MAAANN what a good ass game.

I really enjoy ‘obscure’ or ‘strange’ RPGMaker games, so when I watched a random YouTube video on it I decided to give it a shot.

After a few hours, I’ve become completely enthralled with this game. All the mechanics, the story, the art, the sound design, etc. all create an incredibly haunting and memorable atmosphere.

The first experience that anyone has with this game borders on traumatic. If you don’t get mauled by dogs outside of the dungeon, you’ll probably have your limbs cut off by a guard, only to realize that this is not a game over as you watch your character get assaulted in a prison cell with most limbs still missing.

Similarly to dark souls, these are formative experiences. They teach you how to go about the combat, how to avoid unnecessary conflict, and eventually, how to go from surviving in the dungeon to thriving in it.

The survival mechanics of the game are punishing, but can be adapted to with some trial and effort. I will say that this is the one part of the game that I don’t necessarily like, but it’s more of a pet peeve. This is definitely a ‘wiki game’ past a certain point. You can assimilate enough information on your own to try and beat the game, but you’ll probably fall short and end up more frustrated than understanding of how you died in various scenarios. While this is part of the games charm, your learning and thus overall experience with this game will be significantly reduced without some outside help at some point.

Though, it honestly adds to this games allure. Playing through this game and using both outside sources and your own experiences to unearth all of the various layers this game has is an incredibly fun and rewarding experience that I haven’t had with a game in a very long time.