Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Celebrating All Things Spooky: ITYH: A Horror Otome

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 172022
 

Today we’re talking about an otome, but don’t worry, I haven’t gotten the month wrong.

ITYH: A Horror Otome is a creepy, unsettling visual novel that involves both horror and romance.

It follows Camille, a teenage girl intent on finding love, who sets her sights on the mysterious loner Osgoode. Despite him coldly rebuffing her at every turn, she persists in her attempts to get him to notice her.

And then things go terribly, terribly wrong.

ITYH is set in modern times but has a gothic horror feel throughout. It’s a wonderfully disturbing read with a growing romantic progression that often had me thinking it was sweet despite being uncomfortable at the same time. Both main characters feel flawed and realistic, and the unsettling atmosphere always had me on edge.

Click for implied ITYH spoilers
It’s wonderful at creating sympathy for a monster without losing the sense that he is a monster and maybe you shouldn’t feel too much sympathy.

There is one main ending, with early bad endings you can get along the way. Additionally, completing the main ending unlocks one more ending that branches off early on.

That ending and part of the main ending leave some details unexplained, but it seems these come from a cut route the developer plans to use for another story, so that should be interesting to see.

I know I haven’t gone into a lot of detail here, but that’s because ITYH is fairly short and a lot of impact comes from the surprise and anticipation of what might happen next. It should take a couple of hours to finish, depending on how fast you read.

So if you like horror and dark romance stories, ITYH: A Horror Otome is definitely one you should consider.

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Alone in the Dark

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 142022
 

Following the Alone in the Dark reimagining announcement earlier this year, Steam had a fantastic sale on the earlier Alone in the Dark games, so I picked up the bundle (four games for $1.49) and decided to play the original Alone in the Dark this October.

Alone in the Dark is one of the earliest survival horror games – possibly the earliest.

So as a game released in 1992, it feels… old. I got used to the tank controls quickly enough, but I had a hard time adjusting to double tapping up to run. Actions are also a bit clunky, as there is only one key for actions, so you have to open the menu each time to choose which action you want to perform (ex. search, fight, push).

I never quite got the hang of combat, but that’s not too bad, because combat is fairly de-emphasized. In fact, monster encounters felt like puzzles more often than not, as many have a trick so that you can avoid fighting.

You play either Edward Carnby or Emily Hartwood investigating the strange mansion called Derceto after the suicide of its owner Jeremy Hartwood. I played as Emily, a decision motivated by not realizing I was on a character select screen when I started the game. It doesn’t matter much.

Exploration and puzzle-solving are central to the experience, in true survival horror fashion. So if you like that sort of gameplay loop of backtracking to solve puzzles to unlock more areas, that aspect of Alone in the Dark still holds up.

Saving often is important, since you can die easily, but you can save whenever you want. You also have limited inventory space (determined by item weight) and no storage box, so I got used to dropping used items everywhere.

There are plenty of notes and books throughout the mansion that shed light on the story. I’d somehow forgotten in the time since the reboot’s announcement that Alone in the Dark is Lovecraftian, so it was a pleasant surprise when the game started dropping names from Lovecraft. These documents you can read are also fully voiced, which was entertaining.

Alone in the Dark only takes a few hours to beat, and it definitely shows its age, but it was fun to see such an early example of survival horror.

Speaking of which, don’t forget you can win survival horror games and other great prizes in this year’s contest just by sharing your thoughts on games like Alone in the Dark! Check out the contest rules for more information.

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Spirit Hunter: NG

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 122022
 

Two years ago, our Celebrating All Things Spooky celebration concluded with a look at Death Mark, the first entry in the Spirit Hunter series.

Today, it’s finally time to talk about the sequel, Spirit Hunter: NG.

NG largely stands on its own. It occasionally references Death Mark, but you’d be just fine playing it first.

Like its predecessor, it blends visual novel and adventure game elements. Death Mark had a strangely Ace Attorney-esque feeling to it for me, but NG does not. While it’s still split into chapters focusing on investigations into different spirits, it felt more to me like one continuous story.

Part of this comes from how partners are handled. Instead of always introducing new characters with each case, your partner characters feel more like they’re part of the overarching story. You’re able to switch which partner you’re investigating with and often need to do so in order to proceed. The game even alerts you if you’ve reached a dead end with your current partner.

The only thing I disliked about this is that the dialogue doesn’t change if the current partner has been with you for the whole investigation or if you switched; they’ll talk as if they were there the whole time. Since you can switch fairly freely, though, trying to account for every situation would probably be too complicated.

Confrontations with the spirits have also changed. Instead of using items in a battle with the ghost, you’re put into a critical situation where you must pick the right answer from a list or use the correct item to interact with the ghost or the environment.

On one hand, this new confrontation system makes the solutions a bit easier to figure out, but on the other hand, a wrong choice results in a game over. It lets you retry from the start of the confrontation, though, so you never lose too much progress.

In general, NG felt more straightforward than Death Mark. You still need to investigate for clues and solve occasional puzzles, but the emphasis is more on the story.

Fortunately, the story is very good. It’s a dark, creepy story that progresses nicely as you investigate each spirit. There were some pretty twisted moments, although only a couple of the new spirit stories were as dark as those in Death Mark. On a similar note, NG is not very scary. When the game begins, you set the level of scares, which basically means whether or not random spirits will appear in the environment while you’re investigating. Even on “Scary Mode,” though, these aren’t too frequent. Only a handful of moments in NG actually made me jump. But even though I found it more creepy than scary, I enjoyed the story a lot.

I pursued the good ending, but I made multiple saves in case I want to replay for the other endings someday. Spirit Hunter: NG is a great game, and I’m even more excited now for the third Spirit Hunter game (aka Shibito Magire), confusingly titled Death Mark II for the west.

Aksys announced an All Aksys Online Event for October 20 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET, so maybe we’ll get a Death Mark II release date there!

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