Death Proclaimed

Death Proclaimed has a lot of game content I never really managed to get to, simply because I became too frustrated with the game to bother to continue.

The game is a survival horror title, so clunky, awkward controls are to be expected. However, your success in Death Proclaim does not seem to hinge on masterful use of awkward controls so much as pure dumb luck.

Enemies frequently teleport right beside you, or INTO you, and cause unavoidable damage. Attempting to attack these enemies is extraordinarily dangerous, because your weapon rarely ever actually connects with the enemy, and far more frequently you take damage from the encounter instead. It doesn't help if you try to make use of a slow moving weapon either, for that matter. The only real way to proceed in the game is rushing through corridors to memorize the layout and puzzles and then blaze through them as quickly as possible on a loaded save file. But since save points are sparse (As per Survival Horror standards) this is just frustrating.

There was also a bookcase puzzle, early on in the game, that suffered from poor explanation. After looking in the editor, I found out that ' 8 minus 2 ' apparently was supposed to equal negative six, when I am pretty confident that it should've been the other way around. The objective was to add variables so that it equaled ten, but all of the equations offered equaled positive numbers.

After trying repeatedly to proceed in the game, and being subjected frequently to cheap deaths from unavoidable enemies, I decided to give up. I could have cheated my way through using the editor, but I really wasn't captivated by the story or presentation enough to bother.

The RTP face sets tinted blood red are distracting, mainly because the characters have the wrong facial expressions for the mood of the game. Just because that character's face is tinted red does not excuse the fact that they are smiling demurely. Going without them would have had a greater effect.

The game wants very badly to be Silent Hill. That's fine. Silent Hill is an awesome game franchise. But Death Proclaimed doesn't really set itself apart at all. Its premise is lifted entirely from the original Silent hill, only slightly altered. Most of the events I saw were a derivitive mish-mash of events from SH games.

What makes this worse is that the game takes its ENTIRE sound track from the Silent Hill franchise. It's good music, and profoundly creepy, but for any survival horror gamer, this music is bound to be HIGHLY recognizable and draw more attention to how much this game depends on SH's ideas.

I feel bad for this review being a diatribe. The game does have some good points. The map design is competent and there are some nice special effects in a few spots. The custom systems obviously took a lot of love and work to implement, even if combat was ultimately too frustrating for me. There is a lot of EFFORT in this game, demonstrated by the size of this game. It's just a pity that the game isn't more playable.

Ultimately, the game really doesn't compete with Longing Ribbon or Backstage as an RPG Maker Survival Horror game. There is a lot of effort and love invested here, but the game is unabashedly derivative and VERY difficult to play through.