Red Candle Games, the team who brought us the incredible Detention are back. This time they are scaring the heck out of us with their 80s inspired horror game, Devotion. If you want a more cerebral horror game, a horror game that will make your blood curl as well as make you jump out of your seat, Devotion is the game for you.
How to Download Devotion
Devotion could be at one time downloaded from Steam but it is no longer available, there. Fortunately, you can still download it from MadDownload. To start, click on the button below the review. If you like atmospheric first-person horror games you should also download and check out Five Nights at Candy’s, Home Sweet Home or Dark Deception.
The Game Review
Devotion is a very, very hard game to talk about. Not because it is a hard game to describe or anything like that. But because it is such an incredible experience that it is one you really have to discover for yourself first hand for it to really knock your socks off and knock your socks off it will.
Devotion is set in the 1980s and in Taiwan. The game has been localized and the translation is great and I had no trouble at all. I do kind of wish that they gave it an English dub though as I feel some good voice acting would have made this even more impressive.
One thing that Red Candle Games have done very well is to make the apartment the game is set in really feel like it is the 80s. Now granted I do not know what an 80s apartment in Taiwan looked like, but I can certainly tell the 80s when I see it. As you are exploring the apartment things start to get really strange and you have an uneasy feeling the whole time.
The story of the game is that there is this family and the father is a writer who did not exactly have things go his way so he turned to…. Let’s just say a higher power to help him look after his family. Little by little the house starts to turn and it makes your skin crawl! You actually experience the apartment at different times in history and it is done just so incredibly well.
You will have some puzzles that you need to solve as you figure out what the heck went on. These can be rather tricky and the game greatly encourages you to explore as much as you can. Take in every note that you can find, look at every picture, listen for every sound and really dig deep to uncover all the secrets.
While this is a game that is set in Taiwan and it does focus on religion and aspects that may not be super familiar to those of us in the West. The story is so well written that you do not feel like you are missing out on anything. I would actually describe the story of the game as a cross of things like The Ring, The Grudge and even a little Silent Hill. The religious overtones are done very well and the ending did take me by surprise.
The whole game is played from the first person perspective and in that regard it gave me a very Outlast and P.T kind of vibe. Devotion does have some great jump scares sprinkled in here and I know some people feel that the story is better than that. I though think that these jump scares worked very well and helped you feel more for the characters as they slip into madness.
