The hallways of a mysteriously decrepit and deranged research facility beckon your escape, but the weakening of your mental state refuses to make navigating your way to freedom an easy task. The voice of a mysterious girl describes to the player acts of unspeakable injustices from within the confines, and your descent into the sanity depleting design of this strange complex leads you on the hunt for more information. Why are you here, what is the purpose of this wretched place, and who is this girl leaving you notes telling of a sketchy employment situation gone horribly afoul?

Hektor is a rare breed of psychological horror gaming, one with impeccable pacing and constant flow. Never feeling slow, never sluggish, tedious or breaking the pace, it keeps you one-hundred-percent on your toes and pressing ahead without the will to ever look back.

The story and the mystery surrounding the fates of the facilities inhabitants is told through the discovery of notes left behind by past workers, and cryptic visions from elements of this bleak environment. The voice acting is fantastically done and part of what keeps the player so immersed in the harrowing events unfolding through the snippets of writings uncovered and a real sense of urgency, confusion and terror can be heard with each increasingly dire development of the story.

Moving through the story of Hektor takes you through a range of odd environments and surreal imagery. Starting with the harsh reality of the trashed and abandoned research complex and slowly evolving into more vibrantly obscured visions of lush red curtains and fancy tiled floors as if you've stepped right into an episode of Twin Peaks, but which of these surroundings are merely a figment of your imagination?

The beautifully orchestrated soundtrack is instantly chilling and ominous, worming its way through your ears and into your mind where you can feel every sharp note of the violin effecting your psyche. The echoing of unnerving metal scrapes in the distance, the buzz and crackle of old and failing light fixtures all work together to create a heavy atmosphere that constantly builds tension only to all explode in your face with every twist of the plot and your pysche.

Hallucinatory visual effects that plague our character creates a chaotic and fittingly confusing effect, and your only solace is the scarce Benzodiazepine pills scattered throughout the facility. This in part is what gives Hektor such a uniquely bizarre and frantic situation for a horror game, and a unique concept not seen since the likes of the legendary Eternal Darkness in terms of how much your mind is being screwed with. The wavy and twisting effect of your ravaged mental state making you feel as though you are losing your vision, causing you to squint and focus your attention on the distortion of the screen even harder until that one disturbing/shocking moment takes you off guard.

Not only does neglecting to take your pills bring about the mind altering hallucinatory effects, but stirs the vengeful and twisted souls of past test subjects of this cruel place. Always ahead of you if you rush and forget to scavenge for pills but never too far behind if you lose your way and slow down, the threat of seeing one of these sanity depleting and terrifying creatures is what drives your carefully paced search for escape and answers.

The random and deliberately confusing nature of the ever-changing hallways around you and the constant transformation of the mysterious facility is an incredibly innovative mechanic for the genre. The straight-forward and almost repetitive nature that plagues most modern horror games gets a much needed spicing up and the cold, gray, lifeless hallways we're so used to from the genre now feel much more alive, more sinister and unpredictable.

Hektor is one of those elusive and unforgettable horror titles that manages to keep me consistently glued to the screen, only to severely regret my undying attention at the harrowing realization that I'm not alone in these dark and desolate hallways. The creepiness is in full force thanks to a genuinely mind-bending atmosphere, nothing ever feels forced and the scares are all derived from the mysterious unknown factors and macabre questions swimming around your mind. Even more impressive is that this elegant and disturbing journey into a twisted facility was hand crafted and coordinated by a team of five very dedicated people working from various locations across the globe.

Amongst the droves of same-y horror titles and their cheap thrills, Hektor stands out as one of the few sublimely twisted experiences with a hallucinatory touch and just the right amount of mind♥♥♥♥ery causing you to question the reality of every last step you took. Where have you really been and what really happened, where are you going and will you ever get there?

The premise sounded intriguing - psychological horror adventure with constantly shifting hallways.
Too bad the execution is subpar.

