The problem with 'horror walking sims' usually lies in the inherent lack of urgency. Horror games often impel player apprehension thanks to health bars, AKA the notion of pain and death. In Devotion, the player walks from room to room, solving the occasional "puzzle," if such trivial symbolic obstacles can even be referred to as such, and looking at the various events that occur, over and over again, as the game constantly reminds them that they are supposed to be scared.

Red Candle Games offer nothing new, save for the Chinese familial setting, borrowing from the likes of P.T., Layers of Fear, and even their own prior release, Detention, which itself works essentially as a (mostly wonderful) riff on Silent Hill. What begins with an intriguing setup, regarding a family's stability coming undone, serving up a portrait of enduring patriarchal anxieties, gradually becomes a pretty insufferable excursion into backwards game design; a game so full of itself it seems to forget the player is even there.

What Remains of Edith Finch works so well because its skits function as subconscious pools, where identity is represented through genre and creativity. Devotion gets so boring and bored it starts flinging ideas at a wall, hoping everything just sticks without cohesion. And by the time a storybook transforms into a two-dimensional sidescroller, it's difficult to keep engaged with the preposterousness, especially as its ludicrous finale wraps up with a silly musical number, and a whole load of questions are swept under the rug for the sake of "ambiguity."

For as incredible a series the original Silent Hill trilogy remains, and as innovative P.T. is as a modern successor, recent imitators like Devotion prove that the influence is too often a vapid attempt at replication. The cultural significance of Devotion -- as a Chinese release, and a notably banned product -- is about the only unique and interesting aspect of this otherwise dull, Lifeless title (it's worth noting how the game follows successful people instead of working class). Another example to demonstrate how jumpscares and surrealistic moments simply cannot make up for a lack of engaging design.

Devotion is quite a ways off from what I expected it to be. Since I like to go in blind to most games beyond their short description, especially if it’s a horror or narrative heavy game, this often means that I have little expectations beyond what it says on the tin. For Devotion that means all I knew was that it would be a 1980s Taiwan horror game, presumedly about… Devotion. And call it stereotyping but I was very much anticipating a by-the-books but by no mean unwelcome ghost game. It goes a bit deeper than that though.

Similar to Transference, this is more a game about family than the underlying creep and dread of a boogeyman stalking you. Information you learn about yourself, your daughter, and your wife is told primarily through artistic vignettes, souvenirs, and notes, told over the snapshot duration of many years. Luckily unlike Transference, I think this game did a great job in not only defying my expectations, but in making me happy that it did. It did the unthinkable, it made me care to learn more about it’s titular family. As the name suggests, the game is a tale about how desperate devotion on the part of the player character, the father, can lead a man down a dark path to save his family. It’s a sad ballad that I could dissect set piece by set piece, but for the sake of brevity and the small possibility that I can get someone else to play this game, I won’t elaborate on any more spoilers here. I’ll just add as a last note on the story front that the passage of time is portrayed fantastically in the design and wear of the apartment complex your family lives in as you explore your past, creating a wonderful narrative and aesthetic harmony.

While I said this wasn’t a traditional haunted house, don’t think that means there won’t be any scares or legitimately horrific events. In a surprise twist this game has some of the best toe-curling body horror I’ve seen, realism be damned. And before you think this is just another PT walking simulator clone with a little fluff added on, I’m glad to say there’s some super creative gameplay segments beyond walking nondescript room to nondescript room that kept me properly engaged. Some are cute, some are ethereal, and some are quite unnerving, either by nature of the story or with the help of some masterly crafted ambience. It even has a half-decent chase sequence, with the caveat that it would have been vastly improved if our player character moved faster than a light jog. Regardless, it was short and gave the player some visceral, horror-fueled urgency that the rest of the game doesn’t quite touch on.

It’s weird how in many ways I find Devotion to be similar to Layers of Fear - another walking simulator where you uncover the dark pieces of your past - and yet I enjoyed it so much more. I think the depth of story, a clear creative throughline, and genuinely well-crafted sections beyond JUST notes made it so much more intriguing throughout, even if it wasn’t what I was initially hoping for. Devotion also has this remarkable, almost claylike look to everything that weirdly takes me back to games of the PS3 era. I’m not sure why, but I love it. Inscryption is kind of similar, it has an indescribably fuzzy art style to it that makes it oddly endearing. Whatever it is, keep ‘em coming I say.

First person domestic horror game about a Taiwanese family from 1980-1987 that has you exploring their increasingly disturbing apartment as both the father and daughter while you piece together what happened to their seemingly happy life. Extremely well made environments and scenes that tell a story focused around traditional societal expectations of family and children, effects of ignoring and stigma towards mental health, and the effects of cults and their appeal to vulnerable people.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1153097040915603456

This is PT meets Gone Home. It's like PT in how you repeatedly go through the same apartment over and over again with little or big changes each time. The apartment even changes while you're still in it sometimes. It's like Gone Home in that you are working to uncover what happened to this family through flyers, tv broadcasts, discarded notes, rejected script pages, diary entries, etc.

The player is the father of this family of three with a mother and daughter. He is also a struggling screenwriter. Early on, it is revealed that the daughter has a severe illness preventing her from attending school, and the mother used to be a famous singer before giving that up to start a family. This is my big issue with the game, and it's the same issue I have with Gone Home: the story isn't strong enough to support the game. I have no reason to care about this family or to want to dig any deeper. I was bored through most of my playthrough. It isn't scary and the puzzles are pretty simple.

The game does manage to end strong. There are twists on what I thought the story was about, and the game breaks from its PT-structure to go to a new, more interesting location. The ending is surprisingly dark. It's still too little too late, but it didn't improve my opinion of the game.