Psycholonials
So the trailers are very honest about the kinds of things this game does that might need content warnings. Guns and blood and mental anguish and stuff. But I also kinda wanna warn people about one other thing this game does because it’s pretty unpleasant. It’s also like my favorite thing this game does so, idk, up to you if you wanna keep reading.
This game fucks with you. The pretentious way to say it would be to call Psycholonials a “challenging piece of art” which I think definitely applies but, you know, jerk off hand motion. I’m not a writer but I’ll try to find better ways to phrase this because… it’s complicated. It keeps doing this thing where it puts you on the defensive by saying something super iffy, but I think after playing the whole thing that I’ve settled on giving Hussie the benefit of the doubt that that’s intentional and making a point. It drops a lot of really big, really red flags but all of them have a more charitable reading that is good actually but requires a lot of unearned good faith reading on your part to see it.
– Real player with 16.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dark Humor Drama Games.
Hi, sit down and bear with me. Keep in mind i have never felt the need to write a negative review to a game in my entire life. I am just sad.
This game is simply awful, just incredibly bad. There is nothing to like about anything except the music and SOME of the art. Jokes are bad, it’s just “2020 haha” moments and it’s boring. Seriously, i would never finish this if i played it alone, it’s not interesting. Bear with me, what is there to like about an edgy mental “celebrity” who destroys an entire country just BECAUSE? What’s to like about dumb conversations and just “oh, society is bad and i have the right to act like this because… i don’t know, i guess i can”. A lot of deaths occur simply because, too.
– Real player with 9.6 hrs in game
LISA: The Painful
LISA is polarizing by design, and simply playing through it’s introduction alone is enough to give you an understanding of why so many people never finish or play it at all. The plot is a pitch black, grim, and hopeless affair filled with only occasional forays into lighthearted and humorous territory. But the catch here is that these moments are designed to make the inevitable fall back down into the blackest pits of human cruelty imaginable even more devastating and impactful. You see, while LISA is a deconstruction of many common JRPG tropes, it’s main deconstruction is that of a trope found in many forms of media, not just video games. That trope is the notion of protagonist centered morality. What this trope means is that in a story, when the protagonist causes innumerable amounts of death and destruction in their quest, they’ll still be a hero and still be loved and praised by the populace, because although they’ve caused all this, their goal is noble so they’re relieved of consequences or responsibility for their actions.
– Real player with 91.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dark Humor RPG Games.
“Oh hello there! My name is Nern. I’m considered the greatest historian of our time… I’ve gathered a wealth of knowledge about Olathe and what happened here. Many tales… Would you like to hear? Hmm… I wish you were more enthusiastic… Oh well, I’ll tell you anyway. Let’s see…. Oh right! It all started with what I like to call, THE FLASH. I was sitting with my wife, god rest her soul, sipping on sweet lemon tea. I believe it was homemade by my sweet wife, God rest her soul. Or wait… Maybe she bought it from the store in a bottle. You know, like a plastic bottle? Well hold on now, that would be ridiculous to buy a bottle of sweet lemon tea, then transfer the contents into a glass. Why not just drink it from the bottle? I guess maybe so she could put ice in the glass? But then again, making tea homemade would be just as time consuming, if not more! That sneaky bitch… Anyway, I’ll save that story for later! So, I’m sitting on my porch drinking sweet lemon tea. From a glass of course, ho ho! When suddenly… A great strangeness fills my body… Something was wrong… I’ve lived many years, and I’ve never felt something like this before. Do you know what it was? Yup! It was my rocking chair! That wooden son of a gun stopped rocking! So I looked down and realized a little rock had gotten caught beneath my chair! A rock under my rocking chair! What a day! I decided it was time for bed, I had had a little bit too much excitement for one day! Hoho! I slid into my jammies, brushed my teeth, and said my prayers. As I was climbing into bed I noticed my wife, God rest her soul, brushing her hair in the bathroom. As I peered across the hall my body swelled up with emotion…
– Real player with 69.6 hrs in game
The Cursed Forest
I originally played this game when it was released and posted my thoughts in a review at Just Adventure. It is still accessible even though the site is dormant. At the time, I gave The Cursed Forest high marks.
