Until Done Review

A Journalist, a Farm, and a Demon in the Dark

Until Done casts you as Beyza, a journalist investigating the disappearance of three children at the isolated Silver Lake Farm, armed with little more than a flashlight as a demonic entity hunts her once night falls. It's a $1.99 first-person horror release from solo developer B1onEZ, launched July 16, 2026, and its review sample is about as small as they come — just two reviews, one positive and one negative — but both describe strikingly similar frustrations with the same core chase mechanics, which is worth taking seriously even at this tiny sample size.

The Central Mechanic Is Running, and Reviewers Aren't Impressed

The store page frames the flashlight's "powerful mode" as the game's signature defensive tool — a way to temporarily blind and slow the pursuing demon and buy a few crucial seconds to escape. In practice, both reviewers describe the experience less charitably. One calls the game "exhausting to play," specifically citing mechanics that feel amateur and stressful rather than tense in a satisfying way. The other is far blunter, singling out "needless running" and describing a late-game sequence that amounts to running roughly 500 virtual miles backwards just to avoid dying — a specific, vivid complaint that suggests a chase encounter has overstayed its welcome by a wide margin.

A Complaint About Basic Interaction, Not Just Difficulty

Beyond the running, the negative review raises a more fundamental issue: difficulty picking items up. For a game built around searching a farm for scattered notes to piece together what happened to the missing children, a core interaction that doesn't reliably register is a serious problem, not a minor annoyance — it undercuts the exploration loop the store page positions as one of the game's two main pillars alongside the demon chase. Neither reviewer offers more technical detail than this, but it's a specific enough complaint that it reads as a genuine bug or unclear interaction prompt rather than simple unfamiliarity with the controls.

Where the Store Page Promises Scares, Reviewers Report None

Perhaps the most damaging single line in the sample comes from the negative review's flat assertion: "No real jump scares." For a horror game whose entire marketing pitch is a "suffocating and eerie atmosphere" and a demon "relentlessly hunting" the player through pitch-black darkness, a reviewer walking away without feeling genuinely scared at any point is about as direct a contradiction of the intended experience as a review can offer. It doesn't necessarily mean the atmosphere fails entirely — the same reviewer's frustration seems concentrated on the chase mechanics rather than the mood — but it does suggest the tension the game is built around isn't consistently landing.

An Unexplained Found-Footage Framing Device

Every screenshot on the store page runs through a camcorder-style viewfinder overlay, complete with a REC indicator, a running timer, and a timestamp reading "2005 May" — a curious choice given the story's premise of a present-day journalist investigating a modern disappearance. Nothing in the available marketing material or the two-review sample explains this framing device, whether it's meant to imply the story is a period piece, a discovered recording, or simply a stylistic overlay applied without deeper narrative justification. It's a small mystery in its own right, and one that a game this size, with this little review coverage, hasn't had the chance to have publicly clarified yet.

The Environmental Art Is a Genuine Bright Spot

Whatever the chase mechanics' shortcomings, the screenshots do show a farm setting with real visual craft — a rustic well shelter beside a muddy stream in warm daylight, a lakeshore backed by snow-capped mountains at golden hour, and a full moon rising over calm water as dusk settles in. None of the two reviews specifically praise the visuals, but neither do they criticize them, and the quiet, atmospheric daylight moments visible in the marketing material suggest the environmental design is a stronger asset than the pursuit sequences that dominate reviewer complaints.

A Breathless Update Cadence Right After Launch

The developer pushed an unusually dense string of patches in the days immediately following release — a major update the same day as launch, followed by no fewer than eight further small updates, bug fixes, and a "V2" overhaul within the first eight days. That kind of rapid-fire post-launch churn often signals a solo developer scrambling to address exactly the kind of feedback described above, and it's a reasonable, if unproven, sign that at least some of the frustrations the two reviewers logged near launch may have been addressed since — though with no dated reviews after that patch flurry to confirm it, that remains a hopeful reading rather than a verified one.

Verdict

Until Done has a horror premise with real atmosphere in its screenshots and a demon-hunted farm setting that could support genuine tension, but its tiny two-review sample agrees on too many specific, concrete problems to dismiss: chase sequences reviewers call exhausting rather than scary, an item-pickup interaction that doesn't reliably work, and a total absence of the jump scares the marketing promises. A frantic post-launch patch schedule suggests the developer is actively trying to fix things, and at $1.99 the financial risk is negligible, but there isn't yet enough positive evidence to recommend it with confidence. Worth a cheap, curious look if you're forgiving of rough Early Access-caliber execution in a full-priced release; worth skipping if you want your horror scary rather than merely stressful.