Psychopomp Review: A vision of grimy insanity
(Final review at the bottom)
For the longest Time I had a great name for a horror punk band, that name being Psychopomp, named after the ancient Greek guides to the underworld, The best known being Charon the ferryman who carries souls across the river Styx.
But I discovered last night whilst roaming around the horror section on steam that the name was already being used for a videogame. a horror title by fading club.
Psychopomp intrigued me when I first saw it, the title and the sleeping character evokes a feeling of ominousness for lack of a better word, and it hooked me in and got me to check it out.
I did a bit of digging and found that the game had a new version released called Psychopomp Gold which is packed with more content, and seeing as how it's less than ten dollars I decided to give it a whirl and what I got? was one of the most fascinating horror games I've played in recent memory.
The game revolves around this girl who is named by the community as "Pompi" and she's a probably Schizo who believes that everyone has secret powers they keep secret from her.
(would)
She doesn't like said secrets being kept from her though so in defiance she created a helmet that she named "Machine that lets me read people's minds when I want to" or Psychopomp for short (Somehow...) but rather than making her telepathic the helmet revealed a secret world to her and she is seeking to explore it, specifically the hidden labyrinths beneath every government building.
confused? don't worry it just means you paid attention! Anyway, the game drops you in and it plays almost like a point and click. you can't look around freely, W and S make you move forward and back respectively and A and D rotate you left and right.
you CAN look around freely which lets you get a better look at stuff but I haven't seen a real utility for it, you can also strafe using Q and E.
The games HUD is... THIS, the purple tube is your stamina, The red one is your health, the orb with the face is you, and it changes depending on how low your health gets while the other orb is just a compass.
the point and click options come in with those five options along the bottom.
the Eye lets you examine, the speech bubble lets you talk, the finger lets you touch and pick things up, the hammer you murder with, and the last one brings up your resident evil style inventory with limited space.
As you play, Pompy here has all sorts of nutjob stuff to say, the loading screens show both Game and "Real world" tips, game tips are the standard stuff but real world tips are stuff like this:
What do these mean?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
but even the ACTUAL tips just prove that everything is unreliable, in fact the game straight up tells you that "Some tips are outright lies" SOOOOO don't expect to know anything about anything.
The game has a very claustrophobic and uneasy vibe to it, It's less jumpscarey or heavy handed in it's horror and in my case more so makes me uncomfortable and nervous than actually afraid, the games music is atmospheric and simultaneously calming and unnerving in a way that's difficult to understand without hearing it for yourself.
Without spoiling the ENTIRE game, the gameplay revolves around going to one of the places on the map as shown below:
These locations all have a labyrinth, you walk around in there, kill things, meet some weird NPC's, kill them too if you want, and collect "Things" I don't wanna say what these "Things" are as they're pretty important to the games overall plot but by golly do you collect em!
Of course there are secrets in the game. Each level has hidden areas that reveal these keys
These emerald keys open these doors in your
"home"
(Abandon all hope ye who enter here)
Through these doors? more of that sweet delicious game lore, so I highly recommend you look for em as you play.
the levels are mostly linear but you can explore them as much as you want up to a certain point. (which should become obvious once you reach it.) you can also do the levels in any order you wish. and within each level Pompi here has some words of wisdom for you.
(words to live by)
There are a few enemies through the levels but they aren't THAT much of a threat, to kill most of them you just have to back up and whack em three times or so and they explode.
What really drew me into the game though was the artstyle, it has this delicious grimyness to it that I've hardly seen in any other games. the closest I can compare it to is this obscure game called "Garage bad dream adventure" which I've only seen via youtube but it has a very similar vibe to it, I've also heard a lot of comparisons to Yume-nikki which I can't attest to since I've never played that game for myself and I've seen very little of it.
Perhaps the most alluring game is how many mysteries there are, the story is very confusing to say the least, and leaves you wondering if any of this is real or just what Pompi sees in her fragmented view of reality. And it only gets crazier the deeper in you go.
Plus there's a lot of lore you can straight up either miss or avoid, lots of the games info is hidden in these optional locations called "transient locations"
These bubbles lead to different places with different stuff to see, which I'll keep private to give the readers at home some more incentive to play.
There's also this phone thing here that I still have no clue what its used for.
All in all Psychopomp was a unique, confusing, dark and delectably bizarre dungeon crawl all the way through and for the price? it honestly can't be beat. Take it from someone who usually hates horror games, this one deserves a play.
