Lamia Nox

-Spoilers-

I found this game after going through a lot of junk, when I was desperate for a good horror game to play. Up until a boulder fell on the monster, this game was excellent - 5/5 with only minor gripes. I was thinking about giving this 5/5 and trying to push it to the front page. But after that it goes downhill, presumably because the author felt rushed and wanted to finish it, but at least it still has a puzzle-decision after that.

Gameplay
Oh thank goodness this game has a reasonable base walking speed (when you're running, or turn on auto-dash). I wouldn't have thought to be grateful for that, except that the last few games I've played were terribly slow.

The sad thing is that it's so short, like a 20-minute game. But that means I get to talk about everything that stood out in particular.

Everything the stuffed bear did was perfect. I was genuinely disappointed that the bear didn't do more (for example: The Witch's House, or Forest of Animals), but at least what it did do was good.

However, I wanted to spend more time in the house. It clearly had creepy things going on - I want more of that! I want to investigate while being scared, get surprised by suddenly-moving things and things that weren't there before, and solve puzzles while scary things are going on. And a creepy house is a great setting for that.

The first chase scene was bad. I died to it twice, and both times I ran straight toward the door, but I still got caught because the monster was faster than me. After getting caught the first time, I was so surprised that I checked the area around the trigger to see if there was any other way, and couldn't find one. That made me try the chase again with slight optimization, and I got it on the 3rd try. The chase requires literal perfection to not die, and that's bad. Repetition reduces horror, so the monster in that scene should only move as fast as the character, to allow for 1 or 2 mistakes.

And there should've been more chase scenes, or death traps. I was disappointed that absolutely nothing happened after I got the toy boat, or the second artifact, or flipping the switch in the library, or going out the door, or any number of other places ripe for horrific consequences. On that note: there's absolutely no reason I shouldn't have been able to pick up the 2nd artifact before the first, or even before I even looked at the door. Being forced to do things in a specific order, for the sake of doing things in order, makes a game worse.

On that note, the save system was really weird, and not better than normal. I want to be able to save as soon as I start the game so I don't have to watch the intro again, and having to go through a doorway to save is worse than having an object in the room be a save point because it forces me into a new area right after I save, rather than allowing me to explore more (and maybe try something dangerous).

I liked the puzzles fine. My only problem was that Laura wasn't more inquisitive, meaning that when I investigated the weirdly-shaped kilns in random places outside, I didn't even get a text box. They weren't important, but I wanted to know what the heck they were! Great horror games have info boxes for almost everything.

The last chase scene ended in a gigantic anticlimax. What the heck? That made me think the author just gave up on the game, because it was incredibly lame, and after that point I felt like I didn't get to do much of anything (2 puzzles, which was good, but still).

Sounds
The monster sound effects sounded shoddy. If that was on purpose, it was a bad decision, because it sounded more fake than scary.

Otherwise the sound effects were fine.

Plot
The plot was terrible. What was going on in this game? At first I thought the monster was a random mook, then it turns out he's a demon who steals souls? Yeah, right! He couldn't even open a door. Ao Oni was more of a threat, because at least it followed me through a few rooms before getting lost. And he was killed by a boulder. If that was supposed to lampoon the indestructible monsters in other games, it was badly done.

On another note, at first I thought that I would die if I left the house, but suddenly I was outside and not dead. A few screens later, still not dead, and no threat of being dead. What was even the point of writing "you'll die if you go outside" (or similar)?

On another note, at first I thought the girl would kill me, but then she asks for my help. That was silly. She should've been the bad guy behind it all. It would've made so much more thematic sense for her to slaughter me at the end of the game for freeing her spirit from captivity, or something.

And on that note, I had no clue what was going on with the old woman and the girl. Supposedly the woman hired a demon to kill girls and trap their souls in mirrors for her? But only one of the mirrors is still around? And souls freed from mirrors can kill people?

And how did Laura end up in that house in the first place?

There's too many loose threads for this to be called a good story at all.

Overall
The first 15 minutes of the game are great, the last 5 stink. Hope to see a better game, or even remake, in the future.