Waking up within the mysterious confines of what simply seems like a stranded desert gas station, you must use your brains, brawn, and finesse to make it long enough to find enough answers to help you escape. Unsure of what is quite reality or a horrible, dusty delusion- struggle to get your bearings and simply survive as you delve deeper into this survival/psychological horror immersive sim by Glass Knuckle Games. With only your flashlight and hammer in hand, seek a way out- hopefully without loosing your head, physically or mentally, in the process.


One of a select few safe rooms, one of the only places you truly ARE safe in the world of Ad Infernum.


Ad Infernum combines both immersive sim along with psychological horror, crafting what can be a fairly short format game. In this case, it works incredibly well-despite the game taking places within a quite small perimeter of a gas station. Armed with initially only a flashlight and hammer, you can find and utilize weapons and other items found around you to restore your nerve (sanity meter) and health, ultimately helping you to find your way to the bottom of this mystery you’ve found your way into.


This gas station is the only thing within miles, and something is definitely not quite right. 


While this game is crafted by an exceptionally small team, the controls feel tight and fine tuned. Jump, vault, crouch and slide your way to safety, avoiding the gruesome monsters in hot pursuit. Weapons feel responsive and weighty, as well as firearms feeling accurate, and are easy to aim. The graphics are somewhere between modern and retro. While the art style works well, it could leave some to be desired, falling in a strange middle-ground. Just providing enough detail to sate, you won’t be finding yourself scouring over mass details and intricate environments. Just about any clue you may need is going to be blatant- but left for you to figure out.

You will find yourself pondering over multiple puzzles- all of them relying on number-play and common sense. This feels somewhat lackluster, as none of them require all too much brain power- and offer little-to-no variance. The puzzles provided, also often provide no substance to the core story- only a welcome boost to the state of your game. While this is pleasant, it also proves to be somewhat disappointing-requiring no real effort to advance the story, sans the immediate task at hand. That being said, don't scribble down prior codes expecting them to be correct. In my slew of plays, I never had a code for any puzzle repeat twice. You'll still need to keep an eye out for the ever changing solution.


A typical run-of-the-mill puzzle you'll soon become accustomed to.


The music really takes a back burner on this title- sadly the most enjoyable track I found was the unbelievably short credit roll. I really wish that kind of musical prowess had carried through the length of the game. The music is fairly minimal, likely to try and lend to the eerie silence, but I feel like the sound direction could have been better. Any actual music fades only moments after initially playing. Effectively leaving not much for your ears to feast on. While there are some very interesting or well timed audio ques, ultimately the lack of music did seem to flatten the mood.

Enemies have some variance, but are overall forgettable- mainly consisting of re-skins of which I noted 4 in total. The AI also feels like a weak point in the game, as most enemies find the most basic and direct way forward, not boasting very much true ability to adapt to the situation. Disappointingly, on hard difficulty, I found some of the creatures merely standing at a complete rest, not even bothering to walk patrols that were frequent on Normal. Despite that shortcoming, most enemies did function as intended, leaving you to use stealth or brute force to make your way t'words your goals. While some enemies may exist to be dispatched permanently, some are only temporarily downed before resuming the chase mere moments later. Think quickly, and be sure you always allow yourself an out! Even while seeming slightly dim, the monsters roaming  can and will be catch you by surprise. As a note, I will say I believe that the hard difficulty AI is some-what bugged- as I found even normal felt more challenging. As I am currently going through to complete nightmare mode, the AI is VERY in-tune to what you're doing, and is much more intimidating than I had anticipated, based off of hard difficulty.


Unfortunately, you may find the enemy AI lacking at times.


The story that Glass Knuckle Games is telling with Ad Infernum, while somewhat cliché in appearance- boast some though entertainment, while also remaining somewhat vague. You're stranded in the middle of nowhere, in a desert- and in an attempt to find a way to call for help, you find that more is going on in this humble locale than meets the eye. While the story is the main driving factory, especially within the first run of the game, the real meat and bones of this title lies within it’s New Game + system. Completing the game is really just the springboard into much deeper, darker, far more entertaining depths. While not complex, it pushes all the right buttons for rewarding your work, as well as for completing pre-determined challenges.


An end of run screen, where you will get points that will do nothing but benefit future runs...


Overall, while having some glaring shortcomings, Ad Infernum is easy to sink your teeth into, as well as spend a fair amount of hours in. Rewarding New Game + features, as well as the challenge of mastering the game really make it an enjoyable, easy play. Far from perfect but an obvious passion project, I would absolutely giving Ad Infernum a run, especially if you are a fan of Survivor Horror titles. The folks over at Glass Knuckles are highly active, constantly listening and improving on issues they find- constantly seeing to improve the overall player experience. If you're looking for something that is going to tide you over for a fair bit of time, and offer some decent replay value- I would easily recommend Ad Infernum. While not perfect, it has an astounding amount of polish for such a small dev team, as well as a whole lot of passion behind this project that makes it well worth it's modest price tag, and easily provides more than it's asking price in entertainment value.

Ad Infernum is available on PC through Steam.