I just finished replaying the game and my intention was to run through and pick up the achievements I had missed. Instead, I became totally absorbed and played a ‘new game’ all the way through.
The game begins with you receiving a phone call in the middle of the night and rushing off in your car. You are in a hurry and end up crashing in a mysterious forest. Your task is to find your way out. The Cursed Forest has been created in great detail with cabins, swamps, cliffs, lakes, campfires, caves, etc. There is a lot to explore and you quickly find that no people remain in the forest (only their possessions and homes are evident). The story of what happened to them is discovered in dozens of notes that you find along your journey.
– Real player with 15.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dark Humor Atmospheric Games.
This game has a lot of problems; it is mainly an exploration game, but areas are big and secrets are sparse. Achievements are fine, I didn’t use a walkthrough and found all of them but two on my first playthrough (and the other two I didn’t find accidentally, I almost did). However, if you like exploring, like me, there isn’t enough in this game to keep you invested with exploration, and you’ll end up getting bored. In addition, there is a bug that makes some notes not appear where they should (I’m not even sure why, seems to be a random thing), and you can lose a lot of time searching for them, not realizing it was a bug (if you miss one note on Section 1 and one on Section 4, try restarting the section; also, the last section says there are 9 Sarah letters, but there are only 7, according to developers).
– Real player with 14.2 hrs in game
Bulb Boy
Bulb Boy is a horror/point and click game. Bulb Boy’s house is invaded by a monstrosity corrupting everything. The aim is to save his family while surviving the encounters, which are actually quite dynamic for a point’n’click. It is possible to die, but the checkpoints are very frequent so no real loss or frustration. What I found amazing was the diversity in the scenes and interactions. Everything plays differently, and it is very refreshing. Sadly, this also means that the game is quite short (2-3h).
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
Gameplay
Bulb Boy is a point-and-click adventure game. The gameplay is pretty simple with some twisted puzzles. It reminds me alot of one of my favorite games of all time Machinarium with its dark humor. The puzzles are never too difficult, and it appeals to a more mainstream audience. The game is very short, but a memorable horror game. The darkness has taking over your home and they kidnapped your grandpa. Your job is to fight back and reclaim what is yours. It is heartwarming story.
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
Visceratum
“_That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die._” - H.P. Lovecraft
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A frank, sometimes surreal, other times horrifying story with a good portion of caustic irony and grotesque..
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Simple controls and no “platforming”, pixel-hunting or teeth-grinding puzzles allow you to concentrate on the main thing - the story and your participation in it.
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A unique atmosphere woven from real photographs, bizarre plasticine animation, and enchantingly murky music by Serge Bulat.
Blood. Guts. Our own meat.
Here are the Great Ancients sleeping in each of us.
Should we fear imaginary monsters, or creatures crawling out of the depths of the sea? After all, they are only the wretched of this world.
The unknown and fleshy within us - is the true, underlying horror of which we may not even be aware. A horror about to break free…
Visceratum draws inspiration from the work of those who have been able to look into the abyss of humankind. Let’s honor those names: Lovecraft and Kafka, Beksiński and Giger; Cronenberg, Švankmajer, Lynch. And many other masters of the dark arts gave a bit of their energy to the seed from which Visceratum sprouted. However, the game does not try to parasitize on the greats - by paying tribute to them, it seeks to construct its own reality.
The strange visuals, сrawling at the bottom of the “uncanny valley”, combining serious themes and drama with outright absurdity - create a special surreal atmosphere of Visceratum. Will you dare to step into these dark waters?
Emo Simulator
Emo Simulator
This game gives you an ability to feel yourself an emo. The character’s story is that he is a 19 years old college student who is heavily bullied and not understood by anybody. The game was inspired by Beyond: Two Souls, Life is Strange, and films of Zvyagintsev and Bykov.
We plan to have dialogues, plot, cutscenes and interactive movie style cameras. The plot will have two endings, good and bad.
This is a plot-based game, by subculture developers, for subculture players. By this project we want to tribute to emo culture which we appreciate, we want o create something, relatively relatively (to other emo games) quality about Emo, a one-stop game for all emos, a serious a dramatical game that would become a part of this culture’s legacy.
