208 people found this review helpful
12 people found this review funny
34
5
11
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 33.0 hrs on record (16.7 hrs at review time)
Posted: 15 Jun, 2023 @ 1:20pm
Updated: 16 Jun, 2023 @ 7:39pm

Early Access Review
Tldr: The game has been in early access for several years, and few updates have added very little content. There's still only a small amount of possible events which gets stale fairly quickly. Many bugs have been present since near launch which are still unaddressed.
I'm just not sure the great art is worth it for the limited playtime, frustrating grinding, and unaddressed bugs it forces you to slog through.

Anyway I love this game and I'm irrationally angry it's not perfect.

Edit: as with many rng based games, large amounts of content are locked behind low rng to force grinding and pad out playtime. I'm trying to unlock my first character right now which requires me to go to an otherworld location called the Upper Kingdom. After collecting two different key items, you must find the correct encounter which gives you a chance to roll to try and reach the Upper Kingdom. This is the amount of time it takes to unlock 1 character:

Current number of rolls which failed to go to Upper Kingdom while I was carrying the Goblet: 26 31 34 36
Time spent: 6.5 hours
Runs wasted trying to unlock: 6

Rolled the Upper Kingdom on the 37th portal

Long version:
All this is said with the thought that the game is still being made by 1 person. If the dev has hired more help by now, all of my statements here are either wrong or somewhat inaccurate, besides my critique of the lack of content and bugs.

I wish the developer would hand off the game to someone else. It's been long enough that the original excuse of personal issues has worn thin, and they either don't care or aren't able to put work into the game to make it a full functional product. It's supposed to be released within the year, but honestly unless it doubles the amount of content I don't see it being worthy of a "full release."

Dozens of things still do nothing or don't work. Saving has been broken since release, the Eldritch Statuette and Forest Tapes key items still do nothing, large sections of the hospital serve no purpose, and the pharmacy just doesn't appear in the game until you unlock City planning, despite it being one of the default options. You still cant see your current luck stat in the status menu (you can only view it after a roll for luck.) Some rolls are missing the text to tell you what sat your roll passed/failed on. many chapters take you to locations where they forgot to include a rest area.

Speaking of, the amount of unique areas is getting out of hand since they are entirely separate from the town. They cut you off from using almost all of the resources the game is built upon, such as shops, your house, recruiting allies, etc. It's possible for more than half of your missions to be in these disconnected places, so you'd better hope the devs remembered to include an area you can heal from in some of them, or you'll just die. Many of these areas lack a rest area, or a place to access your storage. If you don't remember that in advance, you will absolutely waste the run because you'll die or you can't access key items for the chapter if your backpack is already full.
This wouldn't be a problem except that you can't access shops and things unless you're currently in a chapter. During the in-between sections where you're at home, you can't leave to stock up or visit locations. I don't know what reasoning there must be behind this feature.

The most annoying bit is that you cannot skip the opening cutscene and tutorial windows, and they will play every single run. It's annoying it doesn't remember the last picked settings so you have to set up every custom run from scratch as well.
The game also has 2 secrets and an EXP boost in the first room of every run, so if you're into min-maxing you'll have to go through those steps every single time as well.
This all adds up to spending 60-90 seconds setting up every single playthrough, which is just a ton of friction for users before they can even play the game.

A few elements are still completely boring RNG, including ghost enemies and unlocking achievements. I failed 18 (so far) Otherworld rolls to find the Upper Kingdom. 18 event checks which cannot be affected by any stats or any player input. Its not good gameplay to blindly fumble with luck for hours and hope. Its just about as fun as losing in most slot machines.
One heavily RNG element is a special enemy called "Something Truly Evil." It's a fourth wall breaking RNG based encounter. If you're unlucky and RNG makes you fight it, it's impossible to kill unless RNG makes the enemy spare your life. It's basically a run killer if you just have bad luck.

Besides "Something Evil," there are other minor things that basically end your run if they occur, either by RNG or from player choice. Simply put, if youre a new player, the game has certain items or choices you can make which immediately cripple you to the point you cannot continue a run. You must remember all of these to play the game or you will immediately lose. (Ie wearing and removing the Crestfallen Mask reduces every Stat by 2 permanently. You will now fail most Stat checks in the lighthouse.)

One missing feature is the ability to speed up text and skip cutscenes. Especially with the lack of diverse events, the fact you have to wait for the text to play an animation to appear gets very, very annoying. Especially while grinding the RNG, it wastes so much of your time with text and mini-animations, like the school window jumpscare visitor. Its a 10 second animation which equates to "take 2 reason damage."

The visual style of the game is one of the most impressive I've found from indie horror games. Charming illustrations drawing inspiration from artists like Junji Ito (who actually makes an unofficial appearance as an unnamed side character) wrapped up in a retro Gameboy-era package. The illustrations somehow work in pixel art form, which is incredible compared to a lot of the more generic pixel art games available. The game also allows you to swap between 1-bit or 2-bit color, which adds an extra level of shading to all of the artwork in the game. Combined with the choice of different color pallets and the game hold up well in all of them. Graphically, it's very impressive from an artistic standpoint.

Imo the game is probably only worth its current price tag ($15) at its beat, but now that I've played it for more than a few hours I don't know if I would even pay that much. Maybe $10?

The one positive is that it can apparently be molded, but I have no experience with that. Also pushing development onto the community instead of fully fleshing out your product is incredibly lazy, but there's no proof that's what the intention was. Honestly if the dev opened the door to modding, I would hope they could find someone who could assist in finishing the official content.

Honestly the dev might do better just being an artist for other people's projects, that way either someone else can do a better job coding, or there will be less pressure so the scope of the game can actually be larger.
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12 Comments
FriendlyFireOnly 20 Oct, 2023 @ 2:21am 
Your review is so thorouly described the game, I appreciate that. Sadly these things haven't changed on release
SIFT 20 Oct, 2023 @ 12:04am 
I find it funny that you probably like this game more than a lot of people who are angry at you about this review
JpNachos 19 Oct, 2023 @ 8:32pm 
Gotta love the genius not looking the date the review was made
Quarex 19 Oct, 2023 @ 8:04pm 
Criticizing omg so spoopy anime aesthetics will always result in children trying to come for you.

This was a well-written and comprehensive take on the experience and I appreciate reviews like this substantially more than the usual unjustified praise that indie developers get for so much as waking up in the morning just because "they're trying."
Mirmirliz 19 Oct, 2023 @ 5:59pm 
cry
Middy 19 Oct, 2023 @ 12:23pm 
Very reasonable and well written, I can only assume the jesters are people randomly choosing to self-identify on your review.
CriticalM@ss 19 Oct, 2023 @ 12:22pm 
Great review!
Sadly there seem to be alot og bootlickers who support poor design choices.

Hopefully the game revives more updates
Jeanne Starlight 19 Oct, 2023 @ 11:02am 
"very little content"?

I mean, I guess if we count tons of new mysteries, new combat encounters, new characters, new events, etc etc as "Very little content", then...sure. I guess. What, did you expect one of the updates to turn the game into an FPS?
Zectifin 19 Oct, 2023 @ 8:41am 
*buys roguelite game. experiences roguelite RNG. Shocked pikachu face*
PenguTheMerciless 26 Aug, 2023 @ 4:39pm 
you complain that a game made for 80s style mystery is ....*checks notes* 80s style mystery... you just wanted to complain