The real disillusion is the combat here.

A while ago, I found out about Disillusion in some youtube video and the game looked very intriguing with its bizarre art direction and strange vibe, so I wanted to play it in the near future. Considering this is an indie game that's about 3€ and won't go on sale anytime soon, I just decided to snag it recently and check it out (since I had nothing else I wanted to play at the time).

I'll give credit where it's due, the intended atmosphere is well done and the exploration was also exciting for most of the time: you navigate through the tower in a first-person dungeon crawler perspective, while stumbling upon various weird creatures and portals leading you to other places. Some of these places are a classroom, a shrine or even some... jumbled mess. It's fun to explore those areas, since they have a surreal feel to them I can't really put into words, even if there's not much gameplay here. I mean, there is gameplay with the combat, but it's not good. Sometimes an enemy blocks the way and you can't pass through, so you need to resort to the most basic and barebones RPG Maker combat out there to fend them off. While many people don't like OMORI's combat, atleast that game tried for an unique approach (which I personally liked too). With a plethora of useless skills and needlessly spongy enemies, the normally fun exploration comes to a screeching halt and you'll just engage in this really boring combat for a large amount of your playtime. I know the game is a walking simulator for the most part, so why even include fights in the first place? I'm sure me and many others are playing it just to run around those strange settings and not to fight monsters, which are all copy pasted and use the same three attacks anyways. The worst part is really dying to some random crit and having to do entire areas over again if you forgot to save, but to be fair, you're warned early on to save often. You get the gist.

Surprisingly, unlike games like Yume Nikki, Disillusion actually has a story, dealing with themes like rebirth and eternal damnation. It's not a central focus, as you only get vague hints spoonfed through your companion Mel and you're expected to piece together the remaining pieces for yourself. Speaking of Mel, she's pretty cool and probably one of the main reasons I didn't drop this game earlier, her banter at times is nice even if it's nothing special by writing standards. There's... not much else to be said about her, except that she's green and also plays a bigger role in the overarching narrative.

Alright, so Disillusion is a decent game, but I just can't get myself to finish it, knowing that it's going to mess with my PC's resolution again (for some reason it breaks windowed applications like Discord and you need to resize them anytime after going into this game's fullscreen mode) and I'd have to go through more arduous random encounters. Despite this, I'd still recommend it for the most part for anyone interested, as the exploration aspect is rather intriguing and you can get a few hours of content for the low price of 3€.

Disillusion ist... cool? Ein RPG Maker Game, welches sich so ziemlich von jedem anderen RPG Maker Spiel abhebt, durch einen so merkwürdig anderen Artstyle, wie man ihn selten bei anderen Videospielen sieht.
Problem: RPG Maker = technisch doch sehr limitiert. Es ist dennoch sehr "frisch" in seiner Essenz. Mich hielt allerdings erstmal die Schriftart ab, es weiter zu spielen. Ich komm irgendwann mal darauf zurück, wenn ich viel viel Zeit habe.
Für die 2,40€ macht man aber sicherlich nichts verkehrt.

I can't describe my feelings about this game...
It's really good...
It's really good...
It's really...
It's......
.--. .-.. .- -.-- / .. -

Such a cool aesthetic. Love the story and world of this game, but most importantly the oneiric vibes. The plot about the karmic cycle and all that was super interesting to me.

Obviously, the combat is a snoozefest and unnecessary. Was probably only included because this is an RPGMaker game.

But! Apparently the next game won't have any combat! And the style looks even cooler in that game so I am super excited for that omg I can't wait.

Psychedelic dungeon crawling trip through the tower Samsara. The combat will bore you straight into enlightenment on the Noble Truth of dukkha, but that's not the reason to play Disillusion. The avantgarde minimalistic tracks and garishly psychedelic visuals are the real attraction, along with the crazy lore. Lots of Buddhist, Hindu, Greek, Egyptian and (if you find some fake walls to walk through in a secret library on accident) Abrahamic influences come together (in roughly that order of importance) to build a surprisingly interesting world. You also get a lot of nonsense from the poor souls trapped in the tower experiencing the loss of ego to amp up the bizarre indie vibes.

Definitely a neat way to spend 5 hours.

What's with the recent trend of schizophrenic, dream-like games starring anime girls?

