Tormentum: Dark Sorrow (2015)

Carried heavily by its art, which is often ruined by some strange filter over it that--had it not been made 11 years ago--I would swear indicated it was manipulated by AI as the art is absolutely covered in poorly disguised artifacting, Tormentum is a decent enough, simplistic adventure game with a wholly unsatisfying ending.

Throughout the game you are met with moral choices, however if you get even a single one wrong (and the answers are often quite unclear and biased by the writer deciding 'killing is always wrong even if killing someone evil,' for instance) you get a bad ending and are condemned to hell. The game, despite its 'edgy' aesthetic, is heavily, glaringly, opaquely Christian and preaches in your face constantly, including by berating you about the concept of suicide being cowardly and sinful.

According to the game's ending, I made two 'evil' choices and 8 'good' choices, which meant I was actually evil and deserving of eternal damnation, because apparently I failed the writer's idea of being a Christian, aka, I wasn't hypocritical and pious enough. Quite stupid. Again, this game is heavily carried by its aesthetic; the writing, when present, is poorly localized and of quite poor-quality. Not to mention, again, the very heavy and pervasive religious overtones.

I'm unsure if I will play the creator's next game, maybe at a heavy discount, but I don't presume it will be any more wowing than this one, and I'm not all that fond of being preached at by what accounts to a biker t-shirt designer's rendition of HR Giger.

This is the second game that I replayed because a sequel is supposedly releasing this year (though this one is a lot less likely than True Fear). It’s a good game with extremely impressive artwork… almost unbelievable how refined and detailed it is. But it’s also pretty short, with fairly basic puzzles.

Also think the animations could use work, they feel way more rudimentary and the more difficult to animate sequences were skipped entirely. I understand the art alone must have taken a decade, but I wish it was a bigger team or something to give the game the animation it deserved.

But the gameplay is good enough with standard inventory puzzles along with some mini games (honestly my favorite part). It’s fun and worth playing just for the incredible visuals, but it’s a lot more visually stimulating than anything deeper.