Personal Rating: "Interesting but not entirely compelling"
Personal Rating: 5/10
Genre: Point and Click Adventure/Psychological horror

In Greek mythology and the Homerian epics, madness is similarly thought of as a punishment from God, or the gods. Thus Hera punishes Hercules by ‘sending madness upon him’, and Agamemnon confides to Achilles that ‘Zeus robbed me of my wits’. Thanks to the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 BC), madness first became an object of scientific speculation.

So Serena (a short point and click adventure set in a single setting - a lonely wooded cabin) opens with a man waiting for the arrival of his wife. As we point and click on various items strewn about the incredibly run-down cabin (a not-so-subtle metaphor used to display the clarity of the mind of its main protagonist) cracks in the veneer begin to surface. Without going into too much detail its suffice to say gamers should expect to see exactly where this story is headed within the first five minutes of playing (the game roughly lasts about 40 min before concluding).

Whilst it's an interesting experiment that comes along with some pedigree - Josh Mandel of Space Quest fame handles the narration of the main character. My mine gripe is that he is probably not the person who should have handled these duties. He comes across as stilted when the script calls for emotional variation and I didn't buy it for one second. The woman who handles the wife's duties comes across as robotic in her line delivery even when called upon to display hysteria and it feels like both are reading from a script as the voice-overs just don't flow naturally. Yes - I realize this is a free little title that probably didn't have the budget to hire professional actors - but having professional voice actors onboard would most certainly have been more beneficial.

I was also not mad about the main character voicing his thoughts about every single little thing we click on. Yes we may be dealing with a descent that's crux is akin to an emotional ship-wreck but having studied basic psychology at Uni before switching, I get that we are mearly an observer inside another man's fractured mind but instead of drawing me in to the complexity of a mind unraveling I was left distanced and more and more annoyed as the tale progressed.

Short and bleak this tale of love, loss and misery is thankfully over quickly. I would hardly call it a "love-letter to the adventure gaming clique" as there are far better examples out there but as a mild diversion you may end up enjoying it more than I did since I can't say I was overly impressed.

Serena a free Steam game will take an hour or so too to fully unlock all its contents .So many questions and thoughts will come to mind as you explore the tiny cabin with many secrets to tell. Give it a try and be prepaired to be thrown for a roller coaster of a ride in short story.

Serena is more of a story than a game, but an experience such as this is a shame to let pass by. Because, in such a small place, a whole world unfolds.

The story takes place in a cabin far into the woods, and away from civilization. You, the narrator, struggles with your faint memories of your wife, Serena. You look around your home, trying to find mementos that may reveal truths, or even lies? Little by little, you start to remember what happened to both you, and your missing Serena. But still, some things remains unclear. In the very beginning, you two had a romantic relationship going on, but slowly, it all went in flames.

As you may already know. Serena is a dark story that can leave many questions inside your head. Certain things are clear, just not directly to your ear. The hope you had from the start has been turned into distress and defeat. You wandered alone in the fantasy of books and arts... now, who is the deceiver of hearts?

It's hard for me to mention this title without also talking about the game Anna... so I'm not even going to try avoiding the comparisons. If anything, I'll probably end up using them as a stick to sort of beat this game with and show what it could have been. Both feature a man alone in a house in the woods forlornly trying to piece together the events of their past while their emotional and mental grip on the world gradually spirals out of control with the realisation of the true history that they have somehow forgotten. Both use a minimum of space for a maximum of focus on atmosphere and tension while also instilling the player with a sense of being extremely confined, to mirror the same trapped feeling the characters have, both in their current situation as well as their lives in general. Both also toy with many of the same themes and apparent approach to environmental design and other such aspects. But where they differ greatly is Anna is a fully fledged game complete with puzzles and an in-depth story that plays with the occult and supernatural forces, while Serena is more grounded in reality and has you walking around a single room for an hour examining things and listening to one man's flood of self-pity at the breakdown of a relationship.

I'm all for "games that aren't games", but rather "experiences" that invite you to submerge yourself in a unique world and present you with an interesting story or something pretty to look at, and I think that's just as worthy an endeavour as any other form of interactive entertainment or art, but Serena fails badly on this count. The diminutive cabin is pretty well crafted and at least serves well in creating a bleak and withered feeling to reflect its emotional themes as it tries to draw in the player to inhabit the protagonist's state of mind. But the actual story and its characters never capitalise on that and are ultimately uninteresting and not especially likable. This is partly due to the male lead's voice acting which seems at times out of place and unconvincing (made even more jarring by the much more natural sense of the female voiceover), but also by the writing that feels a little awkward or rushed through at times and just never really ingratiates the player to the subjects of its tale. It doesn't help either that the big story revelation is so annoyingly and artificially withheld until the right point in time when they want you to find it, despite the fact it can be seen coming a mile away.

Without an interesting story or characters to latch onto, all that you're left with is wandering around a small area examining the items, hoping to gain insight into what went wrong so you can progress your character's recall and further re-examine the items with a slighter newer perspective, then repeat. It's a tedious structure that will essentially have you running small laps of the cabin from the start right until the very end and quickly extinguish any initial excitement you had for exploring this new world. And that's really my biggest problem with the game. It's not exactly outright terrible, as the music, look and presentation is generally good and paints a scene of beautiful torment and misery with increasingly oppressive undertones of fear and madness, but all this is squandered by everything else and never really goes anywhere. Had they expanded it to several areas and spread the story out over a longer period, perhaps even added in some more conventional adventure game staples like some basic puzzles or light scavenger hunts, the story elements and character progression would have felt much more natural and they even could have charged a modest price for it. But, instead, my experience with titles like Anna and Dear Esther, which much more masterfully achieve the aims this game strives towards, makes Serena pale quite badly in comparison. I would still look forward to their future projects and hope that they can hone their craft to finally reach the greatness that this game hints at, but as it stands, this just feels like a failed experiment more than the touching, emotional masterpiece many would have you believe it to be.

If you are extremely bored, play this. If you are tired and can't sleep, play this. This game is sure to put you to sleep quickly. And for the love of god, do not click on things multiple times looking for clues because you will never hear the end of this guys annoying voice.

Serena is a darkly disturbing, emotionally wrenching, severely affecting short little gem. It takes less than an hour to play through. After having played two or three times already, it's a game that is short in duration but stays long in memory. I very much enjoyed playing this game and look forward to playing more games by each of the contributing designers.