Hektor is an underground military base/lab where the scientists conducted experiments on people, making them chug pills like crazy. You, an unnamed "subject", are sedated and sent into the depths of Hektor which is now abandoned. What follows is a 2-3 hour slog through some of the most nauseating and depressing enviroments in the last decade.

The game follows the trend of many indie Penumbra-wannabe games with story told through notes scattered around the corridors and innabillity to defend from monsters. I said Hektor was abandoned? Sorry, I lied. You will encounter either the scream-in-your-face-but-no-real-threat ghasts or the vicious Predator that can hunt you and kill you. Death is not a problem in this game, as you'll be sent to the last checkpoint with your inventory intact. The real problem comes from the so called JIGSAW system. It's pretty much a randomized/algorythmic system of world portal that sends you running around in loops until you figure out the way to progress the game. It's intriguing for the first 10-15 minutes after which becomes tedious as there's no real indicator to the JIGSAW's pattern. Another bothersome thing about it is that it may give the Predator an advantage when it's chasing you, sometimes even teleporting it right in your path.

My biggest gripe with Hektor is its insanity system. Yes, we've seen that in a bazillion games ever since Frictional Games' successfull Penumbra and Amnesia series, so I was normally expecting some blurring of vision when my character's sanity drops low. Instead, what the devs did is adding another layer of nauseating effects like swirl and color shift (thankfuly, these can now be toned down). Combined with claustrophobic hallways and narrow FOV, the game can cause massive headaches and motion sickness. I don't consider myself prone to motion sickness but I had to turn off the game a couple of times and get some fresh air because it made me feel ill and once I almost vomited.

After that's said and done, one can wonder what's in the game at all. Barely no puzzles (if you can even call casual scavenging a puzzle), paper-thin story and no real value for the games as a medium. The price of 15 euros (reduced from ludicrous 20!) is an insult to the injury, the value is terribly low especially considering some of the greatest indie games sold for less than that. Seems like copying Frictional Games' formula isn't so easy after all.

Hektor was amazing,

A unique trait i loved about the game was the subtle way it changed the map constantly to control you more than you control your own path. Atmosphere 10/10. I however did not like the inability to hide from monsters, cannot close doors or iron gates they walk right through them, the game is less scary when death is too easy. The hints and elements throughout the game were fantastic, numbers, voices, messages. The game took me 3.5 hours to complete I liked being able to finish in one sitting. I questioned the entire game who my own character was and the ending was very satisfying. I would reccomend this game to anyone who could appreciate this kind of archetype of horror. Kappa//

8/10

genre : 1st person horror adventure game

+ good presentation, good use of light, creepy atmosphere
+ sound is great, both soundtrack and in-game music/sound is awesome and adds to the fear factor, voice overs (narrator and when reading documents) are fine
+ gameplay wise it's a point and click adventure game in 1st person where you have to progress the story through 3 acts by solving some puzzles (all of them are inventory based) , reading documents and from act 2 using stealth (since you are being hunted) - you have a lighter as a source of light and later on a flashlight - you take pills to decrease your sanity meter - resources are limited and can be found searching the environment
+ controls are fine, so is the optimization, runs maxed out with no problems

+/- the monster that hunts you is too fast, even if you use stealth the light might betray you and if you turn it off you can't see anything - however it's a matter of pace, if you keep up a good pace (not running all the time or doing circles when it hunts you) you can avoid it

- story might be interesting and dark , but not original
- the sanity effect (even if you can reduce it in the options menu) is too much and can be irritating since it makes you loose direction
- consuming pills doesn't seem to do anything , maybe has an effect only for a few seconds
- short, finished in less than 4 hours - some replayability if you want to get all achievements

i was satisfied with the game, although the story is not that good, the atmosphere is great, it's the closest game to amnesia as far as atmosphere is concerned, you will be scared playing it , so i totally recommend it to anyone that has some interest in horror games.

Does a great job of setting you on edge, hinting at some kind of botched brain surgery, the need to regularly pop pills, (which I might add were far too plentul) to stave off madness. Beyond the disorientation of the shifting geography however it didnt do enough to instill a legitimate sense of fear, leaving me a little too much to my own devices in an opening section of game that while admittedly atmospheric, soon lost it's power over me and quickly became a bit of a bore and largely stayed that way for the rest of the game.

