WORLD OF HORROR

Very good "vibe like," the roguelike genre actually lends itself well to Junji Ito's serialized horror. The soundtrack is spectacular, and makes chiptune shockingly listenable, and I personally enjoy the artstyle and aesthetic a lot. So why the negative? There just really aren't that many mysteries to play through (which act as the core "stories"/horror of the game), and they serve as my major draw to the game. There are currently ~20. This seems like a robust number, and a few of them are complex enough to justify the total, but many of them are fairly short and simple. This is compounded by the fact that you have to play through 5 each run, so you quickly begin to repeat the same ones over and over again. I feel especially negative about this total due to its meagre inflation from the 2020 early access release. The roguelike underneath the viscerally interesting storytelling, music, and artstyle is simply not that fun, so the moment all novelty is exhausted it feels pointless to continue. One might get the impression the 20$ is a good value, given my 55 hours, but that total comes from two 100% save files and a few replays since its early access launch around 6 years ago. It's absolutely worth it if you have a passing interest and it happens to be on sale, or if the artstyle and music are alluring to you, just don't go in expecting much longevity unless if the gameplay really clicks with you.

It is really, really, REALLY irritating to me that I like this game, because I have some major gripes with it. I wanna get the stuff I really like out of the way first. It was obviously made by someone with a strong passion for Weird Fiction who gets it in a way that the developers of DREDGE do not (the fact that there's a reference to "The Shunned House" instead of just the standard "hurr durr Colour Out of Space Shadow Over Innsmouth Call of Cthulhu" stuff you get in these types of games is awesome. The only way you could demonstrate a better familiarity with Lovecraft is if you referenced something insane like "The Beast in the Cave" or "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", things practically nobody has read). The idea of being able to play an Arkham Horror-style board game by myself is very appealing, since Arkham Horror takes two cumulative days to set up, play and dissassemble, and I think for the most part the execution is very cool in a way that made me want to keep playing until I 100 percented it. Now comes the serious issue I have with this game, which is that after a couple of runs it just doesn't feel fun or interesting to play anymore. Once you realize how to get the best endings for every Mystery there's no real reason to play them any other way (and a lot of Mysteries aren't actually that deep, having an investigation along the lines of "kill the boss" or "make a single choice at the end", and they railroad you into a bad ending unless you do a lot of planning beforehand). The combat feels floaty and lifeless, as it's just clicking buttons on a static image while your health decreases each turn. I'm not saying every game has to be gorgeously animated, but I think RPG Maker games (e.g. Look Outside, especially relevant to this example) have proven that you can make very static turn-based combat more engaging than this. The art in this game is wildly inconsistent; I get that they're going for a low-poly look but there are a handful of sprites and drawings here and there that look weirdly proportioned or like rough sketches. Maybe it's unfair, but i feel like if you're deliberately aping the artstyle of Junji Ito, a guy who is a superhuman at drawing, then I expect the artwork to at least try to match his quality (an admittedly far-fetched task, so again this is perhaps unfair). That brings me to my biggest overall gripe with this game, which is that it just feels unfinished. Even after deliberately waiting years for this game to come out of Early Access before touching it, it's still missing several features and doesn't have that rewarding of a gameplay loop. Why doesn't this game have Steam achievements? Why does the game just anticlimactically end with a series of boring skill checks? Why are there a bunch of features that presumably involve the upcoming "scenario mode" that don't currently do anything, like the VHS player in your apartment? I want to err on the side of good faith and not be a conspiracist who says that the dev dragged out the development process for as long as he could in order to provide a sustainable source of income, but it is confusing nonetheless when he will disappear for years at a time without providing any updates on new content or estimates for its arrival. Not to lean too heavily on one comparison here, but Look Outside was a game that was blatantly, self-admittedly, OBVIOUSLY incomplete at launch and yet still felt like more of a finished product than this, not to mention that Coloumbe has been pumping out updates to re-add back in all the stuff that was cut for time during development over the past year. I dunno. Would I recommend this game? I guess I'd have to say yes. It very much appeals to my sensibilities and was made by someone who understands the inspirational material they were working with, and those first few runs where you're constantly discovering new events and mysteries are genuinely exciting. But I can't help but feel that even discounted at 17 bucks this game was a tad overpriced. It might end up resonating more with other players than it did with me, so caveat emptor.

unfinished. the developer just took the money and ran.

※2026/02/27　修正・追記 未実装・没などを含むアプデ予告。 本当に来るのか、実際にいつ来るのかは一旦置いとくとして内容的には期待したいですね。 --- ※2025/07/02　修正・追記 数か月以内にアプデしますって予定出したっきり音信不通になって2年が経ち、突然公式が動いたと思ったら「グッズ出します！買ってね！」だけ しかもめっちゃくちゃ高いのね…わたしはグッズ類に興味がないからピンと来なかったけどどうも興味がある人から見ても非常識なお値段と内容な様子 初報からアーリー版が発売されるまでにほぼ風化するくらい時間がかかってはいたしアーリー発売後も更新の遅さはひどかったから、元々そういう開発者だったんだろうと言われればそうだねとしか言えない パブリッシャーの2社もむしろ頭抱えたんじゃないかな…普段はまともなタイトルも有名タイトルも手がけてるところだし このゲーム発売前から期待値は本当に高かったから コンソール版が出たときのトレイラームービーと実際のゲームプレイの乖離がひどすぎるという話も当時はそこはトレイラーだからさってとりなしたもんだけど… 今回みたいな行動を平気でとるとなるとあれも客釣るためにわざと乖離を無視して発注したのかなって邪推したくなる気持ちも出てきちゃうね いいゲームだったんだけどなぁ…本当に残念

Game was pretty neat. They announced a big update back in Feb. of 2024 and as of now nothing has come out. But hey, super expensive merch was just announced so that's cool. Good job devs.

I wasn't part of the early access phase of this game -- I bought it on sale. You should do that, too. I don't think it's necessarily worth full price, but I do think it's worth playing if you're into this sort of thing. It clearly got cut short, and clearly could have been something entirely different and so much better with more love and care applied to it, but, it is what it is. Sometimes devs abandon stuff. It be like that. There's enough here to engage you for a while, it's a great Halloween playthrough, but be warned: it does get a little old a little quickly, if you don't manage your behavior and expectations. Sort of a Far Cry problem: you *can* clear every base with a silenced sniper rifle, but that's boring. So... don't. Hang-glide in with a grenade launcher, throw knives at everyone, sprint from rooftop to rooftop with a machine gun. In this context: make bad choices, on purpose! See what happens! Role play as yourself, and only do what *you* would do! See if you can recruit a small army of schoolkids to fight for you! There's enough options to have fun, so have fun. Now, does that make this a good game? That's an argument for another day. Like I said, I enjoyed it enough to say "you should buy it on sale." So, I hope that helps.

A board game without story mode. The trailer was scarier than the whole game. Promised but unfulfilled updates.