Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Resolving the Sinister Mysteries of The Last Door With Season 2

 Reviews, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Nov 042019
 

Celebrating All Things Spooky 2019 is now over, and we had three winners this year: Moombit in first place with 28 points, Ellie in second place with 20 points, and Ludwig in third place with 10 points.

The winners have received their prizes, aside from the one who picked the game review. That will be coming up soon!

But although October is over, we aren’t quite done with horror yet.

When I reviewed The Last Door, I mentioned my interest in playing the sequel to see the rest of the story.

Well, I recently picked up Xbox GamePass for PC to play The Outer Worlds, and what else happens to be included with GamePass but The Last Door: Season 2!

The Last Door ended with the protagonist’s psychiatrist, Dr. Wakefield, setting out in search of him. Season 2 follows Wakefield as his attempts to learn what happened to his patient draw him into the same growing darkness the first season established so well.

It feels a lot like its predecessor, being a wonderfully atmospheric and Lovecraftian point-and-click adventure game with pixel art graphics and an orchestral soundtrack, once again split across four episodes.

The episodes are a bit longer this time around, although it’s still a fairly short game. Each episode also features multiple locations this time, but they still feel self-contained. The puzzles are a little trickier and sometimes a bit more obscure, but it’s worth getting through them for the story.

While the first game largely set up the mystery, the sequel brings answers (while leaving some things ambiguous). This gives it a different tone, but it still feels horrific and entrenched in the darkness and madness its predecessor set up. I could see them eventually returning with a Season 3 set in the same universe, but as it stands now, Season 2 wraps up the story with a satisfying resolution that brings things to a close while holding true to its atmosphere and style.

I’m happy I played both The Last Door and The Last Door: Season 2. Interestingly, the developers went on to make a game that looks completely different, so maybe someday I’ll try that.

But if you’re in the mood for a short bit of cosmic horror, check out The Last Door and its sequel!

Announcing Horror Visual Novel “Not It”

 My Games, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 312019
 

What’s this, two posts in the same day?

That’s right, because I have a special announcement this Halloween!

This year, I worked with a team from Party Tales participating in the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam, which challenged people to create a horror or otherwise spooky visual novel during the month of October.

Now, the visual novel we made for the event is available from itch.io: Not It.

Not It is a choice-driven horror visual novel about a town plagued by a curse every Halloween… and the group of people who end up trapped at the inn on Halloween night.

I was the writer for Not It, so if you check it out, be sure to let me know what you think!

Happy Halloween!

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Shadow Hearts

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 312019
 

Happy Halloween!

For my longer horror game this year, I held a poll on social media to pick a game, and readers chose Shadow Hearts!

Shadow Hearts is one of those games I’d wanted to play for a long time and finally got a copy this year. It’s a turn-based JRPG set in 1913, where a young man named Yuri who can transform into monsters rescues a young woman named Alice, who is being hunted by a warlock for unknown reasons.

It has a very Gothic horror tone, with curses, vampires, demons, and similar supernatural phenomena. Without spoiling it, the story was exactly the sort of thing I love.

Click for Shadow Hearts spoilers
By the time the plot brought in the Inquisition, which secretly still existed, I was starting to feel like this story was tailor-made for me, and that was before it took a decidedly Lovecraftian turn near the end.

It’s also a spin-off/sequel to Koudelka, another game I’d like to play someday. I expected its links to Koudelka to be just a few minor references, but the connections are more important than that. Several moments left me wanting to check out Koudelka, although Shadow Hearts still stands on its own perfectly well.

I generally liked all of the main characters, even though by the end I settled in on a single group I preferred to use in battle, and the villain wasn’t as one-dimensional as he first appeared. Overall, it has a pretty good cast.

While it’s a turn-based RPG, the combat system has a twist due to the “Judgment Ring.” The Judgment Ring system requires you to hit certain indicators on a ring when it’s your turn, not just to make your attack more powerful, but to attack at all. This adds additional tension (should you try for the more powerful attack and risk missing entirely?) and makes the combat feel unique even when compared to similar systems.

Now, I messed a few things up and missed some stuff that would have made my life a lot easier. I intended to have this blog post up yesterday, except I didn’t successfully beat the final boss until about 10 minutes ago!

Since I enjoyed Shadow Hearts so much, however, maybe someday I’ll start a new game and this time take care to avoid those mistakes – and also get the good ending, since Shadow Hearts has two endings.

Shadow Hearts is an excellent horror JRPG, and I’m so happy I finally got a chance to play it. I’ll be looking forward to play its sequel sometime in the future… maybe next October?

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