Bit of a weird one because the glacial pace of movement between screens and some a particularly dull 'random' element to one of the puzzles that means you spend a lot of time pulling a switch and hoping for the best rather than actually using your brain make this a game I find hard to recommend to anyone but at the same time, if you have the patience for a slow burn, super atmospheric, odd and off-kilter FMV point and click adventure that manages to squeeze a healthy dose of cannibalism into its short, two hour-ish length, then honestly I can't recommend it enough.

There's no middle ground on this one, I'm afraid - you're either into it and you'll accept its flaws and enjoy the ride or you'll absolutely detest it.

Nothing can take away the raw earnestness D exhibits. The arduous journey of developing and releasing a full-motion video, two-hour, grotesque adventure game rump is a daunting one to undertake, and it becomes all the more demanding when you're a small time video game studio in Japan with no major industry connections. Nevertheless, D's lead director put his future in game development on the line to see that D becomes a success. The same man even went as far to purposely hand-in D's golden master late, all in an elaborate scheme to swap out the "clean" cut of the game with his uncensored, vulgar original vision.

This ambitious man is known as the late Kenji Eno, former president of Wrap and video game industry cowboy. A man so eccentric that he bundled in condom feelies in the packaging of one his studio's titles. A man so punk, that after the disastrous botching of D's PlayStation version pre-orders by Sony, he showcased a video of a PlayStation logo morphing into a Sega Saturn logo at Tokyo Game Show 1996. Not only that, but to further cut ties, he presented a video of his team at Wrap dancing and singing a song with lyrics along the lines of "Enemy Zero is a good game, Wrap is a good company", followed by him violently tossing a plush of Muumuu, the mascot of Sony's Jumping Flash!, onto the ground.

The legacy of D and Kenji Eno especially are inspiring to say the least, and it is what mainly attracts people to Wrap's unfortunately short but admirable list of releases. Successful the man was as well; for a creator who would probably be barred from the industry if he was still with us, Wrap's D went on to sell over a million copies, becoming a game that succeeded not only critically but financially. It's hard not to love D, and especially Kenji Eno. No other game, let alone developer, has such a chaotic yet down-to-earth backstory, and it's important to understand the kind of place D came from before diving into the work. For D without that context, relinquishes the form of an allusive, sincere, video game oddity and reveals itself in all its crude, banal essence.

Eno's intention with D's universe was to craft a bleak, sinister world first, with an enthralling narrative coming more as a second thought. It's due to this that D is rather light on story elements throughout. Yet in spite of that, what little narrative is there is one that tilts heavily towards the characters', Laura and her father Richter, rather than the meticulously crafted space of D's fully CGI castle. There's one resounding "why" throughout D's story, what drives a man to massacre an entire cluster of people so suddenly?

Lightly hidden about the setting are grotesque flashback sequences. These digressions are the signature flair of D, despite their sheltered-nature. They served as a vehicle to flesh out the plot after the adventure segments were basically complete. While these cutscenes don't offer much in the way of thematic nuance, they do act as the most spectacular, unsettling scenes the game has to offer and it'd be disingenuous for me to say they don't hold much merit given that D's graphical fidelity is one of its secondary selling points. Even so, it does significantly hurt D for it to not have much substance for one to sink their teeth into. Substance is what gives your journey through horror's typically hostile worlds meaning, and without much in the way in meat in D's world, it leaves the whole journey feeling somewhat hollow.

While it is damning that D's narrative is lacking in eloquence, it is essential to reiterate that the focus of D was to construct an ominous, isolating adventure game setting. D's CGI landscapes are nothing short of a technical marvel, every scene is confidently showcased via sweeping camera angles and dynamic cuts. The music is a constant, nice ambient throughout, and it cuts to silence at times to exacerbate the tension. Yet, just as with the narrative, there's a tinge of vapidness to D's world. The world never emits the same peculiarity nor hostility of your typical horror work. Every mystery the castle introduces is well within the range of human understanding, and anything that exists outside of these bounds has their mysticism robbed by the game explaining them away soon after their encounter. As a whole, the setting of D feels detached from its narrative, and more execrably, fails to capture the atmosphere that it strove to capture.

All we're left with now is D's gameplay, which is, to be frank, the most abominable aspect of a game that is already full of poorly executed concepts. D's pacing can only be described as indulgently methodical. Every FMV sequence takes at least fifteen seconds to play out. This very quickly graduates from charming to aggravating when you realize none of the decisions you'll be making contain enough gravity to make these slow, deliberate animations tolerable. Outside of a forced game over if one takes over two hours to complete the game, there is no fail state in D. You are never at any threat of harm, failure, or difficulty regardless of what action you take. The only purpose these FMV serve is to pompously showcase D's largely forgettable environments.

