is what you get when you combine exploring otherworldly locations in a dungeon crawler-like fashion mixed with lunatic conspiracy theories and retro graphics depicting some disturbing, often violent stuff. And then you expand on this formula and release it as a sort of definitive edition. Basically, Psychopomp GOLD.

The story goes like this: the girl you play as creates a helmet that lets you read peoples’ minds, but not really, it actually shows you things you didn’t know existed — places and creatures hidden under our everyday buildings, be it schools, hospitals etc. So you do what any sane person would do, you take a hammer and break into these places to explore their mysterious depths. You encounter some goofy ahh monsters and NPCs, sometimes get spooked, other times admire some nice views and very atmospheric ambient music, you pretend like you know what you’re doing, in reality you forgot to take your meds. No, seriously. Go take your meds, I’m not joking.




In amidst all these hijinks lies a pretty simple, yet engaging game. Movement is done like on a grid*, either forwards, backwards or sideways and you only get one way to attack enemies. You can also interact with the environment and talk to characters in a point and click style. Oddly enough, sprinting sideways is the best way to get around the levels, since it doesn’t draw your stamina (it was a bug deliberately left in the game by the dev to make speedrunners run like crabs, which is pretty based in my opinion).

Definitely this game’s strongest point is its setting, not how refined it is gameplaywise (because it isn’t). The slick combo of old-school visuals and memorable music creates this mysterious and somewhat unwelcoming atmosphere, that just makes you want to uncover what is hidden deep down. To see what oddities are there. And potentially hit them with a hammer, just in case.

Compared to the free version, in Psychopomp GOLD we get more unique enemies and NPCs, extra locations and old locations get a revamp — new secrets as well as some visual touches. Fresh music is nice too like in the original, I especially like the tracks in Structure and Instructions intro areas (they remind me of Hallmark ‘87 – A T R I U M, great ambient album btw). Game is still quite short, but this might be a blessing in disguise. You quickly get used to the simple gameplay loop and it’s one of these games that’s fun only when you experience it once and replaying levels feels a bit tedious after a few times.

Partially thanks to its mechanical simplicity, game doesn’t suffer from many bugs. The only problems I had was movement grid in a particular level (Instructions) which wasn’t aligned well with level’s geometry and you couldn’t go through one portion of the map without phasing through walls. Moreover, music in one bonus location (Rust Mother Artificial Cave) was too loud, to a point it was substancially louder than anything else and slightly unbearable. Luckily, none of these issues are gamebreaking.

Psychopomp GOLD also features a mod support (in theory), but there is no Steam Workshop yet and there isn’t much information floating around on how to create your own mods, so we’ll see how it goes in the future**. Additionally few people have been saying the dev is dishonest for releasing this game as one smaller free version and then one paid with all the content, but as far as I’m aware he created a poll for his fans and they voted for him to expand the game in a paid edition, so it’s not like it was a ploy to persuade people into paying.




This game and its soundtrack lives rent-free in my head. Despite it not being particularly deep, it was somewhat thought-provoking and even slightly inspiring (game was made by one person and in Godot engine, which I was fond of since it was a huge part of my bachelor's thesis). It’s always nice to see people doing something creative and niche on the internet, especially when they get some deserved recognition for their work.

If Psychopomp 2 was ever to come out, it might need to bring some more variety in gameplay and some QoL improvements — like being able to replay levels after you completed the story, which the current game unfortunately lacks. All in all, the formula for a potential classic is there, it just needs to be refined and ideas for more imaginative worlds need to keep coming. As I’ve said earlier, creativity is this game’s biggest selling point, so let’s hope the developer will never lose the essence of what made Psychopomp great.


Rating:

Playtime: 3-6h

The game is GOOD for players who:

• look for something unique
  
• don’t mind the grotesque and disturbing nature
  
• like conspiracy theories
  
• already played the free version of Psychopomp

The game is NOT GOOD for people who:

• are easily disturbed
  
• look for a complex narrative
  
• want replayability in their games

*Some people call it tank controls, but that doesn’t reflect how it works in practice. It’s more like Crypt of the NecroDancer (but in first person view and without the rhythm) than for example old Silent Hill games.

**As I was finishing up this review, Karbonic released first version of modding tools for Psychopomp GOLD, which looks promising.