Sights & Sounds Welcome to hell [*] Ever wonder what hell is like? Kind of a loaded question, I know; any answer is going to be weighed down by host of cultural and religious baggage. Maybe you don't even think it's real. But for a moment, suppose that it is [*] What's it like? Are there twisted figures scattered around you? Horrors your mind can't comprehend? Monoliths and altars to demons whose names were forgotten before life crawled from the ocean? As you bear the weight of your sins to their final judgement, do you feel the fiery vengeance of an angry god, or the impossible chill of the absence of his presence? [*] More importantly, would it make for a good video game setting? [*] Tormentum: Dark Sorrow seeks to answer that question. Sure, there's characters and a plot and even some puzzles, but the most interesting thing about this game is in how it depicts hell [*] If you're going to draw influences from 20th century horror art, you could make far worse choices than the twisted, erotic, alien machinery of H.R. Giger and the monolithic, writhing, hopeless settings and characters of Zdzisław Beksiński [*] Given the unrelentingly gloomy setting, the variety in the soundtrack was surprising. I completely expected the rest of the tracks to follow suit from the austere ambient grinding with tortured organ and strings. To be clear, there's still plenty of that, but you'll occasionally be hit with some pretty-sounding piano or folksy acoustic guitar to break the monotony [*] I'm not opposed to having an original song with lyrics in the credits, but it feels like a lot of games have a hard time pulling it off well. Tormentum: Dark Sorrow is no exception. This is a slight spoiler, but the good and bad endings have different tracks. Cool idea, but the metal song was a little cheesy compared to the more subdued pop/rock one [*] Kind of a shame, too. It sounded like it was going to launch into a speedy, double kick, growled vocal tech death track, but petered out into a more traditional heavy metal sound. There's no voice acting, so I'd recommend just putting on something evil, blasphemous, and orchestral like if you really wanna get in the spirit. Maybe Septicflesh? Story & Vibes A path to perdition [*] With all the gloomy visuals, the dreary story is expected [*] I'll avoid spoilers, of course, but the game opens with your hooded protagonist being airlifted via grimy dirigible to a daunting, twisted prison fortress. You don't know why or for what reason, but the initial impression is that this is going to be a bit of an inconvenience [*] You only know that your primary goal is to escape. Thankfully, beyond the cell you're initially confined to, security at this prison seems pretty lax. You'll puzzle your way through all horrible corridors of torture until you manage to sneak out the back [*] Your journey isn't over, however. You still need to figure out how to get home, or at least to a place of relative shelter to figure out what comes next. You'll travel the war-torn lands of hell in search of respite [*] Eventually, you reach the end of the game and figure out what the whole journey you went on was for, including some backstory on the protagonists origins [*] It's a fairly run-of-the-mill plot as far as narratives go, even with the backstory drop at the tail end. Not bad but also not very interesting [*] Vibe-wise, what you see is what you get. This is a game for thinking and reflection; "joy" doesn't really enter the equation at any point, so don't go in expecting any humor or lightheartedness. Tormentum , as its name implies, is unilaterally somber Playability & Replayability Torturous puzzles [*] Have you played a point-and-click title before? Good! There's nothing new for me to tell you about the Tormentum 's gameplay. If you haven't delved into this genre before, I don't know that this is where I'd jump in. Try out a couple Lucas Arts games from the 90s and maybe circle back to this one later [*] The puzzles here are very hit-or-miss. The best ones feel very "in-universe". For example, in the prison, there's one puzzle involving repairing and properly positioning a statue to open a door forward that was pretty satisfying. I enjoyed how I had to seek out the proper elements and manipulate a set piece in order to progress [*] Most of the other puzzles are less engaging. Sliding puzzles? Pipe puzzles? Memory matching? These sorts of tasks feel very out of place and extremely generic. The timed memory matching task in particular felt egregiously lazy [*] What's worse is that the bad puzzles far outnumber the good ones. I would have rather endured any number of the unintuitive item combining or bizarre sequence puzzles the genre is usually known for. It certainly would have been better than looking at a screen and frowning because a demon architect decide to lock a door with a sliding puzzle [*] There is a lightweight moral choice mechanic that is surprisingly unforgiving. Being an asshole even once will lock you out of the good ending. None of the choices are morally ambiguous. This makes seeing both endings very straightforward, but I would have enjoyed an opportunity to weigh pros and cons. It's pretty easy to parse which choice is which between "behave like a reasonable human" and "be a literal murderer" [*] Seeing both endings requires two separate playthroughs. Would have preferred a save file system to make seeing both a little easier, but oh well. I just blasted through dialogue to see everything on my way to the "bad" ending. Probably won't be back for a playthrough after getting all the achievements Overall Impressions & Performance Not quite there [*] Not sure where my love of creepy art began. It may have started when I was a kid and saw a picture of Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights in a book. I couldn't take my eyes of the right panel of that triptych. No matter how long you spend peering into his imaginative little slice of hell, you keep seeing new disturbing little details [*] Naturally, then, what followed was a youth full of hiding horror movies and metal music from my parents. I certainly became familiar with the works of both Giger and Beksiński as a teen as well. If I could afford their art, I'd buy some, but for now, I'll treasure the Paul Romano and John Dyer Baizley pieces I've assembled [*] I won't claim objectivity in my reviews, but I will try to avoid "tilting" my rating. I love the art in this game and believe it deserves praise for it, but I can't totally ignore the fact that 75% of the puzzles are generic and the story is merely okay [*] If anything, the game shows too much restraint. By being gloomy but not frightening or disturbing, Tormentum feels like it's missing some spice. At the end, you get the feeling that you spent the whole game looking over a cliff, but realize that you never took a dive. I wouldn't call the tone "boring", but it's looking in that direction [*] Like most point-and-clicks, this one works well with the Steam Deck's trackpads, but playing at your PC with a mouse will be more comfortable Final Verdict 5.5 /10. Biases aside, the experience is surprisingly tame. I would have liked a little more horror in the story, some more darkness in the themes, and some more obscurity in the puzzles. It's a shame that we may never see the sequel. I would like to see how the devs could have learned from making this game and iterated the formula into something more impactful
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