Edited on: November 10, 2025
Posted on: November 9, 2025
Too much confused experience
Mixed about this one... the fact that is mostly a walking simulator doesn't bother me; it has a really good pixel art and it could also have a really good story but only if there hasn't been a huge problem of writing.
Here's the thing:
It's a wannabe horror story full of metaphorical sense, but, actually... well, the game has no metaphors.
This is not a horror story. It's a thriller. We see the dreams of the protagonist full of monsters and gruesome things, but it's not actually reality. The reality of the narration is a psychological thriller: there is no sense of horrific or monstrous.
So we have two lines: a thriller story and a horror dream where the protagonist proceed in her discover of her true self. But in this way the metaphors are not real: metaphor is when something means another thing, but here everything means exactly what it is.
In horror stories the horror and the catharsis must be real; if the horror is just fantasy or a dream, the power of metaphor vanishes, and we're just seeing a narration of a narration.
In this game we have to identify simultaneously with the life of the protagonist and with her path in the horror dream, trying to fit the two realities in our own experience. And that's quite difficult.
It's like watching someone else's therapy sessions: yeah, I could be happy for you, but that's not my story.
There are also other things: taking away the reality from horror stories, the horror elements become weaker, they're are not scaring or disturbing anymore. "Yeah, it's just a dream...", and all horrors become irrelevant.
There is also a verbose and didactic vein in what's happening inside the protagonist: everything is too much said, explained and verbalized, especially by the wise old woman, to the point that the possible tension of what's next to discover is killed by too many explanations: the road we have to take is too much certain to make us thrill for the struggles on the way.
In the thriller part it's difficult to empathize with the protagonist: she's distant from a real behaviour in that situation, and adding to this there are some annoying inconsistencies in what's happening (and the supposed "plot twist" is really weak and predictable).
So... the game would have been really great if all the thriller narration would had been cut away. That's because the imaginary and the metaphorical meanings in the dream part are actually great, but are deflated and flattered by the other line of narration - the "realistic" one.
For what it is, the game is just a confused mess with some good ideas.
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