Yuppie Psycho Review
Yuppie Psycho is made by the same team behind The Count Lucanor and built on the same engine. In many ways, it is a spiritual successor that takes a lot of elements from that game and expands it into a game that is over twice the size. For all its similarities, though, it has a very different identity.
You play as Brian Pasternak, who is a class G citizen in an implied dystopian near-future society which is not explored in much detail. He gets a mysterious letter which tells him he has a job at Sintracorp, one of the world’s most powerful corporations, which he did not apply for. He arrives at Sintracorp to discover his new job is not a regular office job but he has in fact, been recruited as a Witch Hunter, tasked with hunting down a witch who is manipulating everyone in the building since the 80s.
The game has a lot of thematic overlap with The Count Lucanor. Both Brian and Hans are lower class people who have been lured and trapped in a cursed building with the promise of being raised to the top of the hierarchy. Whilst not initially present, the themes of a family curse and inheritance are also present, taking the cyberpunk idea of mega corporations replacing dynasties and running with it. It plays out differently and is part of a twist near the end of the game, but here it feels a bit half baked and rushed. Yuppie Psycho spends significantly more time focused on character interaction, so when it is possible to miss the main exposition cut scene about the Sintra family and the ending rushes through the explanation, it sticks out like a sore thumb. The Count Lucanor is a simpler but more effective exploration of these themes because it had tighter focus and could get away with having quick but effective exposition dumps due to the game’s tone.
On the other hand, the general atmosphere of Yuppie Psycho is far more intriguing and is pretty much a modern re-imagining of the Dario Argento movie Suspiria. For those who do not know, Suspiria is a film about a girl who is invited to join a dance academy that is secretly run by a witch. Just like the Sintracorp building, the witch is able to mentally control the people within it, making them ignore the horribly wrong things going on in the school — with the exception of the protagonist, who must find and kill the witch in order to escape. They both also feature a secondary antagonist, who is too attached to the world created within the Witch’s domain to comprehend leaving it, and is instead working with the witch in exchange for a high position within it.
Relocating events to an office building however is an inspired move. There is clearly potential for social commentary about how people overlook the wrongdoings within institutions and how the culture within them can decay and become toxic environments that people can not leave in Suspiria, but the setting of a 1977 Berlin all girls dance academy may as well be the moon. It may create some interesting visuals combined with the cinematography, but it is also not an environment most people are going to relate to, so they are probably going to miss any social commentary that was intended. Landing a big corporate job that winds up too good to be true, though, is a much more relatable experience.
Gameplay wise, the game is similar to The Count Lucanor, but has been expanded. Brian can run now, which is great, and the tighter level design means that there is less downtime. Brian has access to multiple sources of light. Candles now take the form of glow sticks and you now have access to a torch and an electric lantern. You can switch between them like you would swap between items in The Count Lucanor. Items need to be used from the inventory screen, which seems like it would be annoying at first, but there are a lot more situations where you will need to use items whilst being chased by enemies where you would not want to have to cycle through your items anyway, and being able to quickly change your light source is more important. Placing glow sticks is a slower process than before due to needing to hold the action button down for a period of time. Generally I found placing glow sticks was only really necessary for marking things that needed to interacted with during a boss sequence. While the torch and the lantern use batteries, they aren’t too hard to come by. I finished the game with quite a few to spare, as I only really used them when appropriate.
The most significant change is the level design. The game has a more traditional survival horror level design, and I think it’s generally stronger for it. There is a healthy mix of puzzle solving and using stealth to get around enemies. The game introduces its mechanics slowly, with the first third of the game being focused on puzzles with stealth, and the second third introducing the torch. The game has several boss encounters that The Count Lucanor was missing. Where The Count Lucanor presented two contrasting tones simultaneously, Yuppie Psycho alternates between horror and comedy knocking you off your guard and making them both more effective in spite of both elements being less extreme. It is also twice as big, which is good for the most part, but some sequences can drag, in contrast to The Count Lucanor’s shorter length and tighter story structure.
While the game has a different aesthetic, it is still done in the same art style — which I like, but also limits how horrifying the game can potentially be. This time, we have newly composed tracks from the same composer responsible for the Va-11 Hall-A soundtrack. There is some more of what you would expect, along with a lot more atmospheric music. It is fairly solid with a few tracks I would listen to outside of the game.
For the most part, Yuppie Psycho is the bigger, better and more polished followup to The Count Lucanor. I really enjoyed the themes and the execution of the game’s setting, but I found the backstory to be a bit underwhelming for all of the buildup it received. It is still strongly recommended from me and filled my desire for more after finishing The Count Lucanor. But now that I have had my fill, I am a little worried that Baroque Decay’s next game, Survival Horror Story: Catequesis, is going to feel a bit too similar to what has come before.
