I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to try for accountability on actually releasing a game. In that pursuit, I'm reviewing Steam games with no reviews to get an idea of why they failed. Here is the transcript for Vertical Descent:
Welcome to the Adventure Mechanics, I'm Chandler, and this is another Side Quest. Today we're going to continue our No Review Games Examination with Vertical Descent. Vertical Descent was made in Unity and released in March of 2025 by RuHix. They appear to be a Canadian developer and Vertical Descent appears to be their only game released, on Steam or otherwise. I can't really find any other information for them on the internet at all. So their presence is minimal at best. Cannot find a valid website, itch.io page, Twitter handle, BlueSky handle or anything like that. So all the information that I can get on RuHix is from this one game.
Vertical Descent is a first person puzzle game consisting of roughly ten puzzles spread across seven floors in a mini tower. Each puzzle usually contains a letter or some context for clues. Once you figure out all the puzzles, you'll exit the lobby of the tower. Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it? Well, it's complicated. Let's talk about the build I played.
The current build on steam is broken, there's no sugar coating this. The lighting, one of the most important things shown on the Steam page, isn't included in the latest build. And depending on how you set up the game, there may or may not be more or less broken textures throughout the level. When I compared playthroughs with my co-host Devon, I ended up having a lot more broken textures than they did. Your mileage may vary, but the broken textures will never be zero. And since you don't start on the top level of this Vertical Descent game, you can actually just open the screen door on the elevator and fall out of the game. And once you've broken containment, you can do wacky things like walking off the map, channeling your inner Jesus and walk across water, or even just say fuck it and run to the end trigger. The possibilites are limited, but none of those are intended. And this is all before we actually engage with the intended puzzles in the game, too. Both Devon and I were able to "beat" the game in under a minute. Before we used the elevator. Not a great first playthrough.
Because of how broken this game is, Vertical dissents smells like this developers first commercial game. Judging by how little footprint they have online, I'm pretty sure that's the case. That's not to say this game is completely unredeemable, but rather this game needs to be reworked with the player in mind. And that's why I find it so fascinating. This game has potential. It's just so marred by heads-down developer-itis. Like they needed to step back, get some external perspectives on their game and regroup. I'll hold off on further thoughts on this as we get to them, though.
Let's assume that you want to play the game as intended and you're able to make your way to the roof, the seventh floor. You'll see your objective pop up on screen then. This makes me suspect that there's a build of this game that starts here, but I digress. There's a clue on the mattress that relies on meta knowledge (i.e. your U.S. layout keyboard) to give you the code that you'll need to enter into the keypad in the elevator. That's the level of puzzle the designer put into the game. Now, I'm not saying it's bad to use meta knowledge, per se, but relying solely on meta knowledge will frustrate players that don't have the same keyboard you do. And that shows in the Steam community hub for this game, too. When you enter in the correct code, it will unlock a button for the next floor in the elevator. The game continues on to each lower floor where the player must solve a variety of puzzles, many tied together, to reach the tower lobby. I'm not going to go through each puzzle, but I will say that if this game is getting reworked, more clues will need to be sprinkled throughout the environment for each puzzle. Some solutions straight up felt like they were trolling me. I'm sure that wasn't the developer's intent. It was the lack of parallel clues for the puzzles to figure out what to do. For example, the fourth floor has four candles that need to be lit in order to go to the next floor. There are no clues for that puzzle anywhere. And I searched for the clues on how to solve it. I ended up brute forcing it, assuming that the developer wanted me to run from room to room. You know what? That was the solution. If I wasn't intrigued by the absolute state of this game, I would have gotten frustrated and walked away from the game at this point. You start on the fourth floor. Take that in.
