I discovered this game coming across a review of it on a website that I sadly now forget, but they reviewed a lot of the horror/adventure titles made on RPG Maker/Wolf RPG Editor and so forth that we all know and love. The review, according to them, made it out to be not just the most frightening game they've played but the most unpleasantly frightening. Like they would say many of the other games they've played (which included usual fare like The Witch's House, Ib, Yume Nikki, and a bunch of others I forget) would give you scares but the fun kind of scares, whereas here they were drained. After reading that review and also seeing the posted screencap of the title screen well of course I had to play this thing. Were my expectations too high? Was I even expecting the right thing? Either way, I came away from this game very disappointed. I won't say it doesn't have its moments, as there are bits here and there of promise but unfortunately none of it is fully realized and I come away from this game feeling it to be an amateur effort, let alone a far cry away from what that review I mentioned described it as.

So the story starts with a festival in a village, an annual offering for some spirits, with many offerings for these spirits including, as per relevant to the story told here, bundles of fruit. Because these spirits are nasty SOBs, anyone picking just one fruit to eat from the bunch will let them loose, wreaking havoc and sheer hell upon the villagers, and the only way to end the chaos, it eventually turns out, is to offer the person who committed this unjust act to the deadly, vengeful spirits as sacrifice. That unfortunate person would seem to be you, opening up with a scene where you feel hungry and decide to walk over to take just one little bite after feeling a bit hungry. Bad, BAD idea. And that's not all to the story either. Other characters and elements come into play as well, and even a few unexpected twists along the way (the classic kind of twist where you assume based on what is presented but not what is explicitly seen). So yes I do think the story is the game's best thing about it, but, like many other things about this game, it feels rushed. This is especially apparent as we get closer to the end and it's as though the game just wants to get itself over with, and the same goes for the gameplay itself.

So, the game. It's like any RPG Maker adventure/horror title you've played (or Wolf RPG Editor, which I believe this game was made on), that mainly involve puzzle-solving, exploration, usually no combat (not the traditional kind anyway) and plenty of creepy noises, jump scares, and even a chase scene or two to go with it. If you like that sort of thing (which I do) the game is at its best in the very beginning. However, before things really begin to start you notice... a floating, blue fire thing just floating around in the kitchen? What? I was afraid to go near it thinking it was going to kill me but it turns out to be... a save point. So using spirits as save points doesn't seem that unusual in a game that's about you having unleashed spirits, but we see this thing before we've even established what's happened and your character thinks nothing of it. Well, whatever, anyway, the first area you're in your house alone and must find necessary items to unlock this, collect this, to do this, and so on until you get the hell out. Like I said, the best scares are to be had here. There is one particularly effective jump scare where a face just flashes for a split second barely making a sound all over the screen. The protagonist feels she saw or felt something but doesn't know what. This is the best kind of jump scare I think, one that doesn't need to put on a song and dance or string quartet to make its presence known. It just shows up unexpectedly and uninvitingly and goes away. It leaves you chilled and unnerved and really builds up the tension. There aren't enough like those moments in the game. When your humble abode turns more and more into a hellhouse with nasty sounds and the appearances of monsters, the only way out is through shotgun justice. As in, literally, you have to find a shotgun and blow up a particularly gruesome-looking melty face monster with fleshy webbing over it to get through the hole and to the next area. If you enter this are with OUT the shotgun, well... JUMPSCARE!gameover. OK, fair enough I guess. I had that coming.

So in spite of noticing some other flaws, including some glaring, graphics-related ones (I'll get to those later), I was interested in seeing where this was headed. The next area or two were still scare-oriented but in a more annoying way than anything. There is your obligatory chase scene, which I guess isn't too bad I suppose if you know where to go, but it feels tacked-on and feels like it's there only because "every Wolf/RPG Maker title is required to have at least one chase scene in their contract." And there was another scene I honestly had no clue what to do until I found out I had to wait PRECISELY until the monster came right close to my face, then go to my inventory and select the appropriate item to dispose of it. The worst thing is that every time you die you're sent back to the title screen. Now when you first boot up the game the title screen is an appropriately creepy set-up. Not just because of that deformed monstrosity shown, but this odd ringing sound in the background that unnerves you before you begin. If you die enough times though this sound starts to become EXTREMELY grating. Especially so when you're in a relatively quiet area or one where the music is more low-key, then you die and, out of nowhere, LOUD RINGING. It becomes like nails on a chalkboard. I guess the best solution is to try and suck less than me at the game to avoid this. Well despite not liking this area at all, there is some actual story development going on here. Not to reveal too much but we are introduced to an interesting new character who we will learn more about as you progress.