Feel free to check out my Quick Review video for more detail on my opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv73BsfdQVU

Hektor is really an amazingly made horror experience. I'm an avid horror reader and writer, and personally I really wasn't all that drawn into Amnesia, and Outlast kinda did it for me but still not all that much.

Hektor is a totally different beast. It might be my personal taste, but I love the surreal, psychological horror experience that Hektor gives you. Right off the bat, the game feels like you're playing through a schizophrenic person's really bad acid trip, and everything that happens throughout the game reinforces that feeling.

Nothing makes a whole lot of sense, but it all has its own surreal consistency that starts to make sense, especially given the acid-trip context of the game. ("What the hell am I doing at this place? Where have I been going? What the hell is this thing in my hand? What have I even been doing for the last twenty minutes?")

Also, IMO the game's greatest strength is its pacing and subtlety. There are a lot of details in the game to take in, which can be kinda hard given the acid visual obstructing everything, but as a psychological horror fan it's really a great experience discovering everything the game has to throw at you. That's not to say everything's perfect--I personally didn't like the sexual assault sub-plot going on with the patients at the facility, I felt like that was maybe a bit forced in to try and make you feel shocked about what's going on. Honestly though, I don't feel that this detracts from the overall experience of the game in any way, as long as you don't have personal issues with the inclusion of this story element. To me though, the game's not really about the sub-plots of what went on at the facility, and more about the main character's schizophrenic acid-trip and his mental reactions when he finds out all this ♥♥♥♥ that went on.

Definitely highly recommended for fans of surreal horror, acid, and getting mind-♥♥♥♥ed by a game that's sick in many ways ;)

(Also, as a complete aside to all this, I would like to mention that the devs of this game are really cool guys who love making ♥♥♥♥ed-up horror games, and they definitely deserve your support if you're into this kind of game.)

You feel "like a human guinea pig" on a roller-coaster ride thru hell. Finding your way thru an ongoing changing maze, chased by a creature from hell. This game is amazing. The atmosphere is awful! You discover the story of this facility by finding notes all around. If you are looking for the thrill, that's your game! :-)

We've been playing Hektor for Experienced TV recently and we feel ready to give our thoughts on the game...

Graphics:
The dark atmospheric corridors really feel claustrophobic. The lighting is spot on and when the corridor opens up a bit into a larger area, you get a slight sense of agoraphobia. The whole environment's level of decay and dereliction provide the right level of repulsion and attraction whilst the addition of certain areas (the red-curtained area for example) offer a great juxtaposition with the 'mental hospital' vibe. The insanity and overdose effects can be a little overwhelming at times, but those can now be toned down in the options. However, it adds much more to the experience when you keep them on. Creature design is really good with the antagonists resembling something human, but having that sense of having something wrong with them. The environment twists and changes causing a large amount of disorientation and it gets incredibly tense when you turn a corner and realise that you have just passed that section...

Gameplay:
The door mechanics were slightly annoying to start with, but these were patched and work a lot better now. It took a while to figure out exactly what the benzo pills were doing and why they were needed, but you kind of get a feel for them after, although levelling off the insanity sometimes takes too many and you quickly run out. The mechanics of having a lighter with unlimited fuel and a torch with limited battery create a great dilemma... Do you stay with a very short range of vision and end up running into a creature or do you use the torch to see further ahead? Leaning around corners can be pretty handy, but normally end up scaring the hell out of you when something actually is there. Lacking a real tutorial or introduction to the game, you will have to figure out a lot for yourself, but that just adds to your investment in the way the story plays out.

Sound:
The sound design is genius. We bought the soundtrack as well. From the lights popping to the voices in your head and the auditory hallucinations the player seems to experience regularly, everything just gels together. We genuinely believe that the only other person to have gotten the sound design right on a game like this was Akira Yamaoka on Silent Hill 2. There's a few moments where there is just total silence. After having the orchestrated music playing and then to stop, it really creeps you out. It's also not overused, either. All the effects and voice acting fit in perfectly. Even down to the typewriter noises or scribbling sounds on the notes. The appearance of the creatures are accompanied by a very stressful orchestral stab and really increase the tension for the player.

