Let’s kick off this year’s horror reviews with a classic: D.

When D came to Steam and GOG a few years back, I was intrigued by it because it comes up occasionally when people discuss classic horror games/series.

D originally came out in 1995, so it predates Resident Evil. It’s an adventure game with a big focus on full-motion video (to the point where Wikipedia considers it to be an interactive movie), and the graphics hold up surprisingly well considering how old it is.

You play Laura, a young woman who rushes to the scene upon learning her father has inexplicably gone on a murder spree, and finds herself in a mysterious castle. The game has no save system and a real-time deadline; if you don’t finish within two hours, you’re forced to start over from the beginning.

I’m not a fan of timers in games, but it doesn’t bother me so much when the game is so short – and it did increase the tension in a game that otherwise isn’t very scary.

D is old, and it feels it. Most of the horror moments just fell flat for me. On the other hand, you have to consider it in the context of when it came out, and in that way, I can still appreciate it. Beyond that, it does a decent job of building up its atmosphere, if not in the cutscenes than at least in the mood of the castle itself.

And while exploration is painfully slow (you pick a direction and wait while the character slowly walks forward, because pretty much everything is FMV), the puzzles are still pretty solid. Some of them have aspects that are clearly meant to waste some of your precious two hours, but overall they hold up well.

In short, D isn’t quite a new favorite and it definitely feels dated, but it’s interesting to check out such an old entry in the history of horror games.

A few months ago, I picked up several games in a sale, including The Last Door.

The Last Door is an adventure game split into four episodes. The first episode begins with the main character receiving a strange letter from an old friend and then traveling to his manor, only to learn that things have gone terribly wrong.

From there, the remaining three episodes deal with his attempts to find out what happened and the consequences of his investigation. I don’t want to go into too much detail, because it’s a pretty short game. It took me about 3 hours to finish the entire thing, with roughly 45 minutes per episode.

It’s a point-and-click adventure game, but since it’s divided into episodes, each episode has its own self-contained area and puzzles to solve. Some parts are tricky, but overall it’s not too hard since each episode is so small.

And the story is wonderfully Lovecraftian. The first episode is creepy on its own and really sets the stage for what is to follow, a story of people who delved into a world they should never have touched and now are paying the price as an ancient force stirs.

It also has a great atmosphere, especially due to the soundtrack.

Some of the episodes are better than others, but overall I enjoyed The Last Door a lot. It ends on an ominous cliffhanger (or you could view it as a dark ending with a sequel hook), so I’ll definitely pick up The Last Door: Season 2 to see how the story ends.

And don’t worry – my review of Shadow Hearts is coming soon as promised! In fact, I played The Last Door after realizing I wouldn’t be done with Shadow Hearts in time for today’s post…

In the meantime, don’t forget that you have until the end of this month to get my horror stories The Book at Dernier and It Came Back for $0.99 each, as well as to earn points and win prizes just by posting here on the site!