A downloadable game for Windows and macOS.
The Notzing Project started off well enough. It has a good atmosphere and did a great job setting up backstory using audio tapes. The voice acting was a bit hit and miss but wasn’t what I would call bad. There was some backtracking but the game handled it well by being easy to navigate. The game is marred by a lot of technical issues and a terrible final bit. As for technical issues the game’s save system was bugged. There is an auto save system that only has one slot and when I came back into the game after quitting I was right back to the start of the game which is not where I was before. The game isn’t overly long but a bug is a bug. Also at the very end the game devolved into being chased by an enemy who kills you as soon as they touch you; you can’t fight back; and I had to walk backwards away from them as the mouse wouldn’t let me turn my view. The optimization was also very poor. I couldn’t monitor frame rates but I felt noticeable lag when I turned the lights on in different rooms. The game’s visuals are not good enough to justify lag on my machine. The floor has some nice detail but aside from that the rest of the game’s graphics are underwhelming and nothing special. Lastly some of the graphics settings don’t save. I turned off motion blur; film grain; and depth of field at the main menu but when I either load the game or exit the game those are back to being turned on. If I turn them off after loading the game they stay off for the duration of my play but go back to being turned on after.
I played The Notzing Project on Linux using Wine. The game never crashed. There is six graphics settings and a v-sync toggle. System resource usage was all over the place as well. One time I launched the game and started playing my GPU; VRAM and CPU usage were quite low but other times it was much higher.
Game Engine: Unity
Disk Space Used: 147 MB
Game Version Played: 1.0
Game Settings Used: 2560x1440; high; motion blur/dof/film grain off
GPU Usage: 0-100 %
VRAM Usage: 394-1900 MB
CPU Usage: 11-28 %
RAM Usage: 3.3-4.2 GB
I can’t recommend The Notzing Project. It may be free but there are plenty of free games out there. Also if you check the Itch.io page the developer openly states they have no intention to fix any of the problems. They have a knack for atmosphere but have plenty of other areas to improve in as this game was a technical mess.
My Score: 4/10
My System:
Intel i5-12600K | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | XFX RX 590 8GB Fat Boy | Mesa 23.1.1 | Western Digital Black SN850 500GB | Garuda | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.3.4-zen2-1-zen | MSI G2730QPF 2560*1440 @ 165hz
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