………………………………Moderator Comment………………………………

I’m still playing this game; once I’ve played several more hours I ‘may’ update some of the conclusion when I'm done for the day. :)

There are 150 Steam keys up for grabs and the competition runs until next Monday, when the lucky winners will be announced. Be sure to visit each day to get the extra 5 entries each day. There's 59 entries possible if you complete all the tasks and return each day. To get a feel for this game and to decide whether or not you want to win a copy of the game (I highly recommend it), please firstly check out the following game play videos of Distrust HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. You can see more videos in the ‘Other Reviews and Videos’ section below.

Distrust

In Brief

A survival/horror adventure game with roguelike elements, an isometric viewpoint and procedurally generated levels that give the game lots of game play potential.

There’s also Steam trading cards and achievements available; and your progress is saved via the Steam cloud, so, if you must reinstall the game for any reason, or upgrade your computer, your progress isn’t lost. The game is set mainly in and around an Arctic research station following a helicopter crash. Single player and coop modes are available. I wouldn’t recommend this to those who don’t like rogue-like games. Having to start afresh each time you die can become frustrating to some.

Introduction:

Distrust is a roguelike game, which means if you make too many mistakes you’re almost certainly going to die, which means having to start all over again. :(

A group of explorers have been stranded near an Arctic base following a helicopter crash. Attempting to find their way seen the survivors sinking deeper and deeper into a nightmare scenario. When they sleep, they attract a terrifying force that sucks the life out of their bodies, but the longer they battle exhaustion and stay awake, the less likely they are to survive.

... As the survivors try to sleep just enough to stave off fatigue without dying, they slowly go mad and eventually reach the point where they can no longer trust their senses. In time, they can't even tell the difference between reality and a hallucination. Guide the survivors through a randomly generated Arctic base, overcome the severe climate and fight the unfathomable.

Steam posted the following message about the suitability of this game ''Content in this product may not be appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work.’’

Installation:

Assuming you receive a Steam key for Distrust once you've found it (should be sent to the email you used to enter the giveaway - it must be the email you first used to sign into the game giveaway site. If you’ve used a throwaway email there may be problems getting a key, because the key may be sent to that email. If you have any problems, use the contact form. You must activate the game via your Steam client. Once activated it will be permanently tied to your Steam profile and you'll be able to install the game at anytime, anywhere on any computer, so long as you can validate who you are (usually via emails etc.). The installed game takes up approximately 1.26GB of disk space and is located in the Steamapps\common folder of your Steam clients installation (by default = C:\\Program files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Distrust).

If you don't have a Steam account you will first have to download and install the Steam client HERE

Then create a Steam profile/account. Once that has been completed you can input the Steam code that you've received (after completing the form filling) via the game button along the top of the Steam client, (located between friends and Help). From the drop-down menu select 'Activate a product on Steam'. This opens a product activation window. Just follow the prompts to complete activation. Once the Steam code has been accepted, the game will be permanently associated with your Steam account and can be installed any time you wish.

If you have a problem installing or activating or getting Distrust to work, please visit the problems section over in the Game Discussion forums, which I've now incorporated into the FAQ's thread, and which you can find HERE

The Game:

Review 1:

For those who win a key for Distrust or decide to buy the game I highly recommend reading one of the guides ( these are grouped into different categories - Gameplay basics, Secrets, Walkthroughs, Characters, Maps or Levels & Achievements) that you can find HERE. before you start the game. They give useful advice on how to play the game. The guides are available in various languages (by different authors, so no two guides are the same); plus, you can select to play the game in one of several languages available via the options menu i.e. English, Russian, German, Polish, Korean and Chinese. You can also read all the news posted about Distrust since its release on Steam last year (23rd Aug 2017) HERE as well as 19 pages of topics (275 discussions) HERE; ranging from requests for help, unlocking characters, path finding issues, FOV issues, Quit vs, Quit and Save, various Bugs? Future patch idea’s plus many more. Most have replies from the community and/or the developer.

Casper Jackson, one of the rescue members in the new isometric survival game Distrust, is having a hard time of it. He's starving. He's sleepy. His helicopter crashed. Along with a single survivor, he's now stuck at a research base in the middle of nowhere in Antarctica outrunning aliens who've wiped out the local scientists, and at last the madness hits him.

"Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day and make me travel forth without my cloak," he yells randomly to the uncaring elements.

Most people wouldn't consider auto-recalling the specifics of Shakespeare's 34th sonnet under extreme duress as insanity. But that's how Distrust sees it, ranking it alongside violent outbursts and hearing voices as one of the conditions that haunt Casper and his fellow crew members. Your goal in Distrust is to keep all these conditions at bay while maintaining your satiety, stamina, and warmth across six randomized zones, all while digging through shelves, boxes, and piles of trash for clues and supplies. Fall asleep, and the aliens appear. And if you fail and let them catch you? If you starve, freeze, or just go bonkers? Game over. The aliens win. The randomization makes it maddeningly tough, even on the easier of its two modes, but it's also entertaining once you slip into its rhythm.

