The Letter

The Letter is a first-person "survival horror" video game developed and published by TreeFall Studios for the Wii U. It was released on July 10, 2014 on the Nintendo eShop store.

Why It Needs a Letter to Get Out

 * 1) It's yet another Slender rip-off that tries to be scary simply by making the whole world pitch-black, but forgets to include a monster attacking the player. Once you quickly realize there are no enemies the game immediately stops being scary.
 * 2) There's no way to die.
 * 3) Unclear objectives; you're told to find a letter and open it, but the game neglects to tell you which letter to open and there are several of them. You're also not told where you're supposed to go to find them.
 * 4) Some parts of the game don't function, such as your flashlight's battery meter not depleting no matter how long it's on. A later patch removed the battery meter entirely, rather than fix the mechanic.
 * 5) Abysmal draw distance.
 * 6) The plot is paper-thin and made pointless by the game's ending, where it turns out everything that occurred was just a dream.
 * 7) The game can be beaten in just 15 minutes or less.
 * 8) Poor graphics, with almost no animation and objects and textures looking like they belong in an N64 game.
 * 9) Some textures are blatantly incomplete- displaying as one solid color. Notes and hints do not render correctly with the game's lighting- appearing as bright white no matter how dark the environment.
 * 10) "Story" is told with black screens and plain Times New Roman font.
 * 11) Little to no sound, as there's no voice acting, a small selection of underwhelming sound effects, and music loops that only last for seconds and repeat endlessly.
 * 12) Costs $1.99, which is insulting for a game this incomplete and broken.
 * 13) There are collectible VHS tapes which say "hidden tape collected", but they do absolutely nothing. There doesn't even seem to be an inventory keeping track of how many or which ones you've collected.

The Only Redeeming Quality

 * 1) At least the creator responded to the criticism unlike other developers.

Reception
The game is the 2nd lowest scoring Wii U game after Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade and one of the lowest scoring games on Metacritic, with a score of 14 based on four critic reviews. On ProJared's "Top 10 Worst Games of 2014" list, The Letter was #6.