Thank you BitLight for providing us with a review code!

In most cases when I review games, I don’t know what I’m getting myself into with it. Unless I was aware of it before the review I play it mostly blind outside of looking at the Steam page and going over it to see if I can give it a fair review. In the case of Lost Brothers by BitLight, I did see that it has a “Mostly Negative” reception and my curiosity did get the best of me. Could it be as “bad” as people say?

A first-person adventure game, also sometimes known as a “walking simulator”, Lost Brothers is one of those games that attempt to immerse you with an interactive narrative, much like a point-and-click adventure or a visual novel. Lost Brothers' main character is John, a hiker from Oregon who lost his brother Sam in the woods when they were both young. Every year, John revisits the same area where he lost his brother in an attempt to find him while getting drunk in the process. However, his annual grieving time is interrupted by a signal on his radio. A woman by the name of Samantha contacts John through the radio and pleads for his help. Being the Good Samaritan he is, John accepts, while also gaining newfound hope in that he may also find the whereabouts of his little brother.

When booting up the game, the grammatical errors start already and I knew that I was in for an experience. “Load game” is translated as “loading” which greatly confused me at first. I waited a good minute on the menu screen thinking that something was actually loading until I figured out that it meant load game. Opening the options menu is where more errors are seen. “High” graphics setting is “height”, and there’s a checkbox that’s in Russian. I wish I knew what it meant because toggling it on and off seemed to do nothing in game.

The grammatical errors do not stop there. Throughout the dialogue between John and Samantha, there are nouns used incorrectly, pronouns that aren’t in the right spots, spelling errors, verbs used in instances where the sentence takes a completely different meaning, and dialogue that was meant for John was actually Samantha speaking. I get it, it’s obvious that the person who made this game isn’t fluent in English. I don’t expect them to be a scholar in a language they had to learn after their native one. But this many grammatical errors cannot be excused. There definitively needed to be a second look at the translation by a person fluent in the language.

Despite Lost Brothers only taking place in a forest and a cave, there is a decent amount of variety in the scenery. The woods do look like something a person could find in Oregon. The trees are an amber color signaling the autumn season without even telling the player. The color pallet is bright and colorful with a decent cartoon look to it. Unfortunately, the draw distance of the woods is short, so what could have been a satisfactory atmosphere is ruined by constant pop-in by the grass and trees. It makes the game look somewhat ugly and takes you out of the experience. Going into the caves halfway through the experience, there is a cool setting with giant mushrooms. Again, it could have looked great, but the luminescence that the mushrooms give off looks like they are painted on. Then, we wrap around to the draw distance part where it still exists and mushrooms are popping in and out.

Sound design is acceptable when it wants to work. There are some musical pieces here and there, but they seem to cut out randomly. The same goes for sound effects. None of the characters in Lost Brothers are voiced. The only audible sound uttered are grunts from when John jumps. Other sound effects include crickets at night, birds in the day, and the operation of machinery within some parts of the caves.

Most of the time in Lost Brothers, you’re gonna be walking. You’re directly experiencing a narrative that progresses at your pace. Early on, you’ll obtain a map, and it acts like a map, which is pretty cool. Most maps in games are more like radars, but in Lost Brothers, you read the map like a real life one, acting as a diagetic HUD (being part of the world itself). You’re supposed to match the landmarks on the map to where you are. That part of Lost Brothers is immersive in the adventure aspect of it. All the while this is happening, John and Samantha are speaking to each other, and also supporting each other. There are some puzzle aspects to Lost Brothers, although depending on the path you take inside the caves, you’ll only have to do one in your playthrough. It does somewhat make everyone’s experience different. If only there were more puzzles and they replaced them with the somewhat janky platforming segments.

Even without the grammatical/translation errors, the story as a whole is very confusing. Two plot points happen at once; John finding Samantha and John finding Sam. I usually try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, but in this case, I think they're worth talking about to make some sense out of the story. In a strange decision, neither plot point ever gets resolved. Towards the climax, both major plot points converge after a sudden plot twist, bringing upon even more questions... and then the game just ends. You get kicked right back to the menu. No credits, no epilogue dialogue. John just gets out of the cave. Nothing about what John does after the cave. This is meant to be the end as an achievement is earned signifying such.

Three times, Lost Brothers crashed on me. My entire experience took me around the same runtime of an average feature film and only because of the previously mentioned crashes, and the fact that I had to start over from the beginning as one of my saves was rendered unusable as every time I loaded, John would clip through the floor and fall forever. I believe this was caused by saving at the entrance of the cave.

Besides the alcohol (beer) I talked about before, there are some more moral warnings to be aware of. Language mostly consists of “d*mn” and “bullsh*t.” I saw at least two instances of God’s name used in vain. There could be more depending on other dialogue choices made. Some creepy imagery was seen in the last parts of the game, such as skeletons hanging from the trees with the glow of green and red fog around it.

Video games tend to get flak for having bad stories as most of them are used as an excuse for the gameplay, which is perfectly fine. Games are a special medium, as they are a way to tell a story that a book, movie, or show is unable to. I’ve seen some incredible stories and narratives in video games, that could only be told through a video game. Lost Brothers is not one of those games. The plot is mind-boggling because neither major plot point is resolved and the characters aren’t given enough development for people to care about any of them. The experience is hampered down by John walking extremely slowly through the environment, constant crashes, and too much pop in. It is BitLight’s first game, but it’s just too messy in every regard to recommend, even though it’s not super terrible morally. Their upcoming game Black Dog Bar looks better and easier to manage. Maybe one day with more experience under their belt, BitLight will have the chance to revisit Lost Brothers.