The Devil’s Face is a new horror game drenched in religious symbology and hellish themes that may not be suited to everyone more sensitive to the subject. It’s a first-person stroll to redemption where illogical puzzles, ear-blasting jumpscares, and a cliched narrative collide in the excessively dark and repetitive environments, resulting in a journey with some interesting visual representations but that is over in one hour.

Light in the Darkness

You play as Jonathan, the only survivor of a car crash that took your brother’s life. Crumbling under the weight of guilt, he decided to take his own life as well and is now starting his journey in the afterlife. This translates into a succession of dark rooms and corridors of very small sizes, with candles and the lighter being your best friend, although the view distance still remains a very short one, often bothersome in a possibly intended way.

Navigating the initial corridor brings back fond memories of Konami and Hideo Kojima’s canceled P.T/Silent Hills, with more of this happening later on, as Jonathan again goes through the same places but searching for different goals that allow him to open the door and keep moving.

Many places only push you to move forward, waiting for another abrupt cut to place you in a different environment, no interaction whatsoever. Other times, you have to uncover the necessary triggers to open a specific door, as you search for a key or a series of linear events that often come down to chance and experimentation, not logical thinking or any sort of reasoning over what you should be doing. Puzzles are unfortunately mostly random, deprived of sense, mere luck events as we click on everything and stare at some items hoping to trigger the next set piece, and the Book of Demons doesn’t really provide any valuable clues.

Finding a key in the darkness is cumbersome, especially one that is placed on a wall without anything pointing to its location but by accidental means alone, and lighting up candles is something that can be done so often just to help us see a little better that it’s weird when we are required to do so to make a key appear – such a random and unexpected step that it screams bad design. It’s more of a “do this, find that tiny item in the darkness” kind of game than an actual adventure with puzzles.

Another common resort of low-budget horror games is jumpscares. The amount of sudden flashing images is beyond acceptable, with loud muffled sounds that may be of intentionally bad quality, making them even more insufferable to the ears. Perfect for streamers who live by this kind of tactic to grab viewers with low-attention spans, but for players who want an immersive, enjoyable experience with some depth, this is not the way to go in horror.

One thing that the game somewhat nails down is the imagery and trippy places in this nightmarish afterlife. The graphics look good, although the reuse of assets and locations is exaggerated, and if we look closer we can see that human figures are on the low poly side of things, but neatly disguised most of the time by fire and flames. The excessive use of reflections making some locations appear larger than they are ends up being both deceiving and confusing, and could be toned down a bit. Sometimes, the skewed perspective is disorientating in a good way, enhancing the otherworldly atmosphere.

There Must Be More To Afterlife Than This

The low price is a good thing, but not enough to make up for the obscure puzzles and the single hour of playtime that it takes for you to reach one of the two endings. Jonathan’s constant panting and overuse of flashing images ends up being tiresome as hell, pun intended.

Without being a terrible game, The Devil’s Face doesn’t excel in terms of storytelling or immersion, being more akin to thousands of other horror games that simply throw jumpscares at you every couple of minutes for no good reason. Hold on to dear life as much as you can, because this representation of the afterlife is a flawed and unappealing one.

Pros

• Graphics and atmosphere are occasionally interesting

Cons

• Overuse of jumpscares
• Puzzles are obscure and random for the most part
• An hour or so to complete the adventure

Rating: 4/10