Fear Equation Review (PC)

good
key review info
  • Game: Fear Equation
  • Platform: PC
  • Show system requirements
  • Gamepad support: No
  • Reviewed on:
Fear Equation resource gathering

Playing Fear Equation is a good way to make someone see human resource managers in a very different light, wondering about the choices that they have to make and how ruthless they might be in the post-apocalypse, when it emerges that they have the best skill set required to decide who lives and who dies.

The video game can also lead to fear of trains, fog, and dreams as it puts the gamer in the middle of a series of almost impossible situations that will force him to make choices and try to solve a series of complex challenges.

Fear Equation is not classic horror but does deliver solid character based scares as the player finds out more about the survivors that he guides around in the carriages of his train and about the sacrifices that all of them will have to make to have even the smallest chance of staying alive for more than a few days.

The game was developed and published by Screwfly Studios and can only be played on the PC.

Story

Fear Equation is set in a universe that combines ideas from the recent Snowpiercer and the older but more complex Pontypool, with the player thrown in the middle of a post-apocalyptic scenario that features a big train as well as a fog that moves around the world and can kill people via their nightmares.

Gamers become the engineer in charge if a powerful engine and its associated carriages, apparently the one way for civilians to escape the threats that lurk outside and maybe make it to safety, and they will need to deal with a wide variety of challenges.

Fear Equation offers no details on why the fog has appeared or how the military, who hunts all those moving around the map, or the Fearless, groups who worship this supernatural presence, interact with it.

Fear Equation attack
Fear Equation attack

The only concern for the engineer is to keep his train running and to make sure that he gets access to as much food, fuel and passengers as possible to keep them safe and to try to get them to a safe spot.

The story of the game is dynamic and in many ways created by the gamer himself through his choices and actions, with plenty of complex decisions that involve the allocation of resources, the way the factions that appear interact with each other and, in the end, who gets to live or die and based on what criteria.

Most of the narrative in Fear Equation is linked to radio messages that the train intercepts as it moves and the conversations that the various characters engage in when they go on missions, with some nice exchanges that make it even harder to make hard choices about them.

There's a lot of lore that the game hints in via messages but the fact that it's never spelled out offers an air of mystery that fits both the theme and the mechanics.

Gameplay

Fear Equation is a survival game where each day presents a new set of decisions, with the player in charge of resource allocation, train movement and missions design for the survivors who choose to live in its carriages.

The player interacts with the various systems by moving among three stations in the engine compartment, which adds some physicality to the experience, but the gimmick becomes too time-consuming soon, and the function keys can be used instead to jump quickly from one screen to another.

The train has a limited supply of initial fuel, and only five people are discovered by the launched emergency beacon, which means the priority is to find out more about the surrounding locations and the places where some scavenging can lead to some solid results.

The player can use the on board radio to find transmissions and based on them the train's route will be plotted but before more resources can be secured the survivors need to make it through the nights.

The fog that surrounds the train of Fear Equation somehow reads the dreams of all the characters, which the engineer himself can consult, and creates custom enemies that attack during the night guard phase.

Players can construct defensive structures to mitigate the threat they pose, but the various inhabitants can also be used to improve the train itself, to repair damage delivered or to, depending on the location, scavenge.

The randomly generated maps of Fear Equation feature buildings, both isolated and clustered together, where the train needs to stop so that a party of five characters can enter the fog, despite the clear risks that entails, to get fuel, food and more back to the other survivors.

A lottery, which the player can rig to make sure that the right set of skills are featured, is used to create the group that leaves the relative safety of the carriage and the engineer also get the options to schedule which building is first explored, what kind of equipment is used and what room of a building is searched during the limited time before the fog attacks.

These are the tensest moments of the entire game, with a very low fidelity radar screen allowing the gamer to track movement and to see how his small party fares, before a more detailed reports talks about the stuff they found and about the state they return in.

As more survivors climb aboard various carriages can get into open conflict, rebellions can appear, and hunger becomes very hard to manage, with sacrifices often required to make sure that the best survivors continue to lend their useful talents to train and its progress.

Fear Equation is unforgiving and even on easy difficulty, it is easy to run out of fuel or food while trying to get survivors or to focus too much on scavenging and fail to protect from the nightmare based attacks of the fog.

Graphics and audio

Fear Equation is limited when it comes to presentation but the mechanics, and the theme manage to create the illusion of a much bigger world that exist around the player character.

The interior of the engine compartment that gamers inhabit looks solid if not impressive, but the only detailed elements are the map for the train movement and the old computer that tracks radio signals and allows for scavenging missions to be planned.

Everything looks old and used, and the idea of only using a limited radar system to track survivors as they move among the rooms of locations means the game can create a lot of tension, especially when the player chooses to let them explore beyond the safe window because he really needs the resources.

The fog attack is also well presented graphically, with Dear Equation using shadows, half-seen forms and sounds to suggest the assaults that the survivors huddled in the carriages have to deal with.


The Good

  • Management mechanics
  • Atmosphere of mystery
  • Tension of scavenging

The Bad

  • Difficult even on easy
  • Can become repetitive

Conclusion

Fear Equation is easy to understand from a mechanical point of view but very hard to master, a video game that can evoke a lot of ideas with a few screens and plenty of data while giving players the freedom to solve challenges via trial and error.

I like the mystery created around the fog and the way it affects the world and the way the title manages to create a sense of familiarity with the survivors by using nothing more than a picture, some stats and the job they did before the apocalypse.

The gameplay of Fear Equation can be quickly learned from the tips offered during the tutorial and the solid manuals spread around the engine compartment, but there's no way for the player to gain complete control over the situation he is confronted with.

There's too little time or too little food or too little fuel or the survivors are too wounded or lack the equipment to keep the train running, which feels perfectly suited to the apocalyptic theme and forces players to face the fact that is very hard if not impossible to ever find a solution to all the challenges.

Fear Equation is a hard game that can frustrate players but offers a unique mix of management and terror that fans of both strategy and survival genres should try out.

story 8
gameplay 8
concept 9
graphics 7
audio 7
multiplayer 0
final rating 7.5
Editor's review
good
 

Fear Equation Images (20 Images)

Fear Equation resource gatheringFear Equation fog strikeFear Equation characterFear Equation choicesFear Equation dreams
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