What a short and simple psychological horror game that uses aging for its body horror. Case in point, the first scene of the game starts with the exploitation of the protagonist's body dealing a blow to their well-being. Surprisingly, the narrative holds well given its twist and I do appreciate a sincere ending for this genre. I do disagree with the epilogue though.

As for its mechanics and gameplay, it is quite lacking in both puzzles and horror. The puzzles can be unclear in their intent as well as monotonous to some degree where a sprint option would have helped to reduce this friction although I would have this over the monster rooms. Horror is subjective but I did find it weak in terms of its impact but not visuals. Perhaps I needed more scenes of body horror and maybe impact the protagonist during the fantasy sequences like flesh falling off and turning into enemies. For a positive point, I do like seeing more rhythm mini-games and the hide-and-seek mini-game is surprisingly fun. Overall though, this is the only reason why I think the game is brought down despite its small scale.

Still, its creativity and effort makes this an short indie gem worthy of attention.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

Had high hopes for this one, but Decarnation turned out to be a lengthy, preachy and uninspired drag. After a promising first act, the rest of the game leaves a lot to be desired. You would think–now limited to one room–the game would dial up its artistic merit, but other than a statue that spins 360° nothing will ever match the detailed and visceral body horror you have witnessed hours ago. The introduced dream world is barren; made out of ruins, broken statues, tentacles (?) and people with towels wrapped around their heads, it’s a pathetic attempt to visualise her deteriorating mental state. The set pieces as well as the ‘other selves’ she meets through this journey are nothing but flat, superficial caricatures of the themes the game is trying to dig in.

Minigames continue to be simple and mundane, but do not add to the monotony of her daily life or drive the point home that she was kidnapped and is being caged like an animal. It feels like the developers felt forced to include them for the sake of it being a game – the same can be said about the bare bones puzzles littered here and there, which once again carry only surface-level meaning to them, if even that. The little scene of her dancing until her face falls off in act 1 is truly carrying all the weight of what Decarnation wants to be.

Confused and anticlimactic, the game ends with a Dreamworks dance party that throws any serious messaging of Gloria’s harrowing experience into the mud. I was happy to uninstall this one.

Il problema di fondo è che il gameplay è praticamente inesistente, poi per carità a me non fa impazzire l'artstyle ma ci può stare. Storia che comunque è una idea interessante posta anche abbastanza bene, il continuo spettro del confronto con il mondo maschile è descritto bene grazie alla dinamica del cabaret ma l'eccessiva dilatazione della storia negli atti centrali fa perdere alla lunga il filo del discorso. L'evidente reference soprattutto a perfect blue dimostrano più che altro che il tutto poteva funzionare come film, per come è stato impostato, la scarsità del gameplay rendono le 5/6 ore che richiede il gioco lunghissime

Decarnation sacrifices a lot for it's artistic vision. It's most prominent location takes up a tiny portion of the center of the screen, but this makes it so unbelievably vibrant and visceral whenever it opens up. The gameplay is mostly gimmicks for effect - unwinnable mini games, metaphorical puzzles, button mashers, etc - but the effects they have on the player's interactivity in this story often work very well. It's formatted like an RPG Maker visual novel/adventure game but has a lot more love and detail put into it than that label typically entails.

With games like this, many often echo the sentiment of 'just make a movie instead', but while playing Decarnation, I kept feeling over and over again that I've never seen a video take on subject matter like this, much less in such an unapologetically narrative focused way. And while that can turn some gamers off, it felt so refreshing for me to see a 'story focused indie game' take on an actual heavy story focus that far exceeds 'it's actually a metaphor for depression.'

It takes influence from all avenues of psychological horror, particularly (and very unsubtly to a bit of an eye roll degree sometimes), Perfect Blue and Black Swan. The themes of obsessive fandom, exploitation, career anxiety, aging as a female performer, and their brand of surrealist visual direction are plastered all over Decarnation's vision board. But Decarnation takes these themes and mostly runs with them in its own direction after the first act. Unfortunately, the story does become less interesting when it starts to stray further from these influences, and winds up in a pretty predictable place by the end. That being said, it's still a journey I enjoyed that has it's own surprises along the way, and definitely has enough of it's own identity that these influences rarely feel blatant. It's pixel art and body horror imagery is also gorgeously disgusting - I adore how the art has just enough resolution to make your stomach turn but still leaves room for imagination to fill in the morbid gaps.

Its script and characters are far stronger than many indie games I've played that could be compared to this, and I think a lot of it can be attributed to how boldly it benches any traditional gameplay. There's point and click elements and other minigames, but it's rare that anything halts the pace of the narrative. Often times these minigames are just things your character is doing during story moments and it makes it feel really natural. It's not always perfect - a lot of qtes can leave you confused until you mash or guess you're way out of them, and the consequences of winning or losing are slim to none. But they're risks to be admired, often with at least a memorable payoff.

The biggest thing that's holding me back from rating it any higher is that I think it really does drag in getting to its conclusion, or at least the pacing of the game just feels off. The first chapter has you meeting so many characters, going so many places and learning so much about your character. But the next five chapters after this mostly take place in one location, with a few other areas becoming explorable in dreams and flashbacks. It feels weird to say a 6 or so hour game drags, but it's just structured so unevenly, that it's hard to not feel that way.

