Close your eyes. Imagine yourself with a good friend in one of those cheesy county fair ghost houses. You're riding along in the creaky car as mechanical creatures pop out at you. You look over at your friend who is grimacing in terror...mocking the attraction. You leave feeling a bit amused, but mostly like you've just lost precious moments of your life.

That, in essence is exactly what Amy, the new indie survival horror game feels like -- the only difference is that unlike the county fair attraction, Amy takes itself way too seriously, but the end result is still the same. Though the developers wanted to try something new, they merely managed to deliver an unfinished game that manages to rip-off and ruin your favorite mechanics from every survival horror game in the last twenty years. Long story short --do not buy this game.

The game starts off with impressive ambitions -- you play as Lana, a woman who is responsible for the well-being of a child named Amy. Just when all seems like its going well, the train you're on crashes and you're sent into a nightmare situation filled with cannibal monsters and malicious soldiers. Things get even more interesting when you witness young and innocent Amy start to develop supernatural powers of her own.

"...there's very little ambition on display here at all."

Everything sounds great on paper, but in practice, Amy is far less of an ambitious adventure; in fact, there's very little ambition on display here at all. Rather than focusing on storytelling and character development, the development team chose to steal mechanics from other games and rely on cheap thrills. The worst part is that some of these stolen mechanics weren't even good in the first place, but somehow they're even worse here.

For what it's worth, Lana spends most of her time reacting like a normal human than most survival horror game stars do. The fact that her first reaction is not to go all navy seal and start fighting these abominations, but to hide from them. This mechanic though is also unfortunately overplayed way too quickly as the game relies on it even when it doesn't make much sense. Lana cowers from pretty much everything, even when it's the same thing over and over. About halfway through the game, I stopped rooting for my Lana and Amy, and just wanted them to become dinner for one of the game's cannibals.

"...everything is far more complicated because it just plain doesn't work."

Fine, Amy steals from other games and movies. I came to terms with that idea about halfway through the game, but what I couldn't come to terms with was just what they chose to steal. Lana and the rest of the Amy experience controls like a slightly updated version of the PS1 Resident Evil games. The majority of the game finds you lumbering through the world, getting stuck to random objects throughout the world. Nothing seems to work like it should, and everything is far more complicated because it just plain doesn't work. It's a frustratingly broken experience that will make you question why you even play video games to begin with. Yes, it's that bad.

The biggest crime of Amy's existence is that it never really feels like it goes anywhere all that important. Sure, over time you'll learn more about Amy herself and the powers she's unlocking, but it never feels like it's trying to surprise, scare or even intrigue you. Amy features almost no character development -- who you start with is who you end with, and none of them are any bit likeable.

Amy is one of those games that has a lot of hype and gets a lot of press for it, but fails to deliver on any of it. It's not only disappointing, but it's one of the worst games I've ever played. It's unoriginal, dated and remarkably shallow. In short -- it's broken. There's absolutely no reason to play Amy.