Serena (Free)

Serena
by Senscape - January, 2014

Available at:
Steam Play for FREE




How long has it been? A man sits in a distant getaway cabin waiting for his wife Serena. Where is she? Things in the cabin evoke memories, and the husband comes to a disturbing realization...

This short point-and-click adventure is the result of a massive collaborative effort between dozens of fans and designers of adventure games. Rallying to support the venerable genre and its passionate community, these developers have brought together a grim and highly detailed horror story in what is the largest, possibly even the first, game project of its kind. Talents include crew from renowned indie companies Senscape, CBE Software, Infamous Quests, Digital Media Workshop, Guys from Andromeda, and many more.

• A (twisted) love letter to the adventure game community
  
• Over 40 contributors provided their wit and talents
  
• Extremely depressive mood, and a bit of fear here and there
  
• A haunting story that will challenge your intellect (and temerity)
  
• Amazing voice acting by legendary adventure game designer Josh Mandel
  
• More awesome acting by popular video producer Pushing Up Roses
  
• Yet another overwhelmingly astonishing surprise cameo by an ex-designer from Sierra!
  
• Did we mention the gut-wrenching atmosphere?
  

Serena (Adventure)

We have no options, no interface to work with, no saving... If you're going to play, be sure to have one and a half to two hours to devote to the game.  When I hit the Esc key, it locked up the game, and I had to start over (luckily, I was only about a minute in   )  You can use the keyboard to look around, but the mouse is a bit less cumbersome.  There is a full 360 view, but no scrolling movement.

The game is all about the cabin you're in, and interacting with the environment.  You'll want to click on everything multiple times, until you start getting repeating messages.  Everything you see evokes memories, and the game is all about the memories -- the story.  Explore everything, and eventually you'll hit a trigger, then you'll need to check everything again until you hit the next trigger.  At this point you go back to everything you could interact with, and keep "remembering" until there's no option to do so anymore.  At last you will reach the final sequence.

We have no inventory, so if you're unable to do something right away, you've not hit the right trigger.  Just come back to it later.

The story... well I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that by the end, I was having a feeling of having read something by Edgar Allan Poe.  Bleak.  Disturbing.  Silence.

I was not able to actually watch the entire ending sequence.  I accidentally clicked again when I shouldn't have, and so I missed the last 30 seconds or so.  Luckily, Youtube is my friend, and I was able to watch it there!

If any of this interests you, give it a try -- after all, it's free!

This is a wonderful game.  Very eerie!  And sad, at the same time.