Chapelwaite

Storm Crow's Chapelwaite feels like a prototype, and this isn't a bad thing. Chapelwaite is a fully self-contained game, with a coherent story, clear objectives, a moderate amount of challenge, and a decent degree of player agency. I never felt like I was playing "just a prototype" when I was playing it, and the ending is what you'd expect from a horror story---but not obvious bait for a sequel.

On the other hand, the whole time I was at my keyboard I kept thinking about how simple it would be to make a follow-up that uses the same systems and design sensibilities, and how good that game would be. There's a lot of un-utilized or under-utilized mechanics in Chapelwaite that would be really excellent in a second survival horror rpg, and there's a lot of potential in further developing the systems that Chapelwaite does rely on.

This in turn says something really positive about Chapelwaite's overall design and its ability to avoid getting out of scope, but before we dig into that, let's take a closer look at the game itself.

What It Is

Chapelwaite is an rpgmaker Cthulhu mythos asset pack adaptation of Stephen King's short story Jerusalem's Lot. In the story, a man inherits a house, discovers that it's actually a doom house, and has to make a decision based on how he feels about all of that. The story is written in a deliberately Lovecraftian mode, minus the racism, and it's a lot more ornate than King usually gets. It's also an interesting candidate for adaptation, since the bulk of its horror relies on hinting at monsters rather than showing them, and this can be tricky to do in a medium where there's fights.

Given how a lot of rpgmaker adaptations seem to go, I think it's fair to call Chapelwaite a very faithful one, as it clings tightly to the original plot structure and only deviates in the few places where the original story gives it freedom to do so. It also uses whole giant chunks of the text of Jerusalem's Lot for its dialog, notes, and intro crawls, but this approach works better than I would have expected. I never felt like I what I was playing was a book half-jammed into the cartridge slot of a super nintendo. Instead, King's prose is solid and atmospheric, and that plus some really good music, sound, and lighting design made the game feel moody and immersive.

Unfortunately, the gameplay in Chapelwaite is a little less interesting than the text.

Chapelwaite is mostly an exploration game, with only the occasional chase scene or bit of combat to spice up the formula. The player explores the Chapelwaite mansion and its environs, slowly gathering clues and developing an understanding of what's going on in the house. They get a few opportunities to make plot-relevant decisions, and there are loads of items for them to stockpile, but making progress in the game is generally easy, drawing the player deeper into the story without disrupting them with excessively difficult puzzles or fights.

The few fights that there are rely a little on luck, as the player has very limited options in combat. Items are disallowed entirely during fights, and special moves are equipment based, with the player only having a very limited pool of equipment to draw on for each character. As a result, fights can be moderately chance-based, although the player does get an opportunity to pick up some spells late in the game if they're willing to risk corruption in order to do so.

Blessedly, Chapelwaite is largely bug free and, while enemy AI is very dumb during chases, I never found anything that I could exploit to trivialize difficulty.

Alright, So What Part Of That Calls For A Sequel?

Let's dig specifically into the mechanics, because this is probably going to be the best way to illustrate my point.

Chapelwaite is a time-limited game. It takes place over a set number of days, and most days involve a short, timed exploration segment followed by some main plot. The timed exploration gives the player a chance to pick up anything they might have missed on their first time through the mansion, but is mostly useless if they explored thoroughly in the opening act.

At the start of each day, the player levels up. This is cool as hell, and I don't think I've seen a game tie character progression so directly to time like this, and it does a really interesting thing when paired with the next design choice.

Characters have a set of stats that are used purely for out of combat "skill checks". For example, if you pick up an old leather-bound book with a solid iron lock on it, you can check your strength skill to see if you can smash the lock open. Now, leveling up increases these stats, which creates an opportunity for you to sort of soft-unlock areas or items as you level, and for you to balance the number of days that you're spending getting swole vs how much the house is full-on poltergeisting around you.

Chapelwaite doesn't commit fully on either of these design elements, as the opportunities to make skill checks are few and you can't prematurely deal with any of the game's threats, but the potential is there.

Another mechanic in Chapelwaite is its sanity system, which has cosmetic effects on the environment and theoretically leads to some jump-scares, although I didn't encounter any. Seeing horrific sights or messing with occult writings whittles away at your sanity, and accruing too much madness prematurely gets you a bad ending. This is fairly standard Cthulhu rpg fare, but again the potential is there. By treating sanity as a resource and creating more options for you to risk your lucidity to enhance your character, the sanity system could be a lot more than just a "gotcha, you shouldn't have looked in the spooky urn" element. Combat in Chapelwaite has the potential to be blisteringly hard, and that plus the ability to get a little bit stronger at the expense of some occult meddling would lead to a really compelling cycle of gameplay.

Finally, the last opportunity for expansion on Chapewaite's design is that it's on-rails. In Chapewaite, you have to explore the central mystery in a certain way, because that's how it was explored in the story. A follow-up that uses a little bit of Souls-like design and allows multiple paths for exploration, all feeding back into a central hub, would allow a lot more player agency, and in turn give the player little bit more buy-in with the story, since they'd be choosing how to approach it rather than having it parceled out to them.

As is, Chapelwaite is cool, but the potential in developing these mechanics is tantalizing.

Overall Impression

Chapelwaite has good ideas but doesn't get too crazy with them. It keeps its scope tight and doesn't fall prey to "add a fishing minigame" syndrome.

If you like Lovecraftian writing or worldbuilding, exploration/puzzle horror, and short, atmospheric games, this is worth picking up. If you want lots of combat or don't want lots of reading, it's probably better to give it a miss.

There isn't a lot of padding on Chapelwaite, and it only takes about 45 minutes to run through, so it's also a good pick-up if you want a palate-cleanser in between tremendously long JRPGs.