I don’t know if it’s just me, or the average indie game that wants to consider itself a horror offering of some kind, but this is unfortunately a space that bums me out more often than not. Whether it's weird and wonky Five Nights at Freddy's clones, titles that offer little more than cheap jump scares or some gory imagery, or walking simulators that are more scary for how dull they are, it can be tough to find interesting indie horror out there. Snow Squall Grip, which happens to be a walking simulator at its core, unfortunately does little to move the needle from mediocre.

Having crashed in a remote area in the middle of a horrendous snow storm on the way to some mysterious facility, you find yourself starting out in a hostile environment. After doing some initial looking around a few things are clear. First, you’re only able to go a relatively short distance before the cold begins to claim you, first with your perceptions and then eventually just killing you outright. Second, lending to the relatively short runtime of the game (it can be completed in an hour or two, depending on how you play through it), there aren’t that many places for you to go. Third, aside from the resources in the area being sparse, your carrying capacity is limited as well to only one item. This makes finding what you need and then getting it to where it needs to go somewhat central to the experience… all while trying to avoid freezing to death or being attacked.

The problem here is that almost every aspect of play could be considered clunky at best. Your maneuverability is pretty awful and janky, often making getting where you want to go more difficult than it should need to be. The puzzles you’ll need to solve are generally rudimentary at best, more often a challenge in trying to get around between locations than in working things out. You’ll have a gun with very limited ammo, but unfortunately when you actually need to make use of it you’ll find that there’s a good reason this isn’t intended to be a shooter in any way. This honestly just feels a bit slapped together, meeting all of the essential requirements for being considered a game, but not really putting in the effort to even be considered adequate.