Clicking through a list of links that your friend messaged to you and expects you to read is pretty boring. I think that we can all agree on that. What could possibly be more boring than that? Well how about a video game that simulates clicking through a bunch of links that your friend messaged you and expects you to read through? That is exactly what “Welcome To The Game” has in store for its players. It does not sound promising to me, but let’s go ahead and take a look anyhow.

“Welcome To The Game” puts the player into the role of a rather unusual young person. This character has accessed a “deep web” browser with the help of a friend. That friend then sends you a list of websites on the deep web. There are codes scattered around these sites, which the player must gather in order to gain access to a “red room.” What’s a red room? It’s a website where a group of people watch and participate in the torture and murder of a kidnapped victim. Yeah, that’s the end goal here, watch someone get tortured and killed, and maybe even tell the killer how to torture them. Needless to say, this did not exactly endear the protagonist to me.

“Welcome To The Game” does not look good. 90% of the game is spent looking at websites on a computer screen-within-a-computer screen. You’ll be reading text that someone made blockier and worse-looking than actual text on a computer screen, in order to look like it is text on a computer screen. When you actually get the chance to look at things outside of your computer screen, it’s just a bunch of generic, blocky Unity models. Look, it’s perfectly possible for a one-man team to make a small game that looks fantastic, like “Five Nights At Freddy’s.” This game does not.

Sound is probably the best part of “Welcome To The Game” in that it is the least intrusively bad. It is pretty clear what each sound effect means. That is all that I can really say on the subject, and it is the best thing that I have to say about the game.

As far as gameplay goes, “Welcome To The Game” is a big old pile of nothing. 90% of the game consists of just clicking links and trying to find where the different codes are hidden. This is further complicated by the fact that sites are only up at random in-game times, and many of the links never actually go anywhere. Other times you need to go turn your light off and wait for hackers to leave your home (no, this doesn’t make any more sense in the game). Sometimes you have to “counter hack” which is more or less a typing test. It is not a fun game to play.

“Welcome To The Game” has nothing going for it. It looks bad and has mediocre sound. The protagonist is not someone who I find myself able to relate to at all. It’s cardinal sin however is that it’s just so terribly boring.