Review 1
Purchased!
Ok the first thing red flag was right after I'm launch this game. I even thought
that this game is broken because no key on keyboard choose options in menu. Than
I've relized that's left mouse button! Strange decition, I didn't recall it from
any other game. You can't rebind keys and game has no support controller so it's
just add to the problem... Oh btw if you click right mouse button you've just
see your cursor he he "nice" coding. Main character has no diagonal animations,
so it's look very ankward then you're going this direction. You're just collect
stuff and there is no indication which key or item you had.
Review 2
Purchased!
Nice NES-stylized graphics and 2.79$ price won my attention, but I was wrong. It
would be better if this game was a freeware, like the other projects from
Candlelight Studios' website - no matter how much money you'll spend on it, you
will be frustrated.
Lack of content, poor gamedesign choices, primitive level-design, confusing
plotline, imbalanced difficulty, repetitive gameplay - all you need to do in
this game is to search the small rooms for keys and matches for your lamp (they
makes the flying enemy disappear). Do this for 10 minutes and the "Easy Mode"
ends - with a cliffhanger instead of ending, or, to be clear, with the beginning
of the story at the very end of the mode. Spoiler: for some reason our hero
wandered around the empty inn for 10 minutes, looking for a keys and avoiding an
enigmatic flying thing, and then someone killed him! What a twist! Do the same
thing on the "Extreme Mode" and don' t forget to find all the purple orbs to get
the second part of the story!
The "Extreme Mode" unravels a new layer of repetitiveness - now you have only
one life and the flying enemy kills you on the first touch. If there was no bug
that erases enemy from the map after pressing "Escape" button (or was it a
feature?; anyway, press "Escape" every time enemy appears on the screen) the
whole mode could be simply unplayable. It's absurdly hard to beat the game on
"Extreme" without it - maybe even impossible, because level design with
claustrophobic rooms and corridors always helps the enemy to clamp you in a
corner with lethal aftermath.
After 10 minutes of pressing the "Escape" button and clicking on every object of
the every room to find the orbs (remember that some orbs are just lying on the
floor, and they are invisible), when you will get to the same scene that ended
the "Easy Mode" and enter the portal, you'll find out that there is another 10
minutes of gameplay on a different map - and for some reason it's easier then on
the first one, because now when enemy touches you, you respawn not too far away
from the place of the contact. You have to walk around the convoluted maze-like
levels with the same textures and color patterns (that makes it pretty confusing
to navigate) in the search of keys, switches and doors, also you have to dodge
the randomly appearing ghosts.
And then the plot starts to move on. Spoiler:our hero was dead the whole time,
he died in another place, and The Inn is just an artificial world for the
tortured souls who seeks "more meaningful death". The entity who made it have
its own plans for the protagonist, and now he must meet it in "After-death"
world. When hero does so, it offers him a chance to hide from another entity who
we never heard about before and who is, suddenly, eager to "collect" him. There
is a hint in a dialogue that the entity he met is malicious, but actually we get
another cliffhanger instead of an ending.
While "The Inn" world is colorful and at least intriguing, the "After-death"
world is bleak and low-detailed - there is literally nothing in it but floor,
walls, doors and switches (and some ghosts that appears randomly); it's funny
that this fact is not represented in a screenshots.
This game is neither "awful" nor "so bad that it's good". It looks like the
result of an author's first try on gamedesign that ended predictably, despite
the fact that Candlelight Studios already made some short free games.
If "Empty Inn" was freeware, I would say "It's OK"; as a game that wants your
money - it seems to me that you will want your money back.
P.S.: I replayed "The Empty Inn" for a number of times hoping to find some
secrets or easter eggs, but found nothing except a bug with the opening of The
Inn's front door - if you will try to get the hero away from there, he will
simply go off the screen.
Review 3
Purchased!
This is a rather short 4 dollar game. Besides trying to unlock the hidden secret
story or to get all achievements it doesn't have much replay. The limited
lighting is a nice idea maybe if there were different arrangment of the levels
for the difficulties it would have had longer entertaining value for some users.
There are some random gliches ( I had a few gamethru with no monster ghost
chasing me fixed by shutting down and opening up the game). The controls are
simple (I kind of wish I could use a controller on it) The sound effects are
decent, story short, graphics for 8 bit not bad just a lot of Yellow (which you
can see in the screen shots).
So that being said if you know your getting a short dectective,
run-from-the-scary-thing (actully just don't let it see you your not going to
outrun it in the harder difficulties) game then its not bad. If you want to work
on getting the secret ending then this game can keep you playing for a while.
Pretty much what you see in the description and the screen shots is what you
get. For that reason I give this game a thumbs up becuase it does deliver what
it says it does. Its really a 3 out of 5 for short 8 bit style games.
Review 4
Purchased!
What??
2/10 - The Empty Inn wasn't so Empty. She should just take the frickin matches
and burn the place down.
Review 5
Purchased!
First off to note, this is not a very long game. It also has a couple of bugs
here and there. However, if you understand that, then I'd definitely say it's
worth a play if you can maybe pick it up on sale, because it's quite innovative
for what it is, and the retro vibe is very well done. It's a puzzle-focussed
exploration game, with a little bit of a story. I have yet to reach the secret
ending, and extreme mode has posed a challenge for me - so if you want to replay
it with a bit more challenge, there's a bit more meat to this little gem.
Review 6
Purchased!
Interesting Puzzle Game. That being said, this is more something I would expect
to find on Kongregate than Steam. 10-15 minutes of playtime, tops. I hope the
developer takes the profits from this game and attempts to develop something
with a bit more meat to it.
Review 7
Purchased!
Not worth $4.
The controls are really, really bad: Move with WASD, mouse button for actions...
No, you don't move the mouse. Just the button. There's a remap in the options
screen, but it doesn't work. You can't remap it to a keyboard key.
The gameplay itself is also vacuous. A small area surrounding you is lit up and
you navigate through small, not very complex rooms to find the next key, to open
the next door, repeat, etc.
Not worth money.
Review 8
Purchased!
So I bought this game on a whim, being that it is only a couple of dollars and I
like supporting indie developers. I can't say that I recommend buying it, but I
haven't fully completed it yet. I played it on normal mode, and beat it within
20 minutes. It seems that based on the game description & achievements that the
hardest difficulty has a longer story, and that there is probably a secret
ending as well.
Pros:
I actually like the core gameplay mechanic, which revolves around finding
matches to keep your lamp lit, and finding keys to progress through locked
doors. Since there are not too many matches, you have to keep moving at all
times and search everything you can. It ends up giving you a nice mild anxiety
as you try to find the next match.
Cons:
The game length is pretty short, although again I only played it on the mid tier
difficulty level, not the high level. Another thing that was mildly annoying
throughout the gameplay was collision. The doors you must go through are
basically just big enough for you to get through, so I bumped into the walls a
lot.
The Empty Inn 
