Unlucky Seven is unique, to say the least. Developed by Puzzling Dream and published by Ultimate Games S.A., the title strives to pull together classic horror tropes and point-and-click adventure style gaming in order to tell a story unlike any you’ve seen before. At the time of writing this review, the game is still in Early Access. The version I played falls short of its goals, but hopefully the developers will be able to fix it based on player feedback. Many of the issues I ran into have already been addressed by the dev team when talking about their Early Access goals.

The Problems

In its current state, Unlucky Seven suffers from more than a few bugs. Throughout my time with the game, I was plagued by characters that didn’t seem to want to listen to my inputs. There were times when the character I was controlling would walk into walls endlessly, forcing me to restart the game, and others where they insisted on inspecting everything twice, despite my single prompt. Technical difficulties like these just aren’t acceptable in a game once it has been released, especially with the frequency I encountered them.

On top of the character-related bugs, my game also crashed on one occasion, not allowing me any input even to open the menu and exit. Add to this the fact that character dialogue sometimes includes lines of code and a few mistranslations, and the game becomes almost unbearable. There were times when playing this title felt like more of a chore than a way to unwind.

My biggest issue with Unlucky Seven, though, is the poor execution of the storytelling. As a story-driven game, uncovering the plot needs to be exciting and fun. But the poor translations and poor voice acting often confused me. I had to read dialogue prompts a few times to understand what was going on. Even when I turned on the dubbed voice option, the emotionless deliveries by the voice actors killed the mood the game was working so hard to achieve. Slow cutscenes and bland gameplay sandwich the story, ultimately killing my experience.

Diamonds in the Rough

If there is any saving grace in Unlucky Seven, it is the fact that the story, poorly told as it may be, is an intriguing one. Some of the characters and their motives are very interesting, and the premise is something I haven’t seen before. It was hard to find behind the poor dialogue and uninteresting gameplay, but the story here does hold some potential. The developers even mention having plans for multiple endings and character customization if they have time to implement them in their Early Access period. If they manage to fix the bugs and come through with those mechanics, the game might just save itself.