Hall of Nightmares: A Review of Project 13

Project 13 is the latest horror anomaly game from Developed Dry Bread Games and Publisher Dolores Entertainment. The premise of the game is for you to walk the repeating hallway of the Station 18 Mental Health Unit while looking for things out of place. The short L-shaped hallway connects to a small handful of rooms and doors to other areas of Station 18, and a few patients will be seen as you walk down the hall, some in their rooms, a man walking. Posters for services and images of support are posted on the walls, a small bird can be seen sitting in its cage and singing next to a woman in a wheelchair, muttering to herself. At the turn, you find a soda vending machine and the exit door right before you. When you pass through the exit, you loop back to the start of the hallway and are informed on your success or failure to identify what stood out in that “run” of the hallway.

At the entrance, you’ll find two boards. The first, and larger, is the current run count that starts at zero and climbs with each successful turn in the hall until the 13th run is completed. The second is above the door frame and keeps counts of the amount of anomalies you have reported with a goal of 35. With each successful report of a located anomaly, each counter will increase. If you fail to locate the anomaly or falsely report that there was something wrong in the hall, the run counter will reset but your anomaly counter will continue.

The anomalies you are searching for can range in complexity and how obvious they are. You may notice that a sign promoting heart health with a cartoon heart has been replaced with a disgusting cut of beef, The man at the end of the hall is now banging his head against the glass of his room, or the man who paces the hallway has a burst blood vessel in his eye but ignores it as if it never happened.

Other anomalies are more sinister, blood coming from now open doors with a giant rat hiding in the darkness, or worse; that woman sitting in the wheelchair has now decided to snack on the bird from the cage next to her.

Now that you have found what is wrong, you must report the anomaly with the giant switch at the end of the hall to the right of the exit. With practice and a lot of incorrect reports, you may escape Station 18 and be rewarded with the image I used for this review, a nice gold crown and bottle of champagne.

I had a lot of fun playing Project 13 but had a rough start with the game being a review copy prior to the actual release date in late May. The camera was the biggest issue with the game as when I first played it I became nauseous like I was on a boat on rough waters. My character wobbled down the hall as if he were drunk and the camera seemed to move on its own alongside this. My wife who was playing with me had to leave the room because she nearly threw-up. I eventually got used to the camera shake, but eventually stopped playing as I was getting a headache. I emailed the developer and they took my feedback and stabilized the camera to where I could actually finish the goal of 13 runs, reporting or not reporting anomalies to escape the nightmarish ward. The camera shake was a choice by the developer, but it was worse than initially planned.

A bit further down the line near the actual release, I had finally finished the game and was disappointed that I wasn’t rewarded with any Achievements on the Xbox Series X that I played on, but learned that this was because the publisher was working on getting the game approved access to the Microsoft servers which would help save my progress in game and reward every achievement that I had unlocked. When this did go through, I was excited to celebrate the release with the publisher and was notified that I had finished the game’s full achievement list.

Genuine jump scares and reactions to the anomalies made it a fun game and while it looks a lot better on PC, the Xbox Series X version is still decent. I am disappointed that the Xbox Store shows images from the PC Version, but I would still recommend this game for people that are fans of anomaly games. If you finish the main mode, there is a Hardcore mode where you must find anomalies and escape Station 18 on a timer as an electric wall is chasing you down the hallway and if it touches you, you die and have to start over from Run Zero.

Project 13 is available now on Playstation, Xbox, and Steam for $5.99.