Antarctica is one of the few places left on earth where you know no one's around to help you. H.P. Lovecraft understood its potential for horror, as did John Carpenter when making the 1982 film The Thing, from which Distrust draws heavily. But rather than body snatchers, aliens here are "anomalies," which initially manifest themselves as glowing clouds akin to swarms of butterflies when you're sleeping, or menacing black balls with a white corona, sort of like little solar eclipses on the run. They're at their worst in their latter state when they hunt you down and devour you by merely getting too close. More frightening incarnations eventually show themselves, but sadly, you'd be wrong to expect alien horrors of the sort that leaves you cranking up the lights to 150 watts.

The greatest horrors here are instead those that spring from the simple drive for survival, and usually to good effect. Even without aliens playing tag, your status bars for satiety, warmth, and stamina dwindle with every passing second, forcing quick lessons in multitasking and prioritization. Failure can be as simple as freezing to death, particularly if you stay outside too long without finding a well-insulated coat or run out of fuel for the facility's furnaces. Even seemingly "safe" food can give you food poisoning if you lose one of Distrust's many coin toss prompts, such as one that asks if you dare ignore a little mold on the edge of your noodle cup. Worse, your crew's ridiculously accident-prone, as they cut themselves on all manner of crates and metal lockers, requiring precious bandages to patch up their carelessness.

Despite the repetitive sight of grey buildings and snowy backgrounds, repeat playthroughs of Distrust feel meaningfully different thanks to variety found elsewhere. There's great variability in the crew itself. Your pick of two companions from a pool of three characters feels limited at the start, but quickly expands the offerings to 15 as you both tick off achievements and discover people lying unconscious within the facility. Some, like the Kurt-Russell-esque Olaf Haraldson, handle the cold better than their peers. Casper Jackson can outrun and outwalk everyone else. Some even come with helpful perks, like Irma Dillinger and her blessedly slow metabolism.

Pick the best two of the bunch, though, and you'll likely still fail, and fail often. Like so many roguelikes, Distrust attempts to keep the inevitable repeated playthroughs interesting with randomized locations for assets like buildings, tools, and food. The catch? Distrust can feel unusually unbalanced in this regard. In some playthroughs, it practically shoves food and gear in your face, but you're just as likely to wind up in an instance with little else besides spoiled food and a laughable absence of generator fuel.

Distrust complicates this already punishing setup further by insisting you manage other factors such as the little madness’s mentioned above, as well as a strategy for killing anomalies by luring them into warm buildings (while they suck up your precious fuel at the same time). The madness’s and conditions themselves sometimes demand an excess of attention, particularly myopia, which prevents you from guiding the crew member to the other side of the map without steering him or her click by click. Match this with the mildly annoying camera, which doesn't center on your heroes when you click their respective hotkeys, and you'll find you're losing too much time that would be much better spent guiding your other crew member to dig through safes and cabinets.

But if everything goes according to plan and you aren't backed into an inescapable corner, you're looking at a roughly six-hour playthrough. That may seem short, but chances are the vagaries of Distrust's randomization will leaving you taking much longer to reach its end, and even after six hours you'll feel as though you've survived a trial by fire. Victory is a warm feeling in this world of cold. As Casper might tell us in his Shakespeare-quoting reveries, the challenge makes crossing the finish line feel all the most rewarding, "lest light winning make the prize light."

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Leif Johnson on Aug 26, 2017. Edited and reposted by Whiterabbit-uk 29th July 2018.

Review 2:

An Arctic research base, a UFO buried in the snow, the inevitable distress call. It's not long before a rescue team is sent out, but when one of the crew drifts off, a strange anomaly attacks their helicopter, causing it to crash on site. Only a handful survive, and now their only hope lies deep within. Cold and exhausted, they quickly find that if the cold doesn't kill them, their sleep will.

Distrust is a challenging game, even for those familiar with the roguelike/survival genre. Whereas contemporaries like FTL and Darkest Dungeon allow you to mull over your actions, Distrust expects you to act quickly and decisively. But while it can be relentless, once you master its emphasis on timing, teamwork, and rationing, Distrust manages to capture a tense atmosphere of desperation and sacrifice.

The aim of Distrust is to get through six zones, each one worse off than the last. Players must scavenge for supplies, use tools to progress efficiently, and keep the furnaces running to stay warm. In each zone, there's also a randomized exit puzzle to solve like moving a snowplow or making a bomb. Once you escape, the same objectives repeat, only at a perpetually faster rate and with less supplies. Despite the repetition, Distrust's white-knuckle pacing and varied puzzles keep it fresh after several failed attempts.

Players can choose between 15 different characters for a party of two, with a third character found mid-game. Everyone has their own unique ability - be it a cook who can make leftovers or a grizzled explorer used to the cold - along with their physical weaknesses, so it's all about putting the right team together. That said, the more useful characters are locked behind achievements, which means you must take a few losses with the starting lineup. Roguelike vets might find this par for the course, but it's still padding in a genre that works better with open experimentation.

