Reviewer: Daniel “Nightmare-ACTUAL” Patterson Case #000-017 Codename: Cerberus
Now, I don’t know where the hell to start with this one. This is only the beginning of this as the game has not come out, yet. It is a game in its early development stages, checking out the steam page there is no release date posted, yet. The build I could play through Keymailer is their Kickstarter demo. Let’s talk about their Kickstarter campaign of which they were able to fund in 10 hours with a total of 3,017 backers and a grand total of $90,000.
This is impressive work, especially taking into account the length of the campaign Apr 25, 2019 – Jun 4, 2019 (40 days)
Movie Games Lunarium, if you’re familiar with the works of the people that inspired this video game you’re going to be able to spot who they are, the usual suspects for the inspiration of this game are as follows H. R. Giger Swiss painter best known for airbrush images of humans, machines, alien landscapes fused together in a biomechanical curious way. Most notably, though he is the creator of the design work of the movie Alien. Next up is H. P. Lovecraft American writer of horror and strange fiction. Most notably The Call of Cthulhu and last but not least, I don’t fucking know who this guy was but you know, I would not be a good journalist if I did not do the research. (Yeah SCIENCE!) Zdzisław Beksiński I had to copy-paste his name because I would’ve spent probably several minutes back and forth trying to get it right and most likely would’ve gotten it wrong. He is a Polish painter, photographer, and sculptor.
He would describe his work as “baroque” or in a “gothic” manner.
As you play the game, you get to see the inspirations as the story unfolds before your eyes. During the demo, you play as a man named Christopher, but this is not his real name; this is not his real life. Chris breaks away from society and transported into a very spooky Victorian mansion. They gave the name of Christopher to him by his cult. This cult celebrates sex and the occult praising the name of a lust god by the name of Lauv’abrarc, his realm of eternal lust and passion Lhusst’gaa. There are quite a few references to an event that happened in the first entry (Lust for Darkness) that you play Jonathan in search of Amanda your wife. She was taken in by a man named W.D Yelverton into his mansion, a name you’ll recognize if you played the first entry named above.
This is a short demo, as the story in it with Christopher takes a dark turn and the main game will feature the story of Victor Holloway. The event of Lust for Darkness and the Lust from Beyond demo and all connected to the soon to come retail game. More info on that as I get it.
While the game is early in development, the build is obviously not perfect, I understand and appreciate the process development. However I absolutely loved the game, it reminded me of a lot of games like SOMA, Amnesia, Observer, and Layers of Fear. Since the demo was short but short in the sense that it leaves you wanting more. if you speed through it maybe 2 hours or so before you finish it but if you take the time to appreciate the artwork the architecture of the Victorian Mansion, which is stunning and on its own extremely spooky. I had to take a look back to kind of see where the next entry might take us. So I got a chance to play Lust for Darkness. it definitely feels like the same game, so to speak. Though I believe Lust from Beyond to be more polished and some of the aesthetic changed.
You can clearly see the Lovecraftian Beksinski inspiration though not so much Giger but that changes in the sequel Lust From Beyond where the Giger style aesthetics take more control.
As far as recommendations go, I highly recommend this one to anyone interested in psychological horror with occult and sexual themes. This game is definitely not for the faint of heart as there are very mature themes at play, not something common in other psychological horror games of this caliber. I am a huge fan of these types of game and the more twisted they are the better they are for me to enjoy. Because taking steps like this breaks away from the monotony of similar style games playing on the same tropes. So when a company comes along and thinks outside the box but still remains within the parameters of the psychological horror genre.
Nightmare, out.
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