Rise of Insanity

Very good psychological thriller. Quite short however. Some amazing use of effects throughout though. Well worth picking up at the right price.

this game wasn't what i expected it to be but while there was some disappointment it didn't ruin my day.
they did not reinvent the wheel with this game but compared to the many other "indie" games in the horror genre this one is actually worth playing and an honest effort to deliver a worthy experience.
graphics are decent and the story is not bad but...
well i guessed the whole story and the final plot twist within the first 5 minutes of playing. while i would like to take all the credit for that achievement the developers really didn't hide the clues all that well.
scares are decent and the developers didn't throw literally every cheap jump scare in the book at the player. just some...
while most other indie horror games are plain cheap & stupid this game is in fact one of the better & scarier ones.
it took 2.5 hours to finish the game (ocd-grade exploration) plus some extra time for 100% achievements.
not a great game but not bad either. recently i have played a lot of indie horror games WAY worse than this one.
get it cheap when it's on sale if horror is your genre.

I am pretty picky with horror games. I tend to love games that have horror themes and some dark, sinister atmosphere but I hate stealth gameplay so run and hide horror games are not fun for me. Rise of Insanity is luckily more of a horror themed walking sim so it is much more up my alley. You play as a psychologist named Dr. Stephen Dowell who seems to be going through some kind of mental break. You will solve light puzzles; read newspaper clippings and notes; watch videos; and find objects that will all help jog the Dr’s memory as to just what happened to his wife and child as well as how it ties into a recent patient of his. In between this will be hallucinations and general unpleasant sites as well as being transported to various palces such as the Dr’s office; home and property.
The puzzles are very straight forward and won’t give much trouble save for maybe one where you need to figure out a combo to a lock. The soundtrack is fantastic and the overall atmosphere is very well done. It has a good amount of creepiness to it and the plot is awesome. Without spoiling it I can say that I had a few theories throughout the game and was wrong but was happy to be as I much preferred the actual ending over what I thought happened. The graphics aren’t bad but aren’t great either. I’d say they’re middle of the pack as far as Unity games go. The daylight section and lighting are well done but the little details such as walls; furniture; and objects are just average. There are a lot of jump scares in the game beware. I caution that because some people find them a cheap tactic and don’t like them but that being said they are effective and seemed to compliment the atmosphere in my opinion.
I played Rise of Insanity on Linux. It didn’t crash on me once. There is three settings for ambient occlusion; four settings for AA; one main detail setting and a vsync option. Not a ton but enough to do some light tweaking. There is support for framerates above 60. I played the game maxed out at 1920*1080 and was usually around 70-90 FPS aside for one small section. This section was the only part of the game that took place in daylight instead of darkness or indoors and the framerate plummeted down to 28-50 for it. Luckily the section is only 4-5 minutes long. I’m not surprised as the game uses the Unity engine and in my experience a lot of games have weird issues with drops in performance. That being said I think the culprit here was the ambient occlusion level as I saw my FPS rise by about 15 FPS in other sections by turning it from high to off. Even with the jump I would have expected better given the visuals. There is no manual save options just checkpoints but there is a checkpoint every 5-6 minutes so it’s bearable. Alt-Tab doesn’t work sadly. The game uses up 9.41GB of storage. My system used around 4-5GB of system RAM and 20-32% of my CPU while playing.
I finished Rise of Insanity in 114 minutes. It is not a long game but it has a great story that kept me interested. I would rather play a 114 minute game that I enjoyed over a 60 hour game I found to be bland. It didn’t feel rushed and didn’t overstay it’s welcome so it is a good length to me.I paid $5.74 CAD for the game and can say it is easily worth it’s current asking price of $11.49 CAD. I would even say it is worth $20 CAD based on enjoyment alone. If you enjoy games such as Layers of Fear, The Park, Kona, Tacoma, The Station or Soma I would recommend Rise of Insanity.
My Score: 9/10
My system:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 19.1.4 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Manjaro 18.0.4 | Mate 1.22.1 | Kernel 5.2.8-1-MANJARO

I just picked the game up recently and am enjoying it quite a bit.
Does it give the player a sense of progression?
For me it does. You have objectives which come up as you explore the area where the story unveils itself and your progress is always saved so there is no worry about repeating things due to having to quit the game at a moment's notice.
Is the story interesting?
Its keeping me in the game as the world tells its story as i explore. Am a big horror and b-movie fan so take that into account. Horrible for some can be paradise for me :)
Does it offer any puzzles (such as the ones in Amnesia for example)?
Not really. It is pretty much finding keys or triggering events by exploration. So far it does not feel insulting and the pacing is well done.
How's the optimization?
Am playing on a i7 8770, 16gb of ram with a RTX 2060 6gb vram video card. Everything is running at max setting with no issues and i have yet to crash.
I think the jump scares are properly paced between the quiet exploration moments and the wtf was that. There are plenty of them but for me they don't feel shallow or just there for the sake of being there.
RISE OF INSANITY, BUY IT! PLAY IT! Feel the terror of all normality leaving YOUR MIND! YOUR LIFE! as a morbid morally putrid oozing madness takes hold transfiguring your reality into a NIGHTMARE BEYOND BELIEF! BEYOND REDEMPTION!!! AiiiEEEEGH!!!

Very nice psychological horror point&click. Heavy immersive atmosphere and jumpscares that really caught me off guard. Interesting story, quite complex, you need to carefully read every note. ~3h to finish with 100% achievements. This indie thriller deserves a chance from any horror game fan. Recommended!
My Curator Page

This is what I call an old school game made by people with imagination. One of my favourite games, I played on an Amiga 500 and they rarely make games that interesting as they used to be. The graphics have gone super high quality, but the actual atmosphere of the game is like salt that has lost it's taste. This game captures that glimpse of the games of the past, very good work guys and I am talking from a lot of experience, though I do not play games so much anymore. I got this game for half price on a sale, but it is worth the full price of £7.19. I mean seriously to pay for a decent game, that sort of money is nothing these days, especially when a lot of the money (trees bare fruit and grow for free by the way) is in the hands of less than 1% of the population, which shows that the developer really cares about what they do and not about the money, cause for a game of this kaliber they could easily charge £20.
There is so much colour to this game despite it is pretty dark in essence. I played this game in VR and it is meant for VR! I played it on psychedelics, so despite I am hardcore, that lady in that room lying down covered with a sheet freaked me out the most. This is like a preview to the reality of actual inferno, if you ever been there. I've been there and it is not a nice place, a nightmare that makes you believe it is forever and it is super scary, a trillion more times more scary than Rise of Insanity in VR on LSD, but the worst part with Inferno is the state of existence of the lack of the existence of God, that is the worst of it all. Good thing is that inferno is empty already, it expired some time ago, so everything is heading in the right direction. Forgive me, I got carried away, but I like to educate humans on the matters of reality, despite I am often misunderstood and thought of plain crazy or stupid. The day will come my friends when you shall see the Light and know what I know. Until then, keep safe and healthy. Blessings to you all and your families and if you are a fan of horror and got a good VR equipment with a decent GPU+CPU then I super highly recommend you buy this game and I dare you to play it on acid, it is meant to be played like that, otherwise you cannot appreciate the horror to the extremes. שלום לכל העולם. Zajebista robota bracia!

I loved that game! It has a very deep story and some jumpscares. It´s pretty short, maybe 2 hours if you take your time, but it´s worth it.