I heard about this game incredibly recently. Came at an interesting time for me as I have started to work on game development myself. This is a throwback ps1 type survival horror game that leans very heavily on silent hill and resident evil for its gameplay inspiration and final fantasy 7(ps1) for its visuals.

Even though it borrows very extensively from its source material. I can’t help but find myself charmed by this game. It strikes the mark I feel it was intending to go for.

I find myself very drawn towards works that blend notions of cuteness with horror. There is a psychological phenomenon known as cute aggression(haven’t you always wondered why people say “ooo I’m just going to eat you up” when they see a baby? According to psycholgists the parts of our brains that appreciate cuteness is wired closely with our aggressive tendencies. I feel that this is why this game clicks so well together.

Resident evil and silent hill both have immediately hostile worlds but final fantasy 7’s world is equally hostile but feels less so partially because of its artistic direction. There is a sort of implicit uncanny feeling to early 3d modeling in video games, you can make something cute but with shadows and framing can make things seem very dark. The donkey Kong country game over screen immediately comes to mind when I think about this.

Well that whole feeling is encapsulated in this claustrophobic stuffy game. It leans heavily on it’s atmosphere which is aided by CRT filters and lighting effects to generate a game that feels like a Mandela effect lost ps1 title.

You progress through the game much the way you would through resident evil, keys scattered throughout the world. It’s one big map, with various areas.

Combat is about as fleshed out as it was in survival horror in the 90’s and 2000’s. It wasn’t the focus of those games and it’s not the focus here. You have tank controls, not as bad as resident evil or silent hill but still stiff feeling, no moving while shooting for you. Enemies never really feel like a challenge but the game will throw them at you fairly constantly but you will also never run out of bullets because the game hands it out like candy.

In hindsight, I don’t like that I didn’t feel as stressed about having enough ammo as I would in a game like dead space and also the enemies are genuinely not threatening enough. They are very scary and doll like to look at but they very easy to dispatch.

This game has ok puzzles, they are mostly basic logic stuff like look through word docs to find clues or look through a room to find a train that’s coloured blue or whatever. Honestly they are about as on par with resident evil or silent hill so that’s ok.

Story wise unfortunately, idk fellas I don’t think writing was the dev’s strong suit.
Survival horror will usually abandon lore story telling in favor of atmospheric story telling but the way this game is laid out makes me think the dev really thought he had something going.

No he did not, mining for gold and finding an interdimensional gateway that turns people into monsters is not really that interesting.

But I give a pass because honestly video games in the 90’s couldn’t really write for shit either.

The soundtrack is in my opinion, excellent. At times it does sound a little derivative of the obvious source material but the mystical, liminal vibes are held in tact.

Overall, def recommend this one.