This review contains spoilers
Downfall is a "Where’s my wife?" point and click horror game developed by Harvester Games, the same dev who developed The Cat Lady previously, a game I viewed as an art piece that deals with mental health/depression. In my research, Downfall originally started as a 2009 indie game, before it was retooled into an entry in the “Devil Came Through Here” trilogy released after Cat Lady. If you were curious about the original, the steam version also comes with the 2009 version of the game, though I didn’t touch it this time (though maybe one day).
I’ll start off with the story: you play as a man named Joe Davis (for those who remember he makes a cameo in Cat Lady as the neighbor towards the end as well as a huge Stephen King fan) who goes to the small hotel of Quiet Haven with his wife Ivy for a quick getaway. However, after a rather gut wrenching argument (after being given different beds as a sort of symbolic gesture of growing apart), you wake up to find that she disappeared, and Joe resolves to find her. The game clearly has reverence for Silent Hill (specifically the second one) from a reference to their “special place”, to the name Quiet Haven sounding flipped for Silent Hill and even the finding wife part, the developers we’re an obvious fan of the game (as are most of us) and it clearly influenced the game’s direction.
Before the hotel though, there’s a prologue where you play as Joe when he was a kid where he first met Ivy (with foreshadowing of her illness of course) on the same day where his younger brother Robbie died opening up a random cache of grenades hidden in a construction site, dying in an extremely graphic yet strangely funny tone (only due to the circumstance of random grenades). Flash forward and Joe meets Ivy in the future where they get married before the relationship takes a rocky road and this romantic getaway trip was supposed to be a rekindling of sorts. After the disappearance comb through the hotel, dealing with all sorts of gore as you’re told you have to kill off a “monster” named Sophie, or more specifically four different versions of her, each of which are symbolic of Ivy herself and her various characteristics and insecurities, which later come ahead as it’s revealed that she has extreme self conscious issues and an eating disorder, none of which we’re truly explained persay during the game or given much depth as far as I’m aware but not everything needs that I suppose.
Going throughout the hotel and its various floors you’ll find characters such as The Manageress (a seductive woman with eyes for Joe), Dr. Z (a mad scientist who’s trying to revive a corpse Frankenstein style), Agnes (the corpse who later comes to life and you play as her a couple of times), as you seek to kill each of the Sophies and rescue your wife. There are also two returning characters from Cat Lady: Susan Ashworth (towards the last five minutes or so) and The Queen of Maggots, the overarching main antagonist of the trilogy.
With this in mind, a lot of things are revealed: since Joe’s brother died, his mom killed herself and the dad blamed Joe for the entire mess; this mixed with Ivy’s anorexia sent him spiraling into madness. In real life, Joe was actually “The Sixth Parasite”, and had gone insane trying to help his wife. The getaway trip wasn’t real, Dr. Z (who was a nazi in the original version) is his therapist (only learned from Cat Lady), and that he had actually been killing people as the Axeman murderer (who was chasing Joe through the game). The ending depends on certain dialogue you choose throughout the game (which are tallied in skulls, 27 in all. If you have all 27 it’s the best, between 0-27 it’s normal and 0 is the bad ending) and for the most part while most of the dialogue feels stressful and like you make the wrong choices each time, I ended up getting the good ending with the help of a guide (also in general just be a decent human being and you should be ok I think).
How does it feel in the grand scheme of things? For me personally, it’s unsure because while I haven’t played the original game it felt like that game could’ve been a sort of fan homage project which then got lots of stuff sort of retro-fitted in. That being said, it works for the most part but I feel like there’s a couple of times where you could tell it was sort of Frankensteined (the irony of it with Dr. Z of course) together with semi-obvious symbolism, with the interconnected Cat Lady stuff being the most jarring stuff. The characters for the most part are ok, Agnes being a standout for her bubbly personality (though my friend who I streamed for hated her at first). The coffin sequence is also a standout for how dark it gets though the appearance of a certain actor’s history did take me out of it a bit once I learned what they did in real life but I can’t say that’s the dev’s fault.
