.
The basic gameplay is you explore the area, pick up codes and keys, and unlock more of the school. And occasionally there's a section with a burly man that you have to run from. What is odd is that sometimes if you die to them, you respawn exactly where you are, and the man has gone. Takes a bit of the tension and challenge out of the game.
Story is a backseat for most of the way and then there's a hilarious 'revelation' at the end which comes completely unearned out of left field and was almost enough to push this to a not recommended. But not quite. Fun for an hour's play or so.

Very atmospheric game. It reminds me on Outlast and Penumbra. You feel the abondance of these old Lost Places in a Post Apocalyptic Area. Graphic, Story, the dark light and sounds are perfect for this scenario. Yes, some small bugs are present, but these are not affect the gameplay negatively.
Positive is also, that the game is not too fast. This is good and lets you check out all the places without stress.
Combined with this very low price i give it 9/10. I would buy it again and i think i will also play this game again after a couple of time.

Despite all the negative reviews, I would like to write a few positives. The game has an interesting atmosphere (which is not based on cheap jumpscares), the graphics are very good, I liked the voices/music very much. I also loved the fact, that the developers have put some much effort in location details - I played the game for nearly 2 hours (altough the game itself is extremely short and can be completed in 30mins), because I really enjoyed admiring all those, real-life Soviet-era posters. Fantastic job! As a polish guy, I would like to Thank the developers for the polish accent in the game - a big smile appeared on my face when I found it.
But to be honest, the game also has it flaws. The enemies are blind as bats, and dumb as doorknobs: they seem to have no AI at all, and are very easy to predict and outwit. The (very few) puzzles might be interesting and fun, but are rather simple..well, maybe except the one at the end of the game that requires reading Russian - it took me a while to figure out that I should click on the screen to type something on the keyboard.
Also, at some moments the game had problems with optimization: the frame rate was able to drop below (around) 20fps on a GTX 1060, i7-7700 and Win7. I hope that the Devs will fix that someday.
If You`re looking for a cheap, one go ("finish once and forget") adventure which has good atmosphere and requires almost no skill to play - this game is definetly worth recommending. If You`re looking for an alpha-high class-premium production, You will surely be dissapointed. Personally, I loved the game.
P.S. As for the ending. SERIOUSLY? He had THAT item all the time with him?!

Creepy atmosphere with the odd tense moment of hiding, sound design is okay except that cheesy dialogue.
The game is very short and involves running around an abandoned school. There are hidden coins and stamps/cards well hidden throughout the school.
The ending was a let down but this game is still decent for the price.