The Village Demon

So I've spent some time on this game now, played it for a couple of hours and even played it from the start more than once just to check everything out. And by now I feel I got more than enough under my belt to give this one a review.

Story

So let's start from the, according to me, most important angle: the story. As far as dark stories go, The Village demon (or Mura Oni if you prefer) actually fairs pretty good. Won't go into too much spoilers but the story flows at a pretty good phase and there were only a few moments where I felt that the exposition or story elements were perhaps hammered in a little too hard. I'll also give some credit where credit is due, it deals with some serious topics and for once they are not over exaggerated or simplified. Perfect is not the right word but I want to pat the creator on the back for being able to handle it this well.

As for the writing, I only have one little minor thing to make a remark on. The game's setting is, what I can only conclude, to be somewhere in Japan. That's all fine and dandy with me. But personally, as an authour myself, when you're doing the entire game in English it can feel awkward and clunky to keep honorary titles or just a random word still in Japanese. If the entire game had been in Japanese I would not have looked at this like that but when everything else is in English, I would personally say leave those things out. Also, the fact that the game literally pauses in order to show a screen that "explains" the Japanese word that was used was very cringe worthy. Personal example, but instead of the sister using "Neko" why did she simply not give the nick name of "kitty"?

Characters

Now as for the characters this is one of the few points where it grinds my gears quite a bit. Our main male lead works rather well. You understand his attitude and motivation good enough and even though he could have used a little more fleshing out, I don't consider him a bad lead. However the rest of the characters became sort of a bother to me. Now if I may make speculations here, as I see it there is a lot of inspirations from archetypes of characters from things like anime and manga. And perhaps that floats for some but personally, I at times felt like I was surrounded by people that, had they been real characters or even people, I would have run so far away from them if I were our main character here.

The best friend seems to be a passive aggressive half bully that is gaslighting the main character and more or less having an entire "emotionally abusive but I'm kind to you" relation going on. The older sister seemed kind of... off. Her behaviour came along as quite unsettling rather than charming. And while most of the towns folk were normal there were some that seemed like they were just a bit too happy to spill information to someone they are obviously not too close with. Close knitted community or not.

I will however stress that those are my views of the characters. These archetypes does not work for me but might work for others and therefore I won't count this into the score of the game. My review is from my experience so I included this point none the less.

Maps

Now as for the maps, I am so torn. Because the corridor maps of the first house are beautiful. Not too spacious but they don't really need to be. But then I get into the bedrooms and those maps are just, if you pardon, awful in comparison. What is with the large wall of tiles that engulf the entire room? It doesn't happen in most of the other indoor maps so why is it happening here? It was so confusing but I won't harp down too much on it. Majority of the maps were looking pretty neat but that just made the bad maps stick out like a sour thumb.

As for the forest map. This is not necessarily a case of bad mapping but in combination with the engulfing darkness, this becomes a huge issue. When you can only see one feet in front of your character you constantly run into edges and stuff and in some cases, where you have to run through a map during a chase in complete darkness, this became infuriating.

Game mechanics

Let's talk about the main negative thing I have to say about this game. The chase scenes. These gods forsaken chase scenes. I know that most horror games relay on them quite a deal and believe me I've been around the block with these type of games. But these chases did not work for me. Not at all. Every time they showed up I found myself just pissed off and taken out of the game. The enemy is often way too fast and you are more often than not crammed into a tiny space with shit tons of things blocking your way. If we do the mathematics of probability here: you'll die a ton of times.

Now I don't harp down on that if it feels deserved. If I didn't calculate the way or such. But when I get killed by the dark abomination cousin of the road runner for the 7th time in a row, that's where I draw the line. My tip. If you're going to have chase sequences, make sure there's space to run. You can have obstacles but there's a fine line between a few obstacles and a cluttered mess. And if the chase is going on long, give the player a few save points in between or at least at the start of the chase sequence. That can help ease the frustration.

Conclusion

I have been lifting out some bad points here but I need to stress that this game is actually real good. It was thought out and planned and though the characters didn't go over well with me, it can go over well with others! So if you can, give it a try. It defiantly deserves it!