Here is where I’ll go into gameplay style and the rest of it, as it’s rather short; it’s mostly just the point and click fare, with numerous dialogue options to determine the ending later on; you collect objects for later puzzles, which are a tad bit randomized on each playthrough but are simple enough to solve. Basically if you liked Cat Lady’s gameplay, there’s more of it. Graphically the game has the same sort of style that The Cat Lady does, lot’s of dark and shadowy imagery, maybe with a tad bit wider range of colors as well as surreal looking 3D animations as you walk to and from certain areas in the game. The voice acting ranges from person to person with most of the voice cast being Youtubers or friends of the main dev, so it may not be the best and most immersive as the mic quality tends to change too (with the childhood voice acting being one of the stranger parts to me). However, this didn’t detract at all from the game’s quality and strangely enhanced the surrealist nature of it all to be honest. The music also, like The Cat Lady, slaps though can be used in the strangest locations leading to an uneven tone that confused me more than unnerved and sounded like it should’ve been in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines instead.
Overall, how do I feel about Downfall? After having this for years along with The Cat Lady, I could say that compared to the former that I like this a tad bit less. Whilst not a lot of things could live up to the former, as its own thing I feel like it’s kind of mashed together and doesn’t have the same impact that it should emotionally or thematically. I could see glimpses of heartwarming stuff I REALLY liked (the emotional scenes between Joe and Ivy of course) but some moments are kind of distracting, derivative or unintentionally funny (like kitchen cooking with out of place music) and overall it's hard for me to describe my feelings for this game other than mildly positive, even setting aside the original quality of The Cat Lady along with steam characters are limited as usual. However, that being said I still like this game and think that it’s worth a play, even if only to at least get the general gist of how you feel about it's thematic handling, and it was also a lot shorter for me so that helped (just keep in mind it’s definitely violent, has a lot of depressing themes and could have some triggers). One day I’ll sit down and try to record behind the scenes stuff and post the links but for now here are some things to look into.
https://www.walkthroughking.com/text/downfallredux.aspx
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Downfall2009
https://devilcamethroughhere.fandom.com/wiki/Downfall:_Redux
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
I’ll start off with the story: you play as a man named Joe Davis (for those who remember he makes a cameo in Cat Lady as the neighbor towards the end as well as a huge Stephen King fan) who goes to the small hotel of Quiet Haven with his wife Ivy for a quick getaway. However, after a rather gut wrenching argument (after being given different beds as a sort of symbolic gesture of growing apart), you wake up to find that she disappeared, and Joe resolves to find her. The game clearly has reverence for Silent Hill (specifically the second one) from a reference to their “special place”, to the name Quiet Haven sounding flipped for Silent Hill and even the finding wife part, the developers we’re an obvious fan of the game (as are most of us) and it clearly influenced the game’s direction.
Before the hotel though, there’s a prologue where you play as Joe when he was a kid where he first met Ivy (with foreshadowing of her illness of course) on the same day where his younger brother Robbie died opening up a random cache of grenades hidden in a construction site, dying in an extremely graphic yet strangely funny tone (only due to the circumstance of random grenades). Flash forward and Joe meets Ivy in the future where they get married before the relationship takes a rocky road and this romantic getaway trip was supposed to be a rekindling of sorts. After the disappearance comb through the hotel, dealing with all sorts of gore as you’re told you have to kill off a “monster” named Sophie, or more specifically four different versions of her, each of which are symbolic of Ivy herself and her various characteristics and insecurities, which later come ahead as it’s revealed that she has extreme self conscious issues and an eating disorder, none of which we’re truly explained persay during the game or given much depth as far as I’m aware but not everything needs that I suppose.