Even with a good team, Distrust will inevitably break them thanks to its key concept: sleep deprivation. When someone runs out of stamina, they gain a random madness. Some are easy to shrug off, but most will cripple a good run. The camera can warp and ruin in colour, tools and doors are broken in anger, or maybe a survivor will selfishly eat all the food.

Since Distrust is also a race against time, madness seems almost unavoidable as characters are pushed to exhaustion to complete a task, and even downing coffee to go that little bit longer. Though they can stack up, every ailment can be removed by resting on a couch or bunk. The brutal trade off, of course, is that the longer one sleeps, the more likely alien anomalies appear and wreak havoc across the base.

Anomalies are attracted to several things, depending on their type: survivors, electrical generators and furnaces. They can sap someone's health, but they're deadlier when draining the power supplies (usually leading to a slow, frostbitten death). Players can fend them off with guns, flashlights and traps, but the throwaway combat tends to be Distrust's weakest aspect. Ideally, it's better to control them through sleep rotation and healthy rations. Still, even though the anomalies aren't particularly fun to fight, it's actually good to see something so genuinely alien for antagonists.

Distrust's vicious cycle of madness, rest, and aliens is perfectly formed. If a character doesn't harm themselves, chances are the aliens will do it for them by impairing their progress. Sometimes, it's best to keep going with a handicap if it means having a warm place for the group. And though it does get easier with better characters and muscle memory, Distrust remains relentless throughout due to the inevitability of its mechanics.

Overall, there's a lot more to like about Distrust than to dislike. The sound design is suitably isolated, with icy winds blowing through the John Carpenter-inspired score, and as a roguelike, it doesn't outstay its welcome (taking a good 8-10 hours to reach the best ending). It's an addictive thriller with a neatly defined goal, even when frustrations like combat and RNG get in the way.

Distrust is a refreshingly unique take on a familiar horror setting, where both players and survivors alike are gradually worn down by a lack of respite, and victory is a hard-fought push to the finish line. Though it's not quite The Thing as billed, Distrust manages to carve out its own fascinating niche with a devious cycle of madness and decay.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Stephen Turner Aug 2017. Edited and reposted by Whiterabbit-uk 29th July 2018.

Other Reviews and Videos of Distrust:

You can see almost 600 mostly positive reviews/comments of Distrust via the Steam community HERE. You can also read other reviews of the game HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. You can see game play/walkthrough videos of Distrust HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE, plus over 70 more videos (lots of walkthroughs etc.) available via the Steam client in various languages HERE.

Conclusion:

I’ve been playing a particular game for thousands of hours since its release 4 years ago (The Elder Scrolls Online) in preference to virtually all of my other games (which number in the tens of thousands) and for the past year I’ve hardly touched any other game apart from those I’ve reviewed for the gamegiveawayoftheday project Distrust is the first game that has held my attention for several hours without a break for a long time, and I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed playing it so far. I’ve not experienced the multiplayer cooperative game yet; which from the comments I’ve read so far via the Steam community discussions, appears to have some issues with bugs; but I can’t verify that at this time?

I expect I will be playing Distrust preferentially until I’ve completed at least a few run-throughs using various combinations of the characters that are available. The gameplay is easy to pick up and (for me) hard to put down. It also has excellent graphics presented in an isometric viewpoint. And interspersed with cartoon-like cutscenes (of the AD2000/Judge Dredd genre). You’ll find elements of horror, survival, micro-management and aliens included in this game. Combined they make for an interesting and for me a riveting experience. It states the game was inspired by John Carpenters ‘The Thing’ (one of my favorite alien horror movies of all time together with the Alien franchise). However, apart from the Arctic environment, the game bears no resemblance to the movie’s plot. None of the characters you play become The Thing. :)

The Metacritic scores for this game are Metascore 75 out of 100 and user score 7.8 out of 10 with generally favorable reviews from both based on a total of 18 ratings. Game Critics gave it a score of 85 out of 100 and Destructoid gave it 80 out of 100. I reckon this is worth 9.5 out of 10 for gameplay. Considering other aspects of the game (see below), the overall score at least, In my opinion, equals 8.3 out of 10

• Gameplay ………………………..9.5
• Graphics ……………………………8
• Tutorial………………………………8
• Sound……………………..………..7.5
• Options…………………………....8.5

Suggestions:

If you receive a key for Distrust please give some feedback about the game, for example, what you liked or disliked, or how it could be improved. If you decide you don’t like this genre/game, please explain why. What, improvements, if any, would change your opinion? For example, you could suggest extra content such as some mini-games, or a level editor that you would like to see that would make it more appealing to you. Maybe you think the graphics are a little dated and need re-skinning, or even playing the game in a third or first-person perspective. Maybe you've just had enough of the genre and want to see something different or something with more originality?

If you miss the Distrust offer, you can get the game 24/7 via Steam HERE. It usually costs £8.99/$11.99, but can sometimes be found on sale for much less.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the developer and distributor Cheerdealers and Alawar respectively, for giving away some Steam keys for this excellent game and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games, in this case a Steam key.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If todays' game doesn't grab you, but you still hanker for a new game, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free in the 'Weekly roundup of game deals', HERE (I've not updated in in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns thread for details of other free games and offers HERE