slanderoid.com

Holy damn, I really really really want to love this game. It checks so many boxes for me. It has excellent ambience, an interesting story, decent monsters… it is truly freaky. This horror game has gotten my pulse pounding on more than a few occasions. On top of all of that, I’ve found at least two nods to Silent Hill – and rather than being hokey, they’re deeper cuts for fanatics of those games.

But the “lives” mechanic keeps me from recommending this one right now. I love the idea: if a character dies, you start again from the same point with another unique character (after finding the last character’s drops) and continue on with the game from where the last character died. This game introduces lives and permadeath into a horror game in a very interesting way. However, while I kind of love this mechanic, it’s the reason I can’t give the game a glowing review.

Long story short, I’ve played the second chapter three times without succeeding. This game likes to hand out instant deaths like candy on Halloween. That’s fine. In chapter two, you only have three lives. That’s fine. But every time I’ve gotten a game over in chapter two, I’ve been at least 40 minutes into the chapter. The thing is, once you lose all of your lives, you have to restart the chapter. So that means I’ve lost at least two hours on the second level and, currently, have to restart it again. With the instant deaths, I might end up trying again more than once to finish it. That’s a huge loss of time.

I’ve loved a lot about this game. I will finish chapter two and I will beat the game. After that, I will update this review to reflect my feelings upon completion. Until then, this game has taught me something:

I really fucking hate instant deaths.