I love games that make me feel intense emotions - whether it's annoyance, anxiety, sadness, excitement... A lot of those can be felt when playing horror games. I remember needing to have someone else watch me play just so I feel 'less alone' when playing horror games and having a camera pointed at me gives the same feeling lol. So I finally was able to force myself to do it.
I think the adrenaline makes me feel alive in that sense so even though I'm absolutely terrified, I still kept playing the games and want to finish them.
Welcome To Kowloon is a horror game in a walking simulator genre that was released just last year. Walking simulator games are often pretty "chill" in a sense that you don't have other challenges like killing an enemy or solving puzzles with a time limit. Instead, you just explore the area and maybe solve a few puzzles here and there and learn the story.
We start as a student who opted for cheap housing. Well, of course, cheap enough to have a lot of disadvantages.
We find ourselves in the walled city of Kowloon which was apparently based in a real city in China (at the time) which was also the densest place in the world before it got demolished in 1994.
I kept mispronouncing the city in the video despite knowing how to properly pronounce it lol.
There were already a few jumpscares at the beginning of the game which just consists mostly of loud noises and some random subtle appearances of 'residents'.
While looking for our landlady, we find some errr reasons to just gtfo there. Apparently, we've been scammed... so the goal changed from searching for the landlady to finding ways to leave the place.
Our first jumpscare happened... T_T
The big bummer here was that I was using a noise suppression filter by NVIDIA Broadcast and I didn't know it filtered out my screams. So I sounded stupid hahah and I only found out after recording. Apparently it is an ongoing problem for streamers especially with high pitched voices/sounds like high excitement and such. It is a great tool as it is very effective of filtering out the noise in my fan but apparently not good if you're gonna record stuff like this.
We then have to look for items to help us escape.
The jumpscares were very effective cos they would appear when you LEAST expect it. I mean who would expect to get jumpscared by looking at a picture frame??? The scares would also not appear when you expect it, making you on high alert all the time.
One of my complaints was how the door was made haha. Like it would just swing but won't also close. Sometimes it blocks your way since it won't open or close properly but thankfully there was only one chase scene in the game so that doesn't really affect you that much. :P
The game gets pretty dark as well that sometimes I get delayed with my reactions cos I only realize the scares late lol. They are really good with keeping you scared and I was tense all the time. What I hate as well was the random loud noises haha.
Finally after being able to get out, we learn the story of Kowloon and the game ends there...
I enjoyed the game despite it mostly jumpscares. I think it was fun exploring the place despite the darkness. At least the flashlight has no battery limits or something like other games which could make it a real challenge. The story is also really creepy especially when you find out what also happened in the city of Kowloon in real life.
