I feel that I am definitely the target audience for this game. I like the 2600 aesthetic in games a lot, as it was my first console, and find it iconic and distinct in its idiosyncrasies. (As an aside, what is it about the nature of old computers that are so haunting and creepy? Is it just me or does a stack of old CRTs resemble a corpse pile or an electronic graveyard?)

This was surprisingly well written really, like this is pretty deep and took some thought and does an unusually good job at exposition in the form of various letters strewn about. This combined with the 8 bit voices, sound and music make this a unique presentation of movie that feels partly like a game, partly like a movie and partly like a book. The art is good as well. The minimalism works really well for this medium too and just makes it feel spooky (Reminded me of some of the backgrounds from Lakeview Cabin Collection Episode 2.) The game is artistic and a really cool idea for a game, but unfortunately there are several flaws:

Due to the retro-nature of the medium... The game is rather flat in span and scope by being railroaded into such limitations resembling that of an older game. (Some games such as Tormenture, went with the root idea here, included the rotoscoped cutscenes but expanded the spectrum of play via meta, puzzles and a variety of more elements within the game, as well as quality of life improvements while retaining the 2600 style) This game does features SOME quality of life improvements but it's sparse (they seem to REALLY be trying to go for authenticity for the most part.) This ultimately results in the game not always being fun to play and a bit sloggy in the later half of the game (lets of repeated failed attempts upon death)

The above results in much of the gameplay to be atrociously painful. Just like in many old titles that hinge upon trial-and-error... You move extremely slow on the screen compared to everything else that may greet you upon it, and your ability to 'target' enemies or objects is severely limited by the controls and makes combat wonky (these seem likely to be self-imposed limitations that mirror a 2600 game... usually enemies were faster than you, and usually you couldn't really lock onto them well)

There are some save points but not enough to bypass lots of do-overs. And a lot of the combat is a bit at length or multi-phased.

Ugh, essentially the game has great elements marred by painful aged-badly components of older generation of games, making it (at least in my opinion) more tedious to play and deliberately harder by design that need actually be. It seems that the designers of subsequent releases (Tormenture) took note of the cool rotoscope videos, and general creep-factor of this kind of medium and improved on the basic formula by modernizing the less accessible bits (That game was still plenty hard! Just not in the ways that this one is!) I hope we see more of these as the medium is excellent for horror, and the abstractness of low-res presentation leaves the imagination a lot of room to fill in gaps with our own personal fear, but i feel that THIS game is actually best experienced as a let's play (I highly recommend a no commentary all endings walkthrough... as well as the video i link to that features analytic commentary... Some of these secret endings are insane!) or to watch someone else play it rather than slog through it yourself. (I managed to poke my way through the first episode, and tackled some of the second episode, but found myself being annoyed with do-overs enough at some point just to take the YouTube route instead for this title)

"You may start noticing shadowy figures in the corners of rooms, or experiencing feelings of lost time while holding sharp objects. Ancient symbols written in blood will materialize on the floor and walls of your home. Animals will no longer trust you. You may emit a foul odor that will cause former loved ones to avoid you. These are just a few of the marvelous blessings that await you in this new stage of life.... Gary Loves You."

Sign me up!

This game is brimming with enthusiasm and sadistic creativity. While the portrayal of the Occult is certainly cartoonish and taking satire with sincerity, it's exceptionally well done. Showing a high degree of knowledge and faith, pun intended, from the creator. I recently watched Long Legs and found it to be pretty hollow in contrast. The Christian Lore it pulls from is exclusively high level and shallow. Things you would learn in bible study in grade school or in pop culture media. Faith pulls on obscure and esoteric elements of Christian belief/mythos adding an arcane depth to the whole narrative and lore.

You see, Satanism does exist as a "church," but what most layman don't seem to realize is that it's basically a troll religion. Most Satanist are actually Atheists who don't actually believe in Satan or God. They instead make fun of Christians by pretending to worship Satan to subvert their entire belief system. When they say "hail Satan," it's actually meant to be a cartoonish joke. What's hilarious about all of that is how often the clear satire is taken as something sincere and disturbing. Thus a lot of portrayals of Satanism draw heavily on a bunch of trolls intentionally fucking with them and trying to make them uncomfortable with a cartoonish joke.

Faith has some elements of this, but elevates everything with it's own lore built upon esoteric Christian teachings. Making it feel authentic even if the cult is far too evil to be believable. Most people who join cults do so because they feel spiritually lost. Cults, particularly in America, are primarily Christian based. I'm not saying they are truly Christian or represent their actual values, but they masquerader as Christian. All the most successful cults in America have done this. Waco, Jim Jones, a certain more contemporary example. The core to a cult being successful is by promising salvation and moral superiority to the victims of the cult. Even the depraved NXIVM constantly preached about being ethical when it clearly wasn't. People always want to view themselves as good, and that's how cults prey on victims. By appealing to that desire to be righteous. While promising immortality and salvation. Nothing about the cult in this game does this remotely if the quote at the top of my review wasn't a clear enough indicator. Gary is gleefully evil and depraved. Which often times results in funny and campy moments throughout the experience. It made the whole thing feel like a very twisted Tales From The Crypt episode which I found very appealing.

