The cultural specificity here feels so personal that it makes similar contemporary horror walking sims like Amnesia, SOMA, Layers of Fear and Observer (and the mansion puzzle sequences of Ethan Winters Resi Evil games) feel so much lesser than. Which is maybe unfair. But it's a reminder of how overly reliant video game developers are on using existing genre trappings to tell a story, and how often that genre is fantasy or sci-fi, and what the point even of video games are at the end of the day if they only reflect fantasy and not reality.

Devotion itself isn't completely free from that because even it relies on horror and jump scares when it easily could have just been a Gone Home styled house tour/slice of life game in the vein of a Tsai Ming Liang film. But oh well. It's a step in a better direction.