DeathOmen is a new first person psychological horror game by Brazilian indie developer Jeff Winner, and publisher CreativeForge Games. I received a key for the demo, and after a few minutes of playing I was thinking “meh”. But then a slow dread started to sink in, and suddenly something happened that I haven’t experienced in a long time - a jump scare actually caused me to jump! There are some issues here including a shallow story and some uninspired gameplay, but a good horror atmosphere wasn’t one of them.

YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO CAREFUL

The game takes place within a small house. You are the homeowner, and you suffer from some significant mental health issues including depression and agoraphobia which make it impossible for you to go outside. Fortunately you work from home and can get everything you need delivered to your front door.  

You start in a bedroom. It’s the middle of a rainy night and you’ve just woken up. It's hard to see the room around you, but you notice a keypad on the door and a desk with a computer. On it is  a link to a shop and a bunch of video feeds. You’ve apparently equipped the home with a Fort Knox level of security cameras, and these along with the locked door make it clear your fears aren’t limited to the world outside.

The cameras reveal a small, empty feeling home. There are views of hallways, closed doors and a staircase descending into blackness that screams, “I wouldn’t if I were you!”. There’s also  a room with an elderly woman lying on top of a bed. She either has significantly stiff joints or rigor mortis has settled in, it’s hard to tell which. In any case, she has the look of someone whose neck could twist all the way around or who might crawl out of your tv. By the time I was done looking at everything, I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave my bedroom.


 

HAS IT STARTED YET? 
  
When I left the bedroom, I found myself on the second floor along with a pretty disgusting bathroom and a bunch of locked doors. While roaming around, the game informed me that I was hungry so I went exploring downstairs where I found a living room, more doors, and a kitchen. There wasn’t any food here, but I did find a note which gave information about my day to day life. Behind one of the doors is an office. There’s another computer here where I do my work as a remote security guard, monitoring cameras for an unknown business. Looking at the feeds earns money which can be used to order items from the shop on the bedroom computer. 

I was still hungry, so I worked and then went upstairs to order food which was delivered instantly to my front door. At this point I was scratching my head, wondering when the horror or anything else was going to start. Thankfully, a short while later things began happening and the real gameplay loop began. Basically, the game presents you with events. With each, you are given a task and upon completion another event occurs. Some tasks are mundane and specific, for example, the lights go out and you need to head to the basement to check the breaker. Others are more supernatural and require a bit of interpretation. Intermittently you’re rewarded with a door opening, giving you access to a different area of the house.

THE OK STUFF

The gameplay here is somewhat basic. Events occur in a linear fashion, and once they start you simply move from one to the next. You’ll have some things to gather and some puzzles to solve, but these are really no more than looking for codes to open doors. The occasional need for an item triggers the work, order, pickup loop which felt to me like a time filler. You also need to manage your mental health via a sanity meter, but this is easy to deal with. In the end, most of my time was spent on a slow (literally, the game has one really slow movement speed) trudge throughout the house, moving up and down stairs and from room to room.    

Throughout, I kept waiting for the story to kick in. There is a teaser at the beginning - it seems you were woken up from a bad dream about a childhood trauma. You’re given a little more here and there and at the end, but there was no real depth to it and my mind was never sent to any dark places. There are items in the house that may be connected to the protagonist's youth, but these and the supernatural events didn’t appear to have any particular meaning. Even the old lady (turns out she’s your mom) didn’t come across as any kind of evil Mommy Dearest driving your issues. The point here might not be any specific story, but rather how one deals with an altered reality due to illness, medications, isolation or all of them together, but this was not well developed.

The visuals in the game are generally good but there wasn’t anything truly gory or frightening. Mom’s stiff posture was unsettling, but when she actually moved she looked almost silly. I thought the cameras on the office computer had a lot of potential, but there was no bad juju at all going on in that building. On the positive side, every corner of the house looked great and I was completely immersed while walking around. 

THE FANTASTIC

So how did this game get me to jump out of my seat? The scares don’t come with any real threats to worry about, so that’s not it. And there’s no slow, masterful buildup to each of them. Even if there was, when I’m given clues that something bad is about to happen, I’m generally unbothered when it does. I think what works well here is that the game managed to have me on edge the entire time I was playing, priming me for the scares.

The tension started with the slow movement speed. Instead of kicking in just in time to help out the bad thing chasing me, it was constant. I really did not like knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to run if I needed to. The use of light, or rather lack of, also contributed. You’ve got a flashlight if it’s dark, but it provides only a small circle of visibility that doesn’t extend very far. And even when the lights were on, there were shadows everywhere making me worry about what I couldn’t see. 

The most important element here might be the sound design. There was nothing new used, but it all worked effectively when layered on top of everything else. There are static noises and a deep underlying hum, both generating unease. They don’t show up intermittently as a warning, they’re always there, waxing and waning. Your footsteps echo when you walk, emphasizing your isolation. And when you hear them in a dark room, you get the sense of empty space around you harboring who knows what. You’re left feeling vulnerable with no idea which direction an attