Recent reviews by Vladimere Lhore

This game is mysterious. What appears to be a deeply personal expression of one's self told through the limited medium of an archaic engine built to make King's Field games.

This game functionally plays like one of those because it is using the Sword of Moonlight engine, and, if I'm not mistaken, uses a lot of the assets that come baked in.

Which creates this dissonance, as visually the world is a medieval fantasy, but half the dialogue spoken will reference pay phones and cars from our modern world, while half is grounded in that fantasy. I feel the dissonance works in the game's favor as it makes the world feel alien in a way that piques your curiosity.

If you enjoy games inspired by King's Field made in the King's Field engine, you're good to go.

But if you don't care for the difficulty of King's Field-likes, but you are the sort who enjoys art that is raw, suffering through the game is worth the effort. The worst aspect is probably going to be the combat, though the lack of direction can occasionally be a close second.

The combat is all over the place. At first it was atrocious as enemies took 30 hits or more to kill. It got so bad I just started running past everything cause killing it wasn't fun. But then I got to the Catacombs, a confusing maze jam packed with skeletons. Finally I decided it would be easier to clear out the enemies so I could take my time and create a better mental map (there is no in game map, very easy to get turned around)
But it takes so long to kill them, I think I should just try leveling up, so I go back to the Castle, grind up to 1000 EXP, and this... makes things tolerable, but skeletons are still taking a minute of circle strafing and stabbing their ass to go down.

I wish the game gave ya more loot, or at least weapons. Cause you get a 1 dmg knife and a 2 dmg club. In the 4th level, the Towers, you find a guy who's selling a sword, but I didn't have enough money... plus by then I had 50dmg spells that were 1 shotting everything, so combat being slow and boring was no longer and issue.

But that was sort of a problem with the back half of the game. It goes from it takes 5 minutes to kill something to everything is a 1 hit kill and I don't have to try. There's a real lack of progression in the challenge.
Thankfully the game has other strengths holding it up.

There is a real sense of exploration and excitement when you find the puzzle piece that will allow you to progress. There is also a lot of optional spaces to find. Not sure how one goes about exploring those space though, as I feel I got a key for the Sewers at the Towers, but due to the rigid progression forced by the platforming there, I couldn't simply walk back to the Town to access them, and the end of the Towers seemed to lead directly into Heaven.

There is also allegedly multiple endings, and outside exploring the optional content, I have no clue what decides your fate. Based on my ending, being told I was a bad person who had perpetuated harm, and that I was left behind in this entity's rapture, my theory was that I had to do a pacifist run, only to discover that was impossible, as the game basically forces you to do a murder in order to progress.
Alternatively, my only other theory was how one answers a series of questions at Heaven's Gate.

While the whole game alludes to traumas, I feel like a bulk of it is dumped onto the player in the last minutes of the game. It takes what was subtext and turns it into text. It's a lot to take in. And with a lack of in game character to ascribe these feelings to, it's hard not to interpret them as literal to the developer and psycho analyze the contents.


All in all, I think this will appeal to the niche of players who like King's Field-likes, and those who enjoy games that devs poured themselves into. So long as you don't mind the rough edges of the Sword Of Moonlight engine, bad combat progression, or not being given any real direction in game.

I appreciate the dev for sending the Haunted PS1 curator group a copy for review. This absolutely fits the vibe.

First Persona game for me, funny I decided to play this right before they announced the Remake was coming. Glad I checked out the original first so I can know the changes more personally.
Overall I enjoyed the game.

Seems to be made of 3 pillars, the SMT dungeon crawling, The Tokimeki Memorial Social Sim, and the Visual Novel that acts as the bulk of the game.

Turns out I really love the Social sim, and the visual novel aspect is good too. Unfortunately these get interupted every so often by dungeon crawling and demon fusing.

Game is very slow to start, and I more or less figured out the mystery before the first dungeon, but luckily the characters are so strong that you enjoy just hanging out in this world even without the paranormal threat looming.

Inaba is a very cozy town.

"Enjoy this for what it is, don't resent it for what it isn't."
Or something to that effect, is a phrase the game threw at me quite often while I was playing. Almost in defense of itself, as I kept wishing things were handled differently.

In spite my failure to enjoy this for what is was, feeling fairly negative during most of my time in the game, I'm still recommending this because there were a handful of superbly crafted moments I feel are worth experiencing. Specially for players who enjoy abstract, surreal, dream-like games full of philosophic ponders about the nature of reality.

The highlight of the game was the first run through the 3rd dungeon/digression, SCP (Soft Contained Play). After 2 dungeons all on your own, having a friend to experience the weird encounters with was a breath of fresh air.
But what really sold that dungeon was the emotional devastation of losing that friend and the quiet moment you share with their corpse in their memory.

Unfortunately, after that high, you get quite the low. Being told you need to back track through all 3 available dungeons and hope the RNG smiles upon you to find the items you've been requested to seek. I wasn't so lucky and had to back track a dungeon twice for one item.

Over all I feel the RNG does nothing to improve the experience, specially as my repeat visits to each dungeon saw me getting a lot of the same text prompts and some repeat encounters instead of pulling from a list of encounters I hadn't seen.

Another hitch in the game are the fixed camera angles. While I appreciate the cinema of it and occasionally it's used to great effect, quite often the camera is placed in such a way you can't see yourself or where you need to go. And being at odd angles coupled with camera based movement means that you walk at odd angles, led to a lot of wiggling the DPad around hoping to catch my visage. It also commits the cardinal fixed camera angle sin of flipping the camera 180 degrees, so you walk from left to right, and the next screen you spawn right and need to walk left. Sometimes causing you to wiggle back and forth between locations.
That's all annoying enough, but the worst part is probably how difficult it is to line yourself up to an interactable sometimes as the camera based movement causes you to move off grid in these 2D environments.

The encounters in the game are hit and miss. Sometimes the text gives you hints about how you should proceed and other times you don't get jack. I really like the encounters that felt like puzzles to solve, and hated the waiting game encounters where it felt like nothing I did was progressing either bar.

The lowest low for me was an encounter against multiple enemies in the final dungeon. At this point, the simulation is breaking down, and you've gained a bunch of random commands that don't seem to do anything. Slowly, over many rounds, those commands disappear, which makes you feel like you're progressing. Eventually I was left with no commands and the encounter became a battle between the shapes. I was trapped in a loop for 5-10 minutes where I had no inputs in the encounter. I just had to wait, round after round, line after line, for the enemies to kill themselves. I almost quit the game to retry thinking the game busted.

Minor complaints, but the text is often difficult to read. Sometimes the transparent background wasn't opaque enough to highlight the text. Sometimes it was just a problem of the text being too fine and tiny. Not to mention all the random screen text that comes up.
Though even when I could read the text, sometimes it was too fast to get through, and sometimes it was slow and agonizing. There is a setting to change the speed, but I don't feel like it helped the inconsistent text speed. Also curious why the text crawl was automatic sometimes and manual at others. It probably should have just been manual always.
Although that led to the issue of sometimes mashing through text I've already read and accidentally making a choice as soon as the choice prompt came up. (But at least that's a common problem in games and not unique to this one.)

Also, this might have also been bad RNG, but I felt like when I played the HPS1 demo disc demo, there were a lot more text prompts that led into choices making the digressions more engaging between rooms. In this full version I'd wager I only received 1-2 choices per digression or of the 10 or so stops.


All in all, I feel like the game would have been better had it been edited down a bit. Reflecting, out of the 9 hours I spent with the game, I'd say 4 of them were gripping. A lot of my play through felt like I was retreading old ground. The same rooms over and over, samey feeling encounters if not the same encounters, pushing through hoping the pieces will click and the good outweighed the bad for me.
That's what frustrates me the most, cause when I was able to enjoy the game for what it was, it was amazing, but I ultimately resent the game for all the moments in between.

I'm recommending this for the absolute sickos who enjoy Devil Daggers, the sequel Hyper Demon, Death in Abyss, etc.
DEATHTRIP also being a fast paced shooter dripping with style.

There is currently only 1 stage, though the game promises more to come.
Having levels to beat places it more akin to Death In Abyss and personally I do prefer this to Sorath's single level pure arcade action as it gives you a goal to meet outside personal achievement.
If you do beat the stage, you get a cute little cut scene that has a style that reminds me of Home Stuck.


I think the tutorial could use an over haul. Right now it's just a video tutorial telling you that you can bounce off walls. I think it should be a playable level that slowly introduces all the mechanics it wants you to know so when you start Stage 1 you're equipped to actually handle it.

The dev made a note when sending me a copy that I would probably hate it due to its difficulty.

I do dislike the difficulty, but I feel that difficulty stems from a lack of understanding to how the systems work rather than being mechanically challenging.
I managed to beat the 1st stage and place 8th on the leaderboard with 1,019,800 points at time of writing, and I still don't really understand the game. I couldn't even tell you what triggers the titular DEATHTRIP.

I had only just recently confirmed that the shadows are actually dangerous and worth taking out, even if they don't give you any points. Speaking of points, I spent half my 45 minutes of play not knowing what gave me points. Turns out its the skulls that chase you and maybe that's it? The screen is often so busy with explosions and particles you can't really tell what's happening. You're doing all you can just to survive.

In spite my belly aching. I really do love the aesthetic of it, and the game play is engaging. Has a "one more run" quality to it.
I wager this game could be elevated from solid to incredible if the game did a little more to onboard new comers and fills out the content with more stages to Master. I'll certainly come back when the last stage is added to see if that's true.

