Fear Effect Sedna by developer Sushee, is a single-player action and strategy game set in Greenland with myths from the Inuit culture. It features puzzle elements, real-time and tactical action, and an in-depth story.
At the start of the game, there is a cutscene which is honestly very confusing. It isn’t revealed until later in the game what it was referencing. After the cutscene, and after introducing the next set of characters, there is a short level that functions as a tutorial. The onscreen messages could have been a bit briefer and not covered the entire screen, but it presented all the controls you would need to know.
Right away, I noticed one element that Fear Effect Sedna did well – the puzzles. There were various puzzles throughout each part of the game that you would have to solve or else face a gruesome game-over cutscene. Each one was done in a way that stayed relevant to the game and theme, rather than just having some sort of minigame, and could be solved without having to look them up online.
Another strength I noticed in Fear Effect Sedna was the visuals. The theme that was chosen for the game fit very well, especially since the game heavily favored cutscenes to add to the story, rather than just background dialogue during gameplay.
As I progressed through the game and tried different strategies, I realized that stealth was highly valued. For fans of stealth games, this is a bonus, but I think it could be a bit annoying to players who just want to shoot all the enemies and forgo any stealth, which could lead to a quick game-over. A good feature in Fear Effect Sedna is the ability to skip cutscenes to get back into the game after dying, since getting caught in the open was almost always an instant game-over, and it would be even more frustrating if it took a long time to reset.
There were a lot of weaknesses that came through while playing Fear Effect Sedna. One of them was very noticeable because of the large amount of cutscenes – the narration. The narration in Fear Effect Sedna is not that great, decent at best. It would sound very robotic at times, and sometimes it just didn’t seem to fit at all.
Another thing that many people might dislike is the amount of cutscenes in Fear Effect Sedna, which make up most of the game. There also wasn’t a consistent theme – sometimes there would be cutscenes, other times there were character images onscreen with corresponding dialogue.
The worst feature of Fear Effect Sedna is by far the combat system. It seems like they tried to implement both real-time and tactical combat, but they ended up with a very disappointing system. Real-time combat is just clicking the enemies very fast and waiting for your character to shoot them. Even if you take cover, it seems to be negligible and doesn’t really provide any protection. Special abilities were introduced during the tutorial stage, but they don’t really seem to be that much more powerful than the normal attack. Another letdown was the fear system that was introduced at the start. It seemed like it would play a larger role, but it didn’t seem to have too much gameplay effects and wouldn’t really affect any decisions I was going to take.
In short, Fear Effect Sedna is an action and stealth game which heavily focuses on story with the use of cutscenes. It incorporates interesting puzzles in a way that relates to the story, enhancing the gameplay experience. The main issue comes with the combat system, which tries to implement both real-time and tactical combat into one. If you’re a fan of stealth or heavy story-based games, then Fear Effect Sedna would be a good choice.
Rating: 7/10
Check Out the Fear Effect Sedna Trailer:
Fear Effect Sedna is now available on PS4,, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.
PC Review
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Overall Score - 7/107/10
I am currently a sophomore at Michigan State University, majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Game Design and Development. I love to play a wide variety of games and hope to one day be able to create amazing games like these.
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