As someone who is still getting into writing, I often find it difficult to articulate exactly why a story doesn't work for me. I'll try my best here, because as much as I love and support indie creators, I came away from this game feeling like I spent a lot of time and effort on something that ultimately didn't pay off. I don't expect indie devs to write something near to or as good as someone who's been doing it for years either; if anything, I'd rather encourage indie creators to work better within their own limits than feel tied to an idea or concept that keeps growing and growing. That being said, I really did not like this at all.
To get the good out of the way, I thought the environments looked very good. I have no idea if they were made for the game or taken off Google, but they fit the scenes so well that I don't even care if they were stolen. The music choice was very nice, it definitely feels very Silent Hill-y, and while I recognized some tracks, they didn't take me out of the experience at all. Now onto the negatives.
I'm not even sure where to start. The puzzles, the combat, the dialogue, the pacing of scenes, the abrupt and sudden reveal at the tail end of the game, it was all very bad. I know some of those things are likely a result of this being made in Ren'Py, which, as I understand, is not typically used to make turn-based RPGs. The developer did a very great job implementing the most basic, bare-bones, and nonsensical system imaginable. Maybe this is contextualized somewhat and I missed it, but I still have no idea if the cross kills everything in one shot, just the nurse in one shot, or if specific items used on specific enemies kill them in one shot. That could be potentially interesting, but it isn't in execution.
The game has many scenes that let you hover your mouse over and click things in the environment, and while these scenes are generally pretty good, they're completely underused. Before some boss fights, you're just sped through several rooms while the text reads "I went in and found a health drink..." over and over and over to prep you for the upcoming fight. These should be controlled by the player in what is trying to be a survival horror VN.
I would also say the constant "It is recommended to save the game" prompt in place of an auto-save is more funny than anything else, but it gets really annoying to see while you're trying to feel immersed in the story.
The puzzles are pretty atrocious. I'm no puzzle designer, but I never felt the game had any idea what it was trying to lead me toward. The morgue puzzle is a good example of this. You're asked to input six letters that you're to associate with the bodies labeled in a morgue. All the bodies are named after a zodiac sign, and you're given clues as to which bed belongs to who and which order to put them in. The problem is the answer makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever. My natural conclusion was to put them in the right order in my mind, and using the letter in the doctor's office, use the numbers of the beds in that sequence to find the solution. I cannot stress how goddamn long I spent trying to force this to work before I just looked up the answer. AND I STILL DON'T GET IT AT ALL, or what it even has to do with the main character or the story.
And speaking of its story...
I dunno how else to describe the story other than completely incoherent. It starts in a bar, and you're playing as a woman named Eve looking for her brother Adam in Silent Hill. The names of the characters are one of the first things you see, and it is about as blunt as a bat to the side of your skull. Ironically, despite being so obvious in its metaphor, I beat the game without any idea what connection it had to the Bible story at all. Sorry to spoil the story, but Eve is Adam. Adam transitioned into a woman and seemingly lost her mind and sense of self at some point. The ending is very direct about the gender reassignment. The issue isn't that she's trans, it's how absolutely worthless the reveal is to me as a player when we've spent all of the story under the assumption they're different characters. They aren't just implied to be separate; there's a part at the very beginning of the game where Adam's phone is explicitly stated to have Eve's phone number in its contacts. There are also several mentions and depictions of childbirth in this game before this reveal is even suspected. I know the developer probably didn't mean this, but the game's subtext led me to think the plot was going to center around some sort of assault from the brother or some other incest plot, which made me very uncomfortable. There's a dog-looking creature with a pregnant belly, along with a Doberman that is shown around Silent Hill. My instinctive read of the story once I reached its ending was "Adam impregnated a dog at some point."
Again I stress, that might not have been the intention, but this is not contextualized in the story whatsoever. When you're making a game in a series where monsters reflect specific aspects of a character's psyche, yeah, I'm going to reach that interpretation. And it makes me uncomfortable in a way that stops being fun.
This story DOES have a lot of potential, though I'd say its worst flaw is how seriously it tries to treat itself. You're clearly supposed to care about Eve in this grounded, realistic world filled with monsters. But the monsters still... just stand there waiting for you to finish your turn before they attack. This could be absolutely hilarious if the game were more aware of its absurdity and, more importantly, its limitations. The opening establishing Adam and Eve as brother and sister could be hilarious if the game stopped trying to be dead serious all the time. I don't care at all about current Eve, but she could be a potentially compelling and fun character. I know people hate Marvel movie quips and catchphrases generally, but having Eve crack some one-liners after unplugging the woman in the hospital is absolutely absurd, but super funny in my mind.
I honestly didn't realize this game is so old, so maybe the writer has gotten a lot better with this stuff, but this was the first game I've seen of theirs.