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If you wish Ghostwire: Tokyo was an actual horror game, try the demo for ChiyoExorcisimulation
Exorcisimulation
Image credit:SCRYsoft
Image credit:SCRYsoft
[PC/PS] Chiyo Demo Teaser #horrorgaming #indiegameWatch on YouTube
[PC/PS] Chiyo Demo Teaser #horrorgaming #indiegame
One of the early signs a horror game is doing an effective job, for me, is that I start closing all the doors behind me to thwart an ambush or simply, the sight of Something Unpleasant. Or leaving them open, because I don’t want to be faffing around withAmnesia-style object physics when I’m running away. Or standing there in paralysis, unable to decide whether to close or shut the doors and argh argh argh, what’s that banging in the ceiling?
The house itself is appealingly/oppressively wrought, with blood-spattered sliding shoji partitions, ornamental fans, rain battering the slates and candles not-quite-illuminating the ends of corridors. There are journal pages and the like to unearth that hint at tortuous family shenanigans, while also conferring puzzle hints. The intro narration properly hams it up, and the English localisation is a bit scruffy, but it’s nothing deal-breaking.
The early scripted scares are similarly touch and go: at one point, an object fell over dramatically and I was all like ‘what next, Mr Ghost, whispering in the walls?’ (Subsequently, there was whispering in the walls.) But the game’s escape room structure lends it a nice sense of mounting intensity. I had to solve a puzzle that involved placing objects on plinths beneath a picture of a woman with her face averted. I knew full well that solving this puzzle would prompt an escalation of some kind, which didn’t stop me jumping out of my skin when Something Unpleasant buzzed out of the shadows and swallowed my character whole.
Playing Chiyo left me curious about the developer’s previous game Malice, which, it turns out, is the sorry recipient ofan Overwhelmingly Negative user consensus on Steam, at the time of writing. Mind you, it appears that a sizeable portion of that reaction has to do with it being a mandatory co-op game that was/is prone to disconnects - Chiyo is single player only. There’s also a sharp split between the English language reviews, which are Mostly Positive, and the rest.
