Review: A Demons Game — Episode 1
A Demon’s Game is a first-person horror game where you are Daniel. A man in hell given a mission by a Demon (presumably Satan) known as “Lucy” to track down and kill some escaped demons in a sort of “game”. The game starts off with a noticeable lack of motion blur, or head bobbing which seems to be a staple in a lot of cheap horror games. The atmosphere isn’t super scary to start out with and sends you on some mundane tasks before fighting the first demon. The game makes good use of sound to cause fear while not containing jump scares. In the sewer, you die after coming in contact with water and as such must start the level over. This is frustrating when you are near the end of a level and find no checkpoints occurred.
The art for the game is okay but I found that the sprites for things like the demons and Lucy to be a bit generic. Later on, in the sewers, you hear radio from a man named Markus who instructs you to go to the exit elevator in the level quickly. He gives you hints to beat the demon and tells you to try to find a man named David.
During this time something became apparent to me, this game is dark. Sometimes it is okay, but when you are just walking around I don’t think it adds much to the experience. The flashlight helps a bit and it certainly has a better cone of vision than most horror game flashlights, but I found the battery to be too short. It would have been better with a longer battery life and fewer battery pickups, so the game becomes more than just a hunt for batteries.
The game uses a lot of text and hints, a lot of these hints are repeated and I believe it could be improved without the hints and letting the player figure things out for themselves. You then encounter Vincent, who presents you with a dilemma that requires a simple solution. The choice making was nice but could have been better executed with improved writing and voice acting. The game is short and would only take a few hours to play from start to finish, which makes it a solid activity for a night out. A Demon’s Game — Episode 1 earns itself a 6.5/10 with a label of “average”.