8/10.
For the longest Time I had a great name for a horror punk band, that name being Psychopomp, named after the ancient Greek guides to the underworld, The best known being Charon the ferryman who carries souls across the river Styx.
But I discovered last night whilst roaming around the horror section on steam that the name was already being used for a videogame. a horror title by fading club.
Psychopomp intrigued me when I first saw it, the title and the sleeping character evokes a feeling of ominousness for lack of a better word, and it hooked me in and got me to check it out.
I did a bit of digging and found that the game had a new version released called Psychopomp Gold which is packed with more content, and seeing as how it's less than ten dollars I decided to give it a whirl and what I got? was one of the most fascinating horror games I've played in recent memory.
The game revolves around this girl who is named by the community as "Pompi" and she's a probably Schizo who believes that everyone has secret powers they keep secret from her.
She doesn't like said secrets being kept from her though so in defiance she created a helmet that she named "Machine that lets me read people's minds when I want to" or Psychopomp for short (Somehow...) but rather than making her telepathic the helmet revealed a secret world to her and she is seeking to explore it, specifically the hidden labyrinths beneath every government building.
confused? don't worry it just means you paid attention! Anyway, the game drops you in and it plays almost like a point and click. you can't look around freely, W and S make you move forward and back respectively and A and D rotate you left and right.
you CAN look around freely which lets you get a better look at stuff but I haven't seen a real utility for it, you can also strafe using Q and E.
The games HUD is... THIS, the purple tube is your stamina, The red one is your health, the orb with the face is you, and it changes depending on how low your health gets while the other orb is just a compass.
the point and click options come in with those five options along the bottom.
the Eye lets you examine, the speech bubble lets you talk, the finger lets you touch and pick things up, the hammer you murder with, and the last one brings up your resident evil style inventory with limited space.
As you play, Pompy here has all sorts of nutjob stuff to say, the loading screens show both Game and "Real world" tips, game tips are the standard stuff but real world tips are stuff like this:
What do these mean?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
but even the ACTUAL tips just prove that everything is unreliable, in fact the game straight up tells you that "Some tips are outright lies" SOOOOO don't expect to know anything about anything.
The game has a very claustrophobic and uneasy vibe to it, It's less jumpscarey or heavy handed in it's horror and in my case more so makes me uncomfortable and nervous than actually afraid, the games music is atmospheric and simultaneously calming and unnerving in a way that's difficult to understand without hearing it for yourself.
Without spoiling the ENTIRE game, the gameplay revolves around going to one of the places on the map as shown below:
These locations all have a labyrinth, you walk around in there, kill things, meet some weird NPC's, kill them too if you want, and collect "Things" I don't wanna say what these "Things" are as they're pretty important to the games overall plot but by golly do you collect em!
Of course there are secrets in the game. Each level has hidden areas that reveal these keys
These emerald keys open these doors in your
"home"
(Abandon all hope ye who enter here)
Through these doors? more of that sweet delicious game lore, so I highly recommend you look for em as you play.
the levels are mostly linear but you can explore them as much as you want up to a certain point. (which should become obvious once you reach it.) you can also do the levels in any order you wish. and within each level Pompi here has some words of wisdom for you.
There are a few enemies through the levels but they aren't THAT much of a threat, to kill most of them you just have to back up and whack em three times or so and they explode.
What really drew me into the game though was the artstyle, it has this delicious grimyness to it that I've hardly seen in any other games. the closest I can compare it to is this obscure game called "Garage bad dream adventure" which I've only seen via youtube but it has a very similar vibe to it, I've also heard a lot of comparisons to Yume-nikki which I can't attest to since I've never played that game for myself and I've seen very little of it.
Perhaps the most alluring game is how many mysteries there are, the story is very confusing to say the least, and leaves you wondering if any of this is real or just what Pompi sees in her fragmented view of reality. And it only gets crazier the deeper in you go.
Plus there's a lot of lore you can straight up either miss or avoid, lots of the games info is hidden in these optional locations called "transient locations"
These bubbles lead to different places with different stuff to see, which I'll keep private to give the readers at home some more incentive to play.
There's also this phone thing here that I still have no clue what its used for.
All in all Psychopomp was a unique, confusing, dark and delectably bizarre dungeon crawl all the way through and for the price? it honestly can't be beat. Take it from someone who usually hates horror games, this one deserves a play.
8/10.
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