Then, as far as I recall, there are only about three more areas to traverse in the game. The next one involves, let's just say for the sake of keeping this as spoiler-free as I can possessed crafts of sorts. This is also perhaps the one actual "boss fight" if you will that you encounter in the game. Not a bad one either I have to say, not really a scary one, but there is a small level of intensity as you try and execute everything properly. Then any semblance of horror just drops off the map as we get to a forest that usually is a common setting for horror but here you'll only find a monster that you've encountered earlier and it all happens during a cutscene, to be thwarted by magical powers of a certain character gradually introduced into the game. The next, and very last, area, is the village itself, where you get a bit of a break to get to look around the place, finding nothing of import and talking to nondescript characters, all the while a synthesized rendition of "Dance of the Toy Flutes" from the Nutcracker Suite plays in the background for some reason. But hey, nice, peppy, all that. There is one bizarre bit I noticed in the upstairs floor here though. On one end of a hallway there's one of those game-saving ghosts floating about. OK, fine, nothing unusual there. But if you walk, like, five feet across to the other hallway there's another one at the end of its hallway parallel to the one above. Why are there two save points essentially right next to each other? I was guessing something catastrophic would happen where you'd navigate one end of the inn, go around and once you've gone through some ordeal you find your savior, the adjacent save point! But, nope, nothing happens, so all I can chalk this up to is that the creator forgot to get rid of one of them so it remains just a curious oddity at best I suppose.

It's at this point some twists, including one major one, are revealed, and just when you think things are going to get interesting the game leads to an abrupt, completely anti-climactic ending. Supposedly though if you play a second round (I'd assume with the same save box?) you not only get one extra sequence to play, another "boss round" of sorts, but also a "happier" ending too. I didn't feel inclined to play it again and so just watched it on YouTube. The boss fight looks like a right pain in the ass, but giving some incentive to replay the game is a nice touch. The fight also explains a certain run-in with some sliced-up corpses you encounter that on first run are never explained (I actually totally forgot about these until I saw the fight, then remembered "oh yeah, there were those bodies sliced with that sword... this must be the guy").

And now some other things I have problems with. First, I said I would talk about the art design and here it needs a LOT of work. In particular, the character portraits. Very scraggly, has that "unfinished MS Paint picture" feel to it, and the black and white outlines where the creator tried to free select around them is distractingly visible. Now sometimes some creators go for an intentionally crude aesthetic that's consistent and suits its style and atmosphere very well (I'm thinking Space Funeral and OFF here), but here it seems a genuine attempt was made at expressive character portraits but they just... don't look very good, particularly the main character. I'll be fair and say it's better than anything I've done, and there are attempts at giving them a wide range of emotions instead of one static face for each person and they do display some personality but it feels like faint praise, and it's just very crude in a way that doesn't suit the game. There are other unique close-ups too, including a few "jump scare" statues. These actually look much better and seem to be made in a different medium than the main character portraits. And there is at least one up-close animation of a monster about to attack you that falls somewhere between. It's not as rushed-in-MS-Paint-ish as the portraits but it looks very crude, like some paper cut-out scanned over and lacking dimension compared to the statue close-ups, and doesn't look particularly good itself. Probably the best unique drawing in the game is the thing on the title screen. Now I have no idea if these were all made by the same person or if different people contributed to the art, but in any case, focus should have been on making everything look presentable and not just a few things. The main map itself is about par for a game like this, created primarily with freely available assets and some custom ones, the custom ones primarily being the monsters you encounter, those don't look too bad. Music and sound... music-wise I don't recall much besides the Nutcracker Suite piece and also that one bit of music most renowned for being the title screen music in Ib and also in Mad Father I believe. Having played these games before this, it felt somewhat distracting to hear when it played, but I'm not exactly sure which of these games came first (it says this was made in 2012, and only translated this year) but it's a free song so... yeah. Sounds range from good and creepy to some effects I've heard in a lot of games like this. Some of the squishy and zombie-like groaning effects in particular I recall hearing in Paranoiac (again, don't know what came first). And maybe others. Nothing really egregious here, it all gets the job done I guess.

But when you put this all together, what do we have here? There is a lot of potential to make a solid game out of this, but everything feels rushed. I never ran into any bugs that I can think of, so that's good at least, but still, the character art, the story that's increasingly rushed toward its even more rushed conclusion, lots of tacked-on bits, that one thing with the two save points (OK a very minor thing, but still... what), the pacing... this game should have been worked on a lot longer before being released, and I believe the creator is very much capable of doing that judging by the things the game does well, however sporadic they may be.

But... give it a try and make your own conclusions if you're into these kinds of games like I am. You may like it better than I do, I know others certainly have, and it's a perfectly playable game that's not too long to get through. But, as of now, the game we've got I just can't say is very good, so here's hoping a much better effort in the next game (from what it looks like, another game has just come out, I may give it a look to see how he's evolved as a game designer).