Going throughout the hotel and its various floors you’ll find characters such as The Manageress (a seductive woman with eyes for Joe), Dr. Z (a mad scientist who’s trying to revive a corpse Frankenstein style), Agnes (the corpse who later comes to life and you play as her a couple of times), as you seek to kill each of the Sophies and rescue your wife. There are also two returning characters from Cat Lady: Susan Ashworth (towards the last five minutes or so) and The Queen of Maggots, the overarching main antagonist of the trilogy.
With this in mind, a lot of things are revealed: since Joe’s brother died, his mom killed herself and the dad blamed Joe for the entire mess; this mixed with Ivy’s anorexia sent him spiraling into madness. In real life, Joe was actually “The Sixth Parasite”, and had gone insane trying to help his wife. The getaway trip wasn’t real, Dr. Z (who was a nazi in the original version) is his therapist (only learned from Cat Lady), and that he had actually been killing people as the Axeman murderer (who was chasing Joe through the game). The ending depends on certain dialogue you choose throughout the game (which are tallied in skulls, 27 in all. If you have all 27 it’s the best, between 0-27 it’s normal and 0 is the bad ending) and for the most part while most of the dialogue feels stressful and like you make the wrong choices each time, I ended up getting the good ending with the help of a guide (also in general just be a decent human being and you should be ok I think).
How does it feel in the grand scheme of things? For me personally, it’s unsure because while I haven’t played the original game it felt like that game could’ve been a sort of fan homage project which then got lots of stuff sort of retro-fitted in. That being said, it works for the most part but I feel like there’s a couple of times where you could tell it was sort of Frankensteined (the irony of it with Dr. Z of course) together with semi-obvious symbolism, with the interconnected Cat Lady stuff being the most jarring stuff. The characters for the most part are ok, Agnes being a standout for her bubbly personality (though my friend who I streamed for hated her at first). The coffin sequence is also a standout for how dark it gets though the appearance of a certain actor’s history did take me out of it a bit once I learned what they did in real life but I can’t say that’s the dev’s fault.
Here is where I’ll go into gameplay style and the rest of it, as it’s rather short; it’s mostly just the point and click fare, with numerous dialogue options to determine the ending later on; you collect objects for later puzzles, which are a tad bit randomized on each playthrough but are simple enough to solve. Basically if you liked Cat Lady’s gameplay, there’s more of it. Graphically the game has the same sort of style that The Cat Lady does, lot’s of dark and shadowy imagery, maybe with a tad bit wider range of colors as well as surreal looking 3D animations as you walk to and from certain areas in the game. The voice acting ranges from person to person with most of the voice cast being Youtubers or friends of the main dev, so it may not be the best and most immersive as the mic quality tends to change too (with the childhood voice acting being one of the stranger parts to me). However, this didn’t detract at all from the game’s quality and strangely enhanced the surrealist nature of it all to be honest. The music also, like The Cat Lady, slaps though can be used in the strangest locations leading to an uneven tone that confused me more than unnerved and sounded like it should’ve been in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines instead.
Overall, how do I feel about Downfall? After having this for years along with The Cat Lady, I could say that compared to the former that I like this a tad bit less. Whilst not a lot of things could live up to the former, as its own thing I feel like it’s kind of mashed together and doesn’t have the same impact that it should emotionally or thematically. I could see glimpses of heartwarming stuff I REALLY liked (the emotional scenes between Joe and Ivy of course) but some moments are kind of distracting, derivative or unintentionally funny (like kitchen cooking with out of place music) and overall it's hard for me to describe my feelings for this game other than mildly positive, even setting aside the original quality of The Cat Lady along with steam characters are limited as usual. However, that being said I still like this game and think that it’s worth a play, even if only to at least get the general gist of how you feel about it's thematic handling, and it was also a lot shorter for me so that helped (just keep in mind it’s definitely violent, has a lot of depressing themes and could have some triggers). One day I’ll sit down and try to record behind the scenes stuff and post the links but for now here are some things to look into.
https://www.walkthroughking.com/text/downfallredux.aspx
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Downfall2009
https://devilcamethroughhere.fandom.com/wiki/Downfall:_Redux
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/