10 Dead Doves review

• Reviews by Sam Amiotte-Beaulieu
• Published:

Equal parts bold work of art and surreal horror odyssey finds its wings and soars after some early stumbles

Urban legends have a mysterious power; emerging from any number of sources, as they pass down from person to person they enter into the realm of myth. For the protagonists of 10 Dead Doves, this search for local legends leads two friends into the heart of darkness that brings forth unsettling truths that will change their lives forever. It is a very uneven adventure that will try your patience as much as the characters in-game, but as you stick with it you will unearth an incredible story of friendship and psychological weirdness that feels largely unique in an increasingly crowded landscape of retro-styled horror titles. This is not a game for everyone, but for those looking for something a little different, there’s a lot to love.

The story begins with two friends, Mark and Sean, on an adventure in the Appalachian wilderness to uncover the location of the legendary Ant Farm. What exactly the Ant Farm is, and why you are trekking into the mountainous unknown to find it are left deliberately unclear at first, but as you progress further away from civilization, you begin to uncover a mystery far larger than anything either Mark or Sean could have imagined. After a brief introductory sequence involving some slight breaking-and-entering into an abandoned trailer park and witnessing a flock of birds falling dead out of the sky for no apparent reason, Mark finds a large stone monument covered in bizarre graffiti.

Because this is a horror game and common sense is optional, Mark reaches out to touch the strange monument and is seemingly transported to an empty white space of peculiar geometry. As you push forward, the space gets increasingly more abstract – black columns stretch out across the landscape, and you could swear you hear a typewriter along with someone or some…thing’s voice echoing out. Upon finding the source of the tap-tapping you heard, you lock eyes with a strange figure wearing a large hat hunched over at a tiny desk. As the figure turns its gaze towards you, bizarre visions start flashing on the screen, and Mark wakes up in the passenger seat of Sean’s van with no knowledge of how he got there.

Moments like this are where 10 Dead Doves shines – when the world of the weird creeps into the mundane, it taps into something special. It’s unfortunate, then, that after this introductory sequence, the pacing takes a nosedive and does not really course correct until the second third of the game. During this time, you will get small hints here and there that not everything is as it seems, but the areas you traverse are so basic in their design that it can feel like a slog to get through the first couple hours. Nowhere is this more egregious than during the first fully open section of the game, where, playing as Mark, you become separated from Sean and find yourself wandering a heavily forested area. Before long, you will come upon a busted-up bridge that Mark notes he’ll have to fix before he can cross.

The problem is, you will have to collect all of the individual replacement planks to fix this bridge, which are hidden throughout a forest lined by trees that are the same exact color as these planks. I swear, I must have walked the full extent of the woods at least three or four times before I found out there was an alternate path that led to a key item required to cut through specific interactable bits of shrub in the environment. And during this entire time, you will have to deal with Sean constantly making terrible jokes over the walkie-talkie you pick up shortly beforehand. You can find a map pretty easily that shows the general layout of the forest path, but while it is pretty to look at it, is so difficult to use effectively that I found myself making my own map with pen and paper to help figure out where I had and had not been. Adding insult to injury, the bridge that Mark cannot cross without fixing it is so short that it looks like something he should be able to quickly run and jump over with ease. With all of these factored together, I was quite frustrated with the game by this point, and I foresee this being the case with most players coming into the game for the first time.

While I understand the reasoning behind wanting players exploring the forest path to uncover additional details about the history of the strange happenings in the area (including a flashback section that shows some of Mark and Sean’s backstory in a rather unique way), it’s disappointing that the first section that doesn’t guide you along a singular route is so difficult to navigate. Thankfully 10 Dead Doves only gets better and better from there, with a huge variety of locales to uncover beyond that point, from an abandoned water park to a towering radio station. All of these are significantly more interesting in their design and traversal than the forest path, with more distinct landmarks making for a much easier time getting from place to place.

At face value, 10 Dead Doves is a classic third-person horror throwback in the realm of Resident Evil or Silent Hill, with fixed camera angles and an unsettling atmosphere. Unlike those games, however, there is no combat at any point here. The game is played exclusively with tank controls – that is, only moving forward and backward while being able to turn your character left or right in relation to where they’re facing, not where they are on-screen. Expect no full 360-degree movement here – this is one hundred percent old school horror traversal. This comes with all the typical trappings of this particular control scheme: expect to drive the protagonist right into a wall at least once while trying to move through a doorway instead.

Movement is handled through standard WASD or arrow keys, while holding down Shift and moving forward will cause Mark to run. (Full gamepad support is included as well.) You have access to a quick turn too, which is useful in a pinch when you’re experiencing an encounter with some of the game’s unkillable horrors that periodically impede your progress and leave you no choice but to run. (Death is possible but a momentary setback, typically causing you to restart whatever section led to your temporary demise.) You can look at or pick up various objects in the environment by walking up to them and examining them when prompted, which works well enough but it can be difficult to select the point of interest you want when there are multiple hotspots in a single area. This is generally due to the camera angles the game locks you into. The fixed perspectives add to the dramatic atmosphere, but it can be frustrating trying to get the right item highlighted when maneuvering Mark around.