The Serial Experiments Lain inspired anime aesthetic has seeped it's influence into western circles. Artists like Sewerslvt have captured the soundscape to these schizophrenic dream worlds, Milk has gone in and out of bags. Disillusion is no different.

It's hard to put into words just what exactly the appeal to this type of aesthetic is. I guess for me, it's the distortion of reality into a jagged colorful kaleidoscopic nightmare. The ties to it's psychological aspects are intriguing to me. I'm interested in the field, so it's only natural. The disease itself brings about terrifying, if not fascinating outcomes within those who suffer from the disease. Artists with the disease sculpt their reality through art work, bringing all of us closer to their reality. The only time I can ever relate to this is through dreams.

What's always fascinated me about dreams is that can hold unconscious feelings that manifest from the waking world. They're drenched in meaning, yet also filled with garbage data that's been spat out like static on a TV. It's garbled up information that's been constructed and reconstructed to create some kind of purposeless purpose.

Disillusion feels much like this description at first. Imagery taken from the unconscious mind of what someone remembers the early 90's dungeon crawling, computer gaming aesthetic was like. This is then filtered through the "anime girl with schizophrenia" filter. Mix in some weird, bizzare looking creatures, near nonsensical levels for textures, and you've got yourself a genuine fever dream to explore. It can feel surface level at times because of this.

As you continue your journey upwards within the tower, the abstractions become a bit more clear. This is someone suffering from schizophrenia, yet may also exist within the reality of this illusion. The hindu spiritual influence and the creation myth that bares the backdrop of the protagonist's journey to break free of this illusion. The souls of all beings ascend a tower in order to reach Nirvana, prone to losing themselves along the way. The protagonist slowly redevelops their memories, or rather their sense of self throughout this journey, fitting for a character named "Golem".

On this journey you're accompanied by a Sage, who's your anime girl tupla. Often times, she comments on your situation, bringing levity and intrigue to just what exactly she is. She's a bit of an untrustworthy character given she admits that she's here to bring about tragedy, but it is her job as a sage. It's hard to blame the gods for their jobs.

There's meaning to be read from all of this, I'm sure. It's better to stay in reality than it is to live in the illusion is more of the surface level analysis. If I was smart, I would have stopped playing the game to look up some of the names and concepts found within the game to follow along better with the backdrop of the setting.

I did not do this. I am not a smart man.

I was definitely here to soak the atmosphere in more than anything else. Disillusion is definitely built for that. The bizzare world is helped molded by the dissonant soundscape, some songs acting like a distortion of songs and sound clips found on TV. They create this air of uncanny weirdness that's not only foreign to listen to with their composition, but reminds you of the familiarity of the real world.

The gameplay is reminiscent of dungeon crawling turn based RPGs, and is fairly average with it's approach. It's simple RPG maker skeleton has very little added on top of it. Most of the time, I'd just find myself tanking hits, raising my strength and just slashing enemies to death. There never felt like there was a need for experimentation when I could just do massive damage like that. I died only once throughout the entirety of the 5 hour experience, and that may have been due to an enemy glitching out and not staying dead after I had just killed it. Exploring these mazes can end up becoming quite tiresome after 3 hours, one level of the tower just being a gigantic labyrinth filled with drops of lore to find. There's no map to fill out, so I'd often find myself just holding forward and turning whenever I saw a corner, taking up an half hour worth of time. It felt exhausting.

Disillusion let me explore an interesting world that was equal parts uncanny, strange, silly, demented, and eerie, but the game feels more like a concept first that was then shifted into having some kind of meaning. It was as if the creator had a dream that was then crafted to have a purpose. The ending I received had my character rejecting the offer of one of the gods in order to remain free from this prison, only to return to their reality, alone in the forest, looking at a the sun, which is fitting for the story that was eventually built up. In that respect, Disillusion works. As a game though, there's a bit here that leaves something to be desired. The game does have a sequel in development that expands the concept into more of an infinite trek through bizzare worlds, and from screenshots, it looks like it'll appeal to me much more in that regard. I just hope the gameplay satisfies.

could have been longer
combat is kind of ass
i did not like the le serious trauma mood of the last area but I may have just gotten a bad ending I dont know

other than that, its a perfect game