Something you may not have thought about is the misogyny that is at the core of Christian beliefs (to be fair this is present in most monotheistic religions. I'm focusing on Christianity for obvious reasons). I mention this because of how the game represents the Unholy Trinity. You see, Christian lore teaches that Women are at the root of the folly of humanity and the genesis of sin and transgression. It was Eve who caused the fall from grace. Not Adam. Resulting in both her and Adam being cast out of Eden. This critical element of the resentment towards women has a large impact on the entire belief system. This is one of the main reasons why women are not allowed to have priesthood power within a church. Only men are seen as worthy enough for the greater communion with the divinity. Some religions try to side step this problem by pointing to women being able to bear children so it's only fair that men get this compromise! What's interesting about this misogyny at the core of the belief system is how it influenced the portrayal of the Unholy Trinity as a Mother and Daughter instead of a Father and Son for the Holy Trinity. Of course you also have the Holy Ghost and the Unholy Ghost but that's amorphous so we will ignore that. I watched a video that was discussing the plot of this game because I didn't feel like playing through it 3-4 times to see all endings. But it says a lot that the content creator mentioned the Unholy Trinity as a lesser form of the Holy Trinity after mentioning the Mother and Daughter rather than the Father and Son... food for thought. I don't think this game is misogynistic. But it will have that element because of how inextricable it is from the Christian lore. Though women are only portrayed as evil or victims that need saving by the male protagonist in this game. There isn't a single powerful good woman in the game. Only powerful evil women. I wish the creator showed a degree of self awareness of this problem with the belief system, but to be fair this game was never trying to be a criticism or deconstruction of Christianity. It's meant to be an example of the power of Faith, pun intended. So the exact opposite of that to be fair. And it does deliver on its goals exceptionally well.

All that baggage out of the way, this game does a tremendous amount with such a rudimentary graphics style and control schema. It's honestly impressive. The entire game is done by moving around and pressing an action button. That's it. Most of the gameplay will effectively be a walking simulator in an 8-bit engine with jarring spikes in difficulty. You see, most of the time you will just slowly walk around and exorcise random objects for notes. There are some enemies, but most are dealt with very quickly by holding out your cross. So not really challenging at all. Yet as the game progresses, difficulty and death becomes a far more prevalent element.

The first boss fight feels unfair because the game doesn't at all prepare you for a giant spike in difficulty. You die in one hit and the boss is aggressive and takes a decent amount of punishment. Once you get over that initial hurdle it stops feeling as unfair. Episode 2 is far more combat focused (still a lot of slowly walking around and exorcising random objects) and after adjusting to the intended difficulty I didn't mind it. Just as a fair warning the first boss will 100% kill you and possibly frustrate you. The game is sorta "balanced" around this by giving you generous checkpoints within the first boss fight. But honestly this is more of a bandaid to the issue. Instead the game should have presented more combat scenarios to teach you the boss mechanics procedurally until the actual boss fight where each mechanic is then stacked on-top of each other. To be fair, this is an extremely low budget game so jank is to be expected. After completing this first episode, the difficulty of the game no longer felt unfair. I just expected it to be brutal lol. What's kind of a shame is the final boss actually gives you multiple lives. You can get knocked down and then you have the chance to crawl to your cross and continue the fight. Why the fuck did they not include this for the first boss fight? This fight where you can get hit really isn't that hard lol Then the final boss is literally a bullet hell and the game gives you 10 hits until you die... so weird to make the end game less punishing than the first hour of the game. But I digress. Jank is expected.

Combat is surprising engaging in spite of being so rudimentary. It never goes beyond moving and pushing/holding the action button. But dying in one hit and needing to constantly move out of the way of monsters barreling towards you always engages you. That said, the game introduces a ton of varied mechanics that amplify the tension and horror of the game. Most revolve around limiting your field of view, but they introduce this mechanic in different ways to make it feel fresh. For example, you first have a flashlight that highlights a narrow cone in front of you. You then face a boss in the darkness that can teleport around. Forcing you to swivel around frantically. Keeping you tense and engaged. Then another, one of my more favorite encounters, involves using a camera. Everytime you push the action button, the room you're in is lit up for about 1 second. Then you need to wait 3-5 seconds before you can push the camera again. It does some very creative scenarios with this mechanic. And certainly elevated the tension in clever ways. Then there's the lantern in the dark woods where you follow bloody runes on the ground while being attacked by monstrosities. This game keeps you on your toes and constantly throws out the rule book to prevent you from getting comfortable.

Then to elevate all of this further is the wonderful art direction and music. Airdorf uses a combination of footage/rotoscoping with 8-bit graphics and it's awesome. Very expressive. And exudes this grunge that fills the entire game with a squalid and oppressive atmosphere. Everything is rotting and morally bankrupt. The limited color pallet also elevates contrast. Most of the time the game will be primarily mono/tri-chrome. Airdorf cleverly uses this to highlight objects of interest. Where he'll suddenly give a certain object multiple colors that really causes it to pop out. This, in my opinion, helps place you in the mind of John Ward. Seeing the world through his perspective. The music itself is a combination of church hymns and classical music all done through an 8-bit sound making it feel cursed and distorted like the game. There's also voice acting that all sounds robotic and distorted which works effectively.

The game is certainly deeply disturbing. For example (read at your own risk): the cultists open up gates to hell by carving out gaping holes in the faces of vessels (mostly women) and shoving babies into the hole. That's why I labeled this game as sadistically creative. There's a lot more but I won't spoil it. That's certainly the most brutal part of the game though. It will certainly linger with you. And while the game firmly plunges into a heart of darkness, it also has lots of silly camp. Including the goofy ending that is a clear reference to Carl Weathers and Schwarzenegger giving each other a firm hand clasp at the start of Predator. I'm not complaining. Predator rules. I choose to accept this as the true ending of the game.

If you couldn't tell I highly recommend this game. It's very unique and artistic. Certainly disturbing but equally creative. It won't be for everyone. If you hate horror you will hate this game 100%. I'll definitely check out more games by Airdorf. While I wouldn't complain about a follow-up to this game, I hope he does something completely different. Mostly because I would be curious where it takes his imagination unhindered.