Mad Father (2016)

Mad Father is a simple horror-themed RPG Maker game. I saw that it had positive reviews on Steam and I thought it looked kind of interesting. There are probably thousands of RPG Maker games on Steam and they are universally terrible; the only good one I've played is the free game Space Funeral. So I was surprised to find myself quite enjoying this one.

Mad Father doesn't have the traditional elements of most RPG Maker games. It doesn't have turn-based combat or an overworld map. It's more like a 2D top-down Amnesia: The Dark Descent but set in a spooky mansion. The game consists of mainly inventory puzzles and occasional steal/QTE sections, a rather unique adaptation of the RPG Maker engine.

You play a little girl who lives in this giant mansion with her father. As it turns out, her father is a homocidal maniac who hangs out in the basement/dungeon killing and torturing people, and the story explores what it's like to be his daughter in this situation, and what is more important: her love for her father, or the sympathy for his victims. The game kicks into gear when strange events start happening in the mansion: apparently the hundreds of dead people hit a spiritual limit, at which point ghosts, ghouls, zombies and other spooky things have appeared in the mansion to seek their revenge on the father.

When you star the game you're restricted to a limited portion of the mansion, but as you solve puzzles you find keys and secret doors and slowly unlock more and more areas, and this leads to larger puzzles and as the mansion's depths are revealed the story also presents twists, turns and surprises. The stealth/QTE sections are well done; they're used very sparingly so it doesn't get irritating. Most of the game is just exploration and puzzles. Everything in the mansion can be examined and there are books, notes and journals which you can read to gain more insight into the story. There are long scripted story sections and events, as well as long portions of dialogue during which nice hand-drawn character portraits are shown.

My first qualm with this game is sound: the sounds used in the game are mostly low-quality stock noises and none of the dialogue is voiced. There is spooky music in the background but it is extremely quiet and cannot be heard in comparison to sound events. If you turn up the volume then you'll be deafened by footsteps, screams and other sounds. Unfortunately there are no options to adjust sound levels. Speaking of screams, jump scares are used too frequently in this game and that became rather tiresome. Though more often creepy set pieces, notes or scripted events were used cleverly to produce a spine-tingling sensation without the need for cheap tactics. My only other complaint is the story, which felt very predictable and silly at times, frequently falling on cringe-inducing sepia-toned flashback scenes and some overused haunted house stereotypes and pixellated gore. Though the game doesn't take itself too seriously and these moments were a guilty pleasure, often darkly humorous or campy.

This game is an odd mixture, and I wouldn't recommend it too everyone, but I really enjoyed it, and it shows that some RPG Maker games are excellent. The puzzles are superb, really well-designed head-scratchers and the over-the-top horroratmosphere was delightful.