Vertical Descent is easily broken and the puzzles can be somewhat obtuse. Why is it interesting, then? Well, despite not having lighting, I feel like the story has promise. It mostly avoids jump scares and has at least one touching moment where you see the deceased person the letter writer tried to bring back. Trying to bring back the dead by any means necessary is a solid plot point to base a game off of. And RuHix touched lightly upon the grief of loss. The puzzles that weren't obtuse were interesting as well. That's a pretty solid base to build from. Like most horror games, the game lives or dies on a story execution. There are hardly any mechanics in the game, so it only leaves ambiance and story-telling to make the game engaging. And I feel like this game can be changed to make it work. It's not going to be easy, or quick, but if the dev wanted to build upon this, maybe make a sequel or something, they wouldn't be starting from zero. And there's a lot to be said about that. As it stands right now, though, this game deserves to be in the no reviews pile.
Let's no leave it there and say we're revamping this game, though. Where would we start? Step one would be to VASTLY increase the internet presence of RuHix as a studio. It appears that their website has lapsed, and that's unfortunate, but not insurmountable. Getting a new domain isn't that hard. I don't expect them to pay the almost six grand that a domain squatter is currently trying to extort. The dev will also have to get more into a social media they can handle. That means sitting on handles where the dev is comfortable having them, like Bluesky, Twitter, Twitch, whatever. Put out a few dev logs, or something to indicate you're alive as a studio. If you're not leaving a trail, you're making it so much harder for people interested in your game to learn about you, either as a studio or as a developer. You need those bread crumbs. Being an indie dev, that's the one way we can get an edge on the AAA space: We're small, reachable, and approachable. Use that advantage. Don't make hard for your customers to reach out to you if they are interested in what you made. Put yourself out there in some capacity! If you make a fanbase, they will be able to latch on to your presence online and, hopefully, evangelize you and your studio. Don't waste that opportunity.
Next, do some market research and play some similarly short horror and puzzle games that are well received. It doesn't have to be on Steam, either. If there is a popular horror game in the same vein on itch, try it out. Take notes on what works for you and what doesn't. Write down the memorable moments, scares and set pieces. Really dig into the artistry on display. Get inspiration for level layouts, puzzles or scary moments that would fit into Vertical Descent. Examine puzzle games and see how they layout hints, clues and puzzles. Mock up the puzzles from Vertical Descent to match that style and see if it makes the puzzles easier to engage with. Just because you're an indie developer doesn't mean you shouldn't try out what your peers are making. I know some devs prefer to avoid similar games while making theirs, but from what's on display in the current build, external inspiration is needed. And it's inspiration, not copying. Take the inspiration and make it yours if you plan on putting it into your game. Your game will turn out better if you have a base that you enjoy to work from. I promise you that.
That's all fine and good, but that doesn't rehab this game. How do we do that? First, and foremost, it needs to have the expected player path described. That includes the potential scares, the visual set pieces, and where they can look for clues, and most importantly, the story being told in this environment. Each floor should ideally have a visual set piece that feels at home in world. Not having a morgue on the second floor of an office building or a random pair of school rooms on the fourth floor sort of thing. Make the whole building cohesive. Once that's figured out, we need to make the characters: The letter writer needs to have clues of his or her presence described and fleshed out. The player is following them, metaphorically. We should know more about them than we currently do. The elevator, yes, the elevator, needs to be better fleshed out and made to fit in the world. That means making it more like an elevator and not a box that takes you to a series of screen doors. The dead lady needs to be given more context with the letter writer. And what came back instead of her needs to be hinted at, too. Only once we have all of that defined can we then look at remaking the map. And yes, this map needs to be remade. There are far too many dead spaces with nothing in them and unintentional red herrings spread throughout. Each floor should have a clear theme and goal instead of using the elevator to move the player to each floor. Make this feel tower feel lived in! It's the home of the letter writer, the dead lady, and presumably, the player. It shouldn't feel like a broken-ass Unity asset. Give each character space to tell their story. Hell, if it's appropriate, use them directly and give them a voice, too. You can make text boxes for speech and not necessarily need a voice actor to do that part, either. If there's time, voice acting would be a beautiful addition, though. It may be out of scope for this remake, and that's fine. Using grunts and other human sounds will work just fine with what I'm envisioning.