10 Dead Doves

Genre:	Horror
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D
Theme:	Psychological, Surreal
Perspective:	Third-Person
Gameplay:	Quest
Control:	Direct Control
Game Length:	Medium (5-10 hours)
Difficulty:	Medium
Graphic Style:	Simulated realism

You can access your inventory at any time with a button press, which will take you to a set of menus also denoting your journal, map, and “visions.” The first three are self-explanatory, but the visions menu serves as your repository for certain items that allow you to “inhabit” them in the game. Choosing one of these visions in your inventory will send you to the white void, where you will hear the voice of someone else associated with the item you “inhabited” – a sort of unique take on the audio diaries from something like BioShock. Each object will have a crude drawing associated with it in your menu along with a brief written description, but these visions will typically provide no information about who you’re listening to other than small contextual clues you may or may not become privy to over the course of the game.

Every item you collect for your inventory has a unique description and is fully rendered as well, with most of these being pretty humorous in tone. There are several things you can pick up that have no real benefit but the game lets you do it anyway. For example, you can collect vast amounts of litter, but as far as I can tell there is no point to it other than the game’s joke about you being a Good Samaritan. It’s rare for menu descriptions to help establish the tone of a game, and it was refreshing to find this much world-building from simple descriptions for items and visions.

10 Dead Doves is presented in a deliberately low-poly graphical style, highly reminiscent of the first PlayStation era. Character faces have a flat projection typical of that time period, but they’re synched with spoken dialogue along with expressions denoting emotional states. Animations are stiff in a way that would look unnatural in something going for photorealism but works well within the retro horror throwback vibe. The people you meet are usually presented with simple design detail, but as the game goes on you will encounter an array of otherworldly beings that vary widely in their portrayal. Without spoiling anything, there are some incredible uses of different art styles and even gameplay perspectives later in the game that work in tandem with some of the creatures you’ll come face to face with. A number of not-so-subtle nods that would feel right at home in the “SCP Foundation” mythos are liberally scattered throughout, which work wonders in establishing the bizarre feel of the events you experience.

Sound design and music are equally deliberate in their style. The game is fully voiced, and at first I was taken aback by how amateurish the acting for the two leads Mark and Sean sounded. It’s nowhere near original Resident Evil levels of bad, but it was immediately noticeable once the pair spoke their first lines. But as the game went on, I came to appreciate their delivery as the average Joes they are. These are two ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and the voice acting reflects that rather than sounding more polished and professional. This can be said for the rest of the cast as well; everyone feels like a regular person, which works well with the game’s constant blending of the mundane with the weird. Some of the strange beings you encounter will speak too, and these performances are suitably outlandish to fit with their inherent strangeness.

The tone is set from the moment you boot up the game, when you are greeted by a haunting piano track. Otherwise the score is largely muted, with unsettling sound effects being the main source of background ambience for the majority of the game. But when story moments play out that tap into feelings of sadness or dread, they’ll be accompanied by a quiet solo piano melody or a rush of loud, frantically screeching violins accordingly. 10 Dead Doves does not shy away from some dark topics like child neglect and terminal illness throughout its runtime, and because of its minimalist approach, the soundtrack packs a punch when it does show up for some emotional heavy lifting.

Without spoiling any of the twists and turns, the game genuinely surprised me and had me glued to my seat for the final two thirds following its underwhelming beginning. There is some fantastic directing in the cutscenes and set pieces that have continued to stick with me, and by the time I arrived at the end, my frustrations earlier on were all but forgotten. There are two very different endings to experience, with one late-game decision that will set in motion your particular outcome. Since you can save your progress at any time, you can easily re-load this section and choose the opposite outcome if you wish to do so. While some questions will be answered, others are left deliberately open to interpretation, and I look forward to seeking out how other players interpret the game’s events. 

Final Verdict

10 Dead Doves is an incredible piece of interactive fiction that leaves a terrible first impression. If I had only played the first couple hours, I’d say this is a fairly run-of-the-mill, old-school horror game homage for enthusiasts that could be played and quickly forgotten. But once you sift through the tedious early hours, the game will grab you and keep dragging you down into a shifting abyss of otherworldly insanity that feels incredibly fresh. The atmosphere is never terrifying per se, but there is a constant feeling of unease that permeates every aspect of the experience. Creature designs from beyond the realm of reason are a treat to behold, and I found myself genuinely attached to Mark and Sean by the time the credits rolled. It’s not a smooth ride, but the road to the Ant Farm ends up being a hike worth the trip – as long as you brace yourself for an uphill climb for the first few miles. 

Sam played 10 Dead Doves on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher. 

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