Verdict:
This game has done a fantastic job at creating a truly creepy atmosphere. The pacing and timing of the creature appearances are perfect and are not overdone. The sound makes you jump and build tension like no other recent horror title available. For something created by just five guys, it is a great venture into the genre and the mainstream games world in general. We can't wait to see more from Rubycone in the future.

Final score: 9 out of 10

First off, ignore the haters. Seriously, like I've read a few of the 'Bad' reviews and its just people spouting nonsense.

Hektor, for me, was scary and atmospheric. A must buy for anyone who appreciates the horror genre.

This game isn't scary, it's just irritating. It uses cheap tricks like "creepy" sounds (just a small bunch of voices and noises that repeat constantly) and blurred vision to make you feel, like, "confused", but it just pissed me off. Wandering in total darkness, accompanied by the sounds that you've heard a dozen times already, just to wait for some ugly monster to jump at you from the corner and initiate another cutscene... I've been through all of this many times before. Better play Amnesia.

This game is a unique horror experience in which you don't actually know if anything is trying to chase you or you're just getting lost in your own decling psyche. At least in the early game and just from the little less than an hour of play I can already tell that this game is in a class of it's own. If you like games like Outlast and Silent Hill this is definitely the game for you. It also scares the ♥♥♥♥ out of my friends and I so I would give the overall experience an 8/10 but if I based it off of the poop in my pants I would give it a 2

Tis' VERy dark and really creepy. I havent encountered any beasts of the darkness yet but the game CONSTANTLY plays with your head as things change when you least expect them to.

Currently playing this for youtube and its Awesome!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we6raem5o-0

HEKTOR is a first-person, psychological horror game where nothing ever stays the same for long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy35MKWKNsw
Explore a world that literally moves with your every twist and turn, as corridors shift and change before your eyes. Uncover cryptic clues to help you find your way and elude the horrors that only madness can conjure.

You were a subject at HEKTOR, a now defunct, covert research facility buried deep beneath northern Greenland. Forgotten in its dark corridors with only a lighter and flashlight to guide your way, you must overcome a psychosis brought on by years of torture and confinement to escape.

This game is awesome! Haven't been so scared since Alien Isolation and Outlast. Skilled creators!

The issue is... that once you figure out that you are invincible and the map/enamies keep repeating... it isn't a very scary game.

First half = freeky as ♥♥♥♥
second half = when is something "new" going to happen

It's not perfect, but the design is very creative. Some parts did get a bit frustrating, when not knowing what to do and being killed over and over again. But overall it was was quite an entertaining playthru, genuinely spooky but not just Amnesia: Redux.

Ok. That was Awsome..... The game was extremely suspensfull and has the most dark and forboding atmosphere ive seen in a horror game. The ending was amazing !! At times i had no idea where this game was going, but it all makes sence in the ending. Mind Blown !!

Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire. Stop the water, Start the fire.

I enjoyed this game thoroughly. Although, it definitely could've been longer. The sense of madness really started to take over after about an hour of gameplay. Sadly, I was too focused on not pooping myself to really follow the story, so I was left utterly confused. :P All in all, I give it a 7/10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yFCGvjjsZQ

Really enjoyed the game! An amazing portrayal of an insane mind. Incredibly interesting approach on level-design that constantly messes with your own mind. Delicious ^^

Hektor was a really good game and very scary the plot when it started to develop actually made me want to keep playing the only thing is that it is still kinda glitchy infact in one part i was wandering around for quite some time with no progress then when i reloaded the game it took two seconds for the story to progress you can watch a highligh of my journey here
https://youtu.be/PHKHfuCqpSw

i will give this game a 9/10 for horror but drop it by .5 because of that one horrible glitch t so total score 8.5/10