If you're putting up a hundred dollars on a steam page, you need to be sure you're going to at least make that hundred dollars back. Maybe even make enough to reclaim the studio domain, who knows. And that means the game needs to be polished. I find myself saying that a lot each time I make one of the games with no reviews: You need to polish your game. And it keeps being relevant because it's the last step in production. Each and every part of the game should be taken to a base level of polish, and it should be consistent throughout. No random blood spots that will throw off players from a puzzle. Each blood spot should have a distinct purpose, to say nothing of everything else put into the game. Ambiance is good, but the goals and motivations should be clear at all times, especially in a horror game. You don't have mechanics to lean on, you need to make your environment clear. Always, always, always. You want to make sure, even when unsettled or scared, the player will be able to make it to the next area of your game. Nothing pulls the player out of the world faster than strange or rough edges not intentionally put there. Except maybe having to do the same "scary chase" scene again. That's a different topic, though. It needs to feel like every part of the game is ready for someone to skulk, hide, or get chased down. And when it's there, the playtesting cycle can finally begin.
Once that's all been executed, playtest. And I'm not talking about using the dev or their friends or family, either. People unassociated with the game at all need to play it blind and comment on it. That's why all of these puzzles feel obtuse. It never got cross-checked with other people. All games need to be playtested before release. It's abundantly clear that Vertical Descent was not. Not in any real sense, anyway. Even a short smoke playtest would have revealed not starting on the roof and the shading not appearing as expected. Before bringing in outside playtesters, the game needs to be as far along as possible. If needed, break up the testing to puzzle testers and blind playtesters. You can lean on the puzzle playtesters to get the vast majority of the puzzles into a good state, swapping out the puzzles they are testing each time and adjusting those in isolation. If possible, don't even put the puzzle into the world. Make a dedicated build that only shows the intended puzzle without the ambiance. If it's possible in the best situation, it should work in world. Save your blind playtesters for when you have everything nailed down to your satisfaction. Sure, there will be minor issues around, there always are, but you should not be putting a build with obvious issues in front of those willing to test your game. It's not going to get you the same level of feedback as if you were giving them a nearly complete game. Blind playtesters are a valuable resource, so squandering them on broken builds is a waste of everyone's time. They will give you the end-to-end overview you need to push your game up to the next level. Use them as such.
And once you get your first playthrough feedback, you have more work to do. Ideally, you'll get a screen recording of them playing and you'll see where the rough spots were and what the player was thinking when they were working out your puzzles. You need to iterate on each puzzle and make it so your playtesters don't get stuck for longer than you intend. Some red herrings are fine, and good ways to introduce story bits, puzzle clues, or scares, but they shouldn't be so convincing that you see players fixating on those areas. And remember, it's always lock before key. Introduce the locking puzzle before giving clues on how to solve it. You will see players appreciate that design flow and it will pay off as you go through the feedback process. Go through this process as many times as you're able to, and hopefully the game that comes out the other end lives up to the horror genre you love so much.
When I started playing Vertical Descent, I was not expecting it to blow up into such a fascinating game to examine. It absolutely deserves to be in no review town, but it does not need to stay there. If RuHix plans on taking another chance on this game and is willing to overhaul it, I believe it would be able to stand proudly in the short form horror game genre. And I'm not really a horror game player, either. Something in this beautiful and campy mess inspired and intrigued me enough to spend far too much time looking at ways to make it what the developer RuHix originally intended it to be. And that means something, especially in the environment the video game industry is in right now.
I'll leave my rant here. As always, if you have any questions or comments on this episode, leave a comment below or reach out to me on various social media. My handle is @jcsirron. If you have a game with zero reviews that you want me to review, let me know! I've been inspired by this series and want to keep making these sort of episodes. This has been another Adventure Mechanics Side Quest and I'm Chandler. I'll talk to you next time.
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