We want raise important social issues in this game, like an issue of unmotivated agression towards people who are different from main population and what it leads to.
The game does not encourage suicide, just like shooters do not encourage shooting people.
We state it clear: we are against suicide, do not do it.
Features:
- Be an emo
-Play guitar
-Drink energetic in first person view
-Listen to post-hardcore, the game will feature some russian emo bands who decided to contribute to the project
- Atmospheric emo’s room. Posters, guitar, amp, razor, things that describe his personality, like certain poems
-Cut the character (do not do it in real life, if you are suicidal call suicide prevention line)
-Be bullied at college (4K experience)
-Make right choices
-Talk with therapist
-Play in a band
Technical information:
First/Third person view
Good graphics
Emo attributes
Achievements
_Cut_scenes
Plot
Face animations
ZLO
Go in search of the ultimate evil!
Cast out evil spirits with the word of God and the cross.
Prepare for the horror that lurks in this forest and uncover the mystery of the priest protagonist.
Psychological horror inspired by the Silent Hill series and movies like The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project and many others.
Zlo is a story-driven horror adventure game.
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Collect notes;
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Exorcise evil spirits;
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Explore atmospheric locations;
Anna’s Quest
A faithful, old fashioned fairytale, with all its merits and its flaws. An enjoyable game, though some aspects are not on Daedelics usual level.
Anna’s Quest
When her grandfather gets ill, Anna has to find a cure out in the world. She has lived isolated on their farm all of her life, and her grampa always warned her of all the dangers out there. So when she ventures out, she immediately gets captured by an evil witch!
The story is told in six chapters, of which the first is an introduction. Every chapter has a new scene, with many new dangers and characters. We witness Anna to grow in her ability to cope with the world in her own way, and discover her magic power of telekinesis, which she inherited from her grandfather!
– Real player with 25.2 hrs in game
It’s not review-writing time…it’s escaping time!
I adored this game so much…the characters are engaging, the story is enjoyable with light-hearted humour shining through what would normally be seen as very dark and grim plot themes, the art style is very charming and whimsical, and the puzzles are for the most part very intuitive–with a couple of challenging ones included, requiring some out-of-the-box thinking at times.
Pro:
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Wonderful art style and character designs.
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Well-written story, with Grimm-brothers-fairy-tale inspired themes and tropes, but with a modern spin on elements.
– Real player with 23.3 hrs in game
AR-K: The Great Escape
After playing the first 2 episodes I can safely say that this is the best episode so far!!! The developers certainly improved the game quality in both ways: technically and direction-wise. The following points sums up the following:
Pros:
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Gameplay quality much improved from first 2 episodes
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Puzzles more interesting
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Protagonist given more depth in character
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Story development much more natural
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Render quality improved
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This episode is much more bug free than previous 2 episodes
– Real player with 27.8 hrs in game
It’s great when you come to a game and it’s a lot better than you thought it would be. While I enjoyed ar-k 1 and 2 and I do recommend those games to play first, this for me is a lot better - story, graphics, setting. The writing was very good and if you didn’t want to read everything, you didn’t need to click on that character’s bit of conversation but could come back to it if you wanted. I liked the humour, and it was witty in parts. It is the perfect balance of not just a good story which is vital in an adventure game but also good interactive gameplay.
– Real player with 18.4 hrs in game
Misery Street
I’m still not very far into the game, but it’s pretty good.
It runs insanely poorly for how graphically simple it is. I have no idea how a game this simple can run that bad unless it’s doing crypto mining or something.
The PLC-as-currency thing is a little bit “Hey guys, can you tell that I played Lisa?” The EP Snails (is that what they are?) are at least slightly altered while clearly being an Earthbound reference.
The “maybe I should get a job” dialogue with the Hobo Grey kind of irks me. Even if it wasn’t a cliche joke that makes no sense in the setting (he’s in a tiny farming village plagued with both a serial killer and a continuous undead infestation in the fields), it would still be a crass misrepresentation of homelessness fit for the scribblings of an elementary schooler.
– Real player with 19.1 hrs in game