This is all amplified by the fact that D has the audacity to intermix puzzles within its already monotonous gameplay. No matter how rudimentary these puzzles are, nothing will change the sheer amount of time each of them wastes for absolutely no reason. Bar none, I've never reckoned with a puzzle that has wasted as much as my time as the central puzzle of D's Disc 2. For one-third of the game's runtime, you will be forced to engage with a puzzle that has no barring on the game's narrative, atmosphere, or anything of meaning whatsoever. Five minutes into the puzzle, you will have probably already figured out what the solution is, but that doesn't matter when you have to sit through D's plethora of 20+ second animations. These puzzles aren't here to be mentally engaging, they're here to extend the game's run time past the thirty-minute mark so audiences don't feel like they wasted their money on a game that has absolutely nothing to offer on any front whatsoever.

I want to love D.

Nothing excites me more than a game with a chronicle as offbeat as D, and Kenji Eno's legacy resonates with me to the core. It's atypical for me to go into anything with any other expectation besides it executing on what it's aiming to do, but it's hard to dash that feeling of D being meaningful when it has all the foundations of a game I'd fall in love with. I pondered on rather I would say D is meaningful for a good night after playing through it. To be honest, I don't think I quite figured out the answer till I went back and revised this review.

D, despite all my misgivings with it on a fundamental level, is still a significant experience. It's not significant because it did the nearly impossible task of satisfying even a quarter of the game's initial, enchanting allure. It's significant because the story behind Kenji Eno, his legacy, and his drive to see D succeed is a rattlingly human, inspiring tale, and regardless of how you feel about D coming out of it, his ambitions will always resonate deeply within any person who's felt a creative drive and I strongly recommend it to anyone who's one of those people.

there might not be a single ouvere in the gaming industry i have a complicated mess of feelings about than that of kenji eno. i have an endless amount of adoration and respect for everything eno stood for, his approach to his artistry, the lengths he took to force his way and get his vision out there. don't let a low score here fool you - this is a game i'm glad exists, and honestly, a game i feel you NEED to play if you want a fuller understanding of games as an art form. hell, i'd argue the influence that D held should be considered immediate and obvious; both silent hill and especially resident evil have clear, bright red arrows pointing right back to do, with its perspective shots, its creaking churning doorways, its puzzle-based progression structure, and the psychedelic oddities that await the patient player.

that said... i can also admit that D is an absolute slog and has either aged terribly or admittedly underperformed from the get-go. it blows my mind this game was apparently a best-seller! for god's sake, if the game wasn't already unbearably slow, the rng-centric puzzle with the rotating numbers is downright time-wasting, especially when you consider this is a game with a TIME LIMIT TO COMPLETE. i really, really want to love D. i struggle to in good conscious recommend it as anything more than an artifact of an artistic madman redefining what console horror could be, but i think that's reason enough to give it an afternoon. is it good? no, not really. but kenji eno was a passionate man and the experience is one you're likely not to forget. as you take the dive, just remember - this man lied about the contents of this game to get the esrb to give him a pass. and i support that shit for the sake of art, all day every day. what an absolute king.

In 1993 Myst splayed open the point and click adventure game by reducing it to its barest essentials. Where the focus was less on complex chains of inventory puzzles but instead on understanding the alien logic of the world. Its innovative prerendered graphics were a hit among a more casual crowd of PC owners which cemented the game as a success. D seems to be playing in this ball park upping the ante by having the whole game be fmv and prendered graphics that move in real time with the player. You see Laura's every move in a way that wasn't possible with the static screens of Myst.

The concept behind D is interesting. The contrast of the modern city and modern horrors in the form of mass shooters with the classic horror of a torture castle and vampires seemed tailor made to reach some deeper level of horror or story that never comes. Really minus the pretty prerendered environments there isn't much here. The gameplay is slow and tedious with the only threat being the very generous 2 hour time limit that is only made scary when you realize that the puzzles here include precise slot wheel timing and a section where you turn a crank for the game to randomly spit out a room. The story is just silly and poorly told across the game, with Laura's dad simply repeating himself in every cutscene until the very ending when the entire lore is dropped.

Normally I try to keep an open mind with older games but there is nothing here to wow but the now faded cutting edge graphics, and unlike some I really fail to the influence this had on gaming minus a few future myst clones. Despite this game being popular in japan any "influence" this had on games like resident evil and silent hill can be more easily and directly explained via other games like Alone in the Dark.