A week ago, we talked about the indie horror game FAITH, and now it’s time to discuss its sequel.

FAITH: Chapter II is not free but can be bought for a minimum of $1.00, and it improves on its predecessor in many ways.

You still walk around and lift your cross to exorcise items and/or demons, but it didn’t have any point where I felt like I was wandering aimlessly in search of random objects to exorcise. It’s a more focused experience, more like the second half of the first game.

Set after the events of the first game, although I’m not entirely sure which ending(s) it considers canon, FAITH: Chapter II has you once again investigating demonic activity. Instead of dealing with a single house and the woods around it, it features more locations and events – such as notes left behind by paranormal investigators in a seemingly-haunted church.

I was more interested in the story this time around, and I started trying to piece together events to try to figure out where the story is going next.

It also was much creepier. The creepiness of the first game didn’t really hit me until later on, but the sequel has some great horror moments that are executed in a fantastic way.

There are multiple endings again, but this time it’s not quite as straightforward. The two main endings are easy enough to get, but there’s also a third secret ending that makes you work for it a bit more.

And while there’s still some degree of ambiguity, I feel like FAITH: Chapter II comes down a bit more strongly on the “yes, there is definitely something supernatural going on” side of things.

The only thing I dislike about the game is that you have to fight enemies, but you die in a single hit. When a single mistake in a battle means you have to start the battle over (and not all of them auto-save right before the battle), it starts to feel tedious after a while.

Anyway, there’s a third FAITH game currently in development, and since FAITH: Chapter II left me interested in the story, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the third entry and how it improves upon this one.

A friend recently recommended that I check out the FAITH series of horror games, so when Ocober arrived, I went to itch.io and picked up FAITH.

(It’s available for free, but paying at least $1.00 like I did gets you the Deluxe version that comes with some bonuses.)

FAITH has simple, retro-style pixel graphics and pretty simple gameplay.

Set in the 1980s, you play a priest who participated in an exorcism that went badly a year earlier and now returns to the house in search of answers and closure.

There are two controls: you can walk, and you can raise your cross to exorcise things. The start of the game didn’t impress me too much. You’re walking through the woods leading to the house, and you can exorcise objects in the environment to get notes that flesh out the story a bit.

Once you get to the house, you’re still collecting notes, but you also begin to have more direct confrontations with the demon plaguing it, which adds more tension.

It took me a little over an hour to finish. There are multiple endings, but it comes down to a fairly straightforward choice at the end. Some of the endings imply different things about what happened during the game, adding to the ambiguity already present because of the premise.

Anyway, I walked away from the game thinking it was a bit creepy but nothing special, but the ambiguous story details ended up lingering in the back of my mind longer than I expected, keeping me up as I tried to sleep. It left me interested enough to try the sequel, so we might be discussing that this October as well!

In the meantime, if you’re interested in a short, minimalist horror game, FAITH is available on itch.io.