Overall I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I might. It's not without it's problems but it's an indie game with a lot of love and care put into it that tells a really unique story for a video game.

Decarnation is a amalgamation of many different aspects in regards to what it creates. Very cool and detailed environments that display many creepy designs and beautiful pixel art making the areas come to life and draws you in also with the creepy characters you come across from time to time. From the release of seeing the trailer on twitter and actually experiencing felt like night and day. It is a very narrative driven game with very little gameplay which makes you feel like you are watching a movie with putting your input at certain parts that are few and far in-between. Tbh this would make a pretty cool movie I think as well. Love the style and what they did here and was an enjoyable one time experience, but I feel like that is all it really was. Id like to see what is next for the people who made this one, because I feel like there is not many games like this one with its unique direction.

This was an odd one because the trailer kinda led me to believe it would be some kind of supernatural survival horror game and it was... very much not that. Instead I got what kind of felt like an indie film following a dancer who gets kidnapped mostly dedicated to exploring the effects that this has on her psyche, with pitstops to the surreal dream world to parallel what's happening outside.

That said, it was very good. It was clear there was a lot of thought put into the writing and the main character felt very well-rounded, I always understood exactly where she was coming from and rooted for her all the way even when she was being annoying. It leans a bit into torture porn at times but I think it does a good job of depicting a terrible situation without feeling too grossly voyeuristic.

As a game, I'll praise the art and music (which were both fantastic) but criticize the gameplay itself, which felt shoehorned in. None of the minigames were very fun and the environments were big but empty. I'd honestly be more interested in a "director's cut" that does away with all of that and just turns it into a straight up movie because some of the visuals were very impressive.

A stunningly harrowing game that explores the horrors of female objectification, stalking, isolation and accepting oneself and ones trauma. Using relatively simple game play mechanics that are incorporated in multiple ways, the narrative and vibe is clearly a higher priority than any sort of difficulty or oppressing game play. Comfortable enough to leave those things to it's writing and use of visual and audio art to explore such stress inducing ideas in such beautiful ways.

For the price, length and narrative I personally find criticisms of Decarnation being gameplay light incredibly odd. It strikes all the right notes of a horror puzzle game and that's all it needs. If you need something emotionally driving that you can simultaneously relax and experience anxiety through I can't recommend Decarnation enough.

WOW one of the few modern games i had to take breaks from for my own mental wellbeing

such a disturbing and bleak story with abstract visuals that make you forget how unfortunately real many of the events of the game could be. the main character’s processing of their situation genuinely made me sick because of how well it was presented. seriously a fantastic 6-7 hour experience that is worth setting aside a day for, will make you appreciate your situation and freedom a ton

gameplay compliments the story well but feels a bit disruptive at times, but this is a small complaint

some of the games’ imagery and main themes feel a bit like they are outdated vs what the game and its story eventually became, almost as if the dev changed ideas for how to present the story halfway through development but again it works alright and isnt overly disruptive. just made me stop a few times throughout to ask, “why is there so much meat?”

Paris, 1990. Gloria is a cabaret dancer turning 30, slowly getting pushed out of work to be replaced with a younger batch. Her girlfriend is breaking things off, her relationship with her mom is strained, and it’s all surrounded the raw fear of being sexualized by every man she meets.

And then she gets kidnapped.

It’s tough to figure out where I fall on this. The juxtaposition between the bleak content and the broader puzzle/rhythm game elements is what I love to see. But there’s a sharp divide between how the story progresses. You have your cutscene focused gameplay in the “Real” world, and then you have the fun gameplay in Gloria’s Nightmare world. It’s really this key mistake that fumbles things for me. Whenever I’m in a nightmare section of the game, established to be events in Gloria’s head, I just start thinking “boy, I wish I was progressing the plot in the real world.” But whenever I’m in the real world, I think “boy I wish I was doing the gameplay of the nightmare world right now.” The divide hardly matters, but I can’t help but think about it whenever there’s a scene shift. It’s hard to feel like real progress is being maintained, it feels more like I’m twiddling my thumbs until Gloria’s ready to make her escape plan. Which isn’t fair, but I think blurring the lines between reality and nightmare would work a lot to the game’s favor. We encounter so many different monsters and personas representing Gloria’s issues, but shuffling them off to one part of the game makes it so difficult for me to attach meaning to them. I do think this game is gorgeous, even important and thrilling, but I can’t make myself finish it when all I can think while I’m playing it is “I wonder when this section finally finishes.”

One of those games I think people should buy and support, even if it fails to land for me.

Pep's Season of Spooks - Game 6
Man, what a beautiful game. A psychological horror in the truest sense, the game has you constantly switching between the protagonist's nightmarish subconcious and her equally bleak reality.
Gorgeous pixel art visuals combine perfectly with a great soundtrack (Akira Yamaoka's distinctive style is especially effective), and the story is incredibly well-written. Gloria has instantly become one of my favourite protagonists in all of gaming and I quickly became genuinely invested in her tale.
My only gripes are relatively minor; there's some pretty obvious padding throughout the game (the repeated rhythm-game and "balancing" minigames got old fast), and some of the "stealth" sections were pretty annoying.
Overall though, this is highly recommended to anyone can handle the dark themes.
Scary Rating 4/10 - Overall Rating 8/10