Enjoyable bite sized RPG. Not mechanically challenging, but personally prefer that.

Essentially 1 hand crafted dungeon with 3 puzzles and 3 bosses each with 2 phases inside, plenty of cutscenes sprinkled about. Took me about 90 minutes to run through, though if you're trying to get 100% you might spend a little more time grinding.


As you wander back and forth across the map you'll stumble across 2 main enemy types on the map. Though sometimes a 3rd enemy will spawn with them as their support.

The progression in the game is a little poorly paced. You start with one character with one move, and you're stuck with that for quite a while. This lack of decision making in the early game made me start avoiding encounters all together. Which thankfully is pretty easy.

You get a good feel for what fighting 1-2 enemies is like while alone. Unfortunately, after getting all your companions together, when you get into a scrap with 1-2 enemies, you think you'll wipe the floor with them cause you've quadrupled your action economy, but the enemies grow in strength so the pacing of battles feels about the same as being alone, just now you make more people hit. This feels bad. At the very least a visual update like their color would have made this pill easier to swallow.
Though I believe it would have felt best if sheep kept the same stats throughout, so they're a struggle alone, but easy with your friends. Then the Mane Wolves could be a mini boss to unlock a companion that leads into them being regular enemies you struggle against for the rest of the game.

Anyhow, once you get all your companions a third of the way through the game, you finally unlock the ability to upgrade stats. By then I had enough money to max out one of my characters.

I do appreciate how each character filled a specific role. Your main character, Arthur, being your bread and butter damage dealer, Angela playing support by increasing another character's damage, Junior being the medic, and Lucia being crowd control.
Of these, I think Lucia was the most fun to use, cause she's absolutely broken in your favor. I literally had her 1 hit kill the final boss's 2nd form.
This won't be a good game if what you enjoy about RPGs is mechanical challenge. But I came for the story and aesthetic. So how are those?
The aesthetics are great, but you can seem that in the screen shots and videos.


The story is.... okay!
You are introduced to our main hero, he goes to school, some other kids are there, but no adults. They split up to find them, when suddenly monsters attack. Sentient Food tells them they're stuck in delusion full of SIN and only FAITH will get them out.
I do think the final emotional beats fall flat cause we don't spend enough time with these characters to really understand their situations and see how that's effecting them. I think our main character gets it the worst. At least everyone else's damage you get a hint of before the ending where they're confronted by despair.
And it sucks we didn't know Arthur's troubles better before the scene with his mom, cause it's a good scene. I really liked how he answers a funky looking Brazillian payphone with two spaces on either side, and his mom appears on the other, but we don't see her face cause it's covered by the egg dome. It's such good imagery that evoked this feeling that he never really knew her, and this is just his construct.


The game is rough around the edges, but I think this dev is worth keeping an eye on to see what they do next and how they improve their craft.

Played the game twice, not because there was an achievement, but because my first run I found absolutely 0 secrets and walked away with 2/14 achievements.
If that had been the experience alone it would have been a strong recommend as the trippy visuals pair really well with the music.

HOWEVER! With all the secrets it's an even stronger recommend. While finding a lot of them require you to wait for doors to open or click on walls old school FPS style, and that's a little annoying, the sense of discovery and being rewarded with new songs and stunning locations is generally worth the hassle.

And for the rest you can use a guide.

I believe there is a glitch that can see you skip an entire area of the game. When you spawn in, there is another you, and I don't think they're supposed to be there until after you talk to someone inside the building.
I only figured out I missed that whole section cause I decided to play it twice because the game was so short.

My first run was 15-20 minutes, wager that one area would be another 5 mins or so.

While there isn't much here, what is here, the content of this experience, is neat. The dialogue and style doing a lot of the heavy lifting. The gameplay of walking, collecting keys, and shooting things are all serviceable to tell the story, but the philosophic pondering of what makes a man is the good stuff.

I actually haven't played or seen any of the stated inspirations, but after playing this, figure they might be worth checking out.

I wish there was more or the price was lower, but I'm still going to recommend cause this is worth playing through when it hits your price threshold for a 20 minute game, which for me is $2.

The game betrays it's conceit and isn't really about Chess School at all. You have 3 classes where you make an arbitrary choice to get alt dialogue sometimes and then suddenly the game becomes a supernatural death game.
But don't worry, you don't actually have to participate in the game. You're just shuffled from scene to scene by other characters making choices.

You don't really spend any time with any character in a natural way. They all love you on sight and the second they get you alone they exposite their whole lore sheet at you.

The combat starts frustrating and then becomes a tedious chore after you figure it out.

Having to play through the entire game to make a small choice at the end blows.

Biggest positive this game has is pleasant art all around.

I'm going to recommend this, but honestly I feel mixed. There is something cool here that is being bogged down by a lot of rough edges that can hopefully be sanded off. But those edges have left me very unsatisfied for what I paid for.

Price is a tricky beast, but I don't believe there is 6 dollars worth of content here. The game will take about 30 minutes, if you end up closer to 60 it is because of an insane difficulty spike in part 2. And while there is alternate paths to take for replayability, Part 2 is so atrocious that you won't want to explore this world.
Not to mention the confusing marketing of calling this game "Season 1" so you think you're getting the complete season, but then after an unsatisfying ending you read the about section and learn they intend to make future updates paid DLC instead of free.
If they're set on the Life Is Strange episodic model, I think 2$ an episode at this scope would have felt more appropriate. Like LiS episode 1 was so much more substantial and polished for a dollar less at time of release.


But let's get into the actual game.

Part 1 is great. The intro text blurb goes too fast to read, but you get enough to get this jist. (Just pray you're not a streamer trying to read it aloud)
Then there's Intro Cinematic, then you walk in the swamp with the boys while they exposite at you. Before finally meeting up with some monsters you will learn virtually nothing about and getting shot with an arrow and cutting to next scene.
The combat doesn't feel great, but it's serviceable. The major flaw is a lack of feedback. Your gun is quieter than your team mates' guns, and when you hit a monster it's not super clear. Also unclear if head shots are more.

Part 2 starts nice, having a branching dialogue you could retry a few times to get all the outcomes, though I wager there is no way to change fate here. Eventually leading you into the most frustrating part of the game, where you're given 30 bullets to trek across a swam with 20 monsters who each take an average 2 head shots to put down. Here is where you'll learn you can head shot, because if you don't you'll waste about 6 bullets per monster.
Also if the monsters get too close it's an instant game over, so you have to kite them one at a time cause they'll swarm you fast.
Also there are invincible monsters that expel harmful gas, and a giant slug who's mostly chill until suddenly they're not.
One time I got the gas monsters to stop expelling gas, but I have no clue how or why.

I managed to beat that 2nd part after a lot of trial and error, just barely hitting the trigger with no ammo, but it turns out it didn't have to be so hard, cause the crows drop ammo if you shoot them. But I only learned that my 2nd play through when going for all the achievements and one of them is to shoot 25 crows, most of which reside in this part.

Although having more ammo doesn't really make this place easier. It still only takes one slip up and it's an instant game over, try again.


But! you manage to do all that, you go to part 3, which finally allows you to stealth to avoid monsters. And you'll have to cause now you have no weapon. This part is good again because it's not frustrating to play.

Eventually you'll fall into a hole, and then the game ends. It's quite unsatisfying.


So to recap,
Cinematics are great.
Gameplay is serviceable when it's not challenging.
Current monetization model is whack.

Game has a weird bell curve.

First Level is okay, it doesn't do the best job teaching you its mechanics so I spent a lot of the first level grappling with the systems at play and dying a lot. Thankfully the game is very forgiving with death, since speed running is the name of the game. It mostly serves to kill your momentum. Took me 15 minutes even with all my struggling.

Level 2 was amazing. This level asks more of you, but after grappling with the controls last level, they finally click, and there are moments where you're speed running through, blasting enemies with lightning reflexes, seamlessly being guided by the level to keep the momentum. Another 15 minutes to beat.

Level 3 spikes the difficulty to the max, asking you to utilize all the spells unique powers to traverse the levels. Oh you didn't figure out you got special powers by holding the swap button? Well no better time than the present. This wasn't fun, but made sense at least. But then you fall down a hole into the boss room where 3 doors are locked. Spent about 5 minutes circling around trying to figure out what to do before rubbing against the right door caused it to open.

After suffering 3 more challenges and 3 mini bosses, you're funneled back into the center room where allegedly there would be one more boss fight? But it felt like something didn't trigger, or the game wanted me to do something, but I don't know what.

I tried shooting the boss, climbing up onto it, looked around for anything to interact with to make something happen, but the floor is made of acid and all the platforms are tilted causing you to slowly slide off. Eventually I noticed Pestilence honed in on something near the heart, and I presumed that maybe that was the core I was supposed to be shooting, and the game just didn't have good feed back.
After a few minutes of pumping the heart full of bugs, the frame rate tanked until the game became unplayable, cause I wager the bugs don't disappear until their target dies, and the target wouldn't die.
After an hour in level 3, after dying over and over from random hands flattening me, or the acid burning me to death, and the long walk back to the boss fight to feel no closer to an answer, I gave up.

In spite of the bad time level 3 was, level 2 was very fun and, for the price of free, worth checking out if you enjoy speed running movement shooters.