Them and Us

Them and Us is a third-person survival horror game developed by TendoGames that plants its flag firmly in the soil of late-1990s genre classics. Fixed camera angles, pre-rendered-style environments, deliberate tank controls, and resource scarcity are all present and accounted for. If you have warm feelings toward early Resident Evil or Clock Tower, this game is clearly speaking your language. If you do not, it will test your patience in the first hour and probably win nothing back from you after that. The game follows Alicia, a woman trapped inside what the story frames as a waking nightmare, piecing together fragments of her past through exploration and survival. The narrative leans into dreamlike dread rather than jump-scare mechanics, which is a genuine choice that separates it from a lot of cheap horror releases on Steam. The environments shift between decayed domestic spaces and stranger, more surreal locations, and the soundtrack does real work here. It is sparse, unsettling, and occasionally beautiful in a way that feels handcrafted rather than library-sourced. That care for sound design is one of the clearest signs a small team was genuinely invested in the project. Combat is limited and intentionally clunky in the genre tradition. Ammunition is scarce, enemies are threats you manage rather than obstacles you demolish, and backtracking through familiar hallways builds dread through repetition. This all functions as intended. What does not always function as intended is the game's technical polish. Frame-rate inconsistencies, some rough collision detection, and writing that occasionally loses its footing in translation are documented complaints across the Steam review base, and they are fair ones. The Mixed rating on Steam sits at roughly 75 percent positive across nearly sixteen hundred reviews, which tells a story of a game that wins over most of the people willing to meet it on its own terms while frustrating those who arrive expecting a tighter production. For the specific audience this targets, the imperfections are easier to absorb. If you have ever finished a B-tier survival horror game and loved it precisely because of its rough sincerity, Them and Us operates in that emotional register. Alicia's story has moments of genuine atmosphere that a bigger-budget horror title might smooth away into blandness. The pacing is slow, the opening especially so, but the game does build toward a payoff that rewards patience. It knows roughly what length it wants to be and does not overstay its welcome in the way that bloated indie releases often do. This is not a game for everyone, and TendoGames has clearly not tried to make it one. It is a love letter to a specific era of survival horror, written by people who cared enough to see it through to release. The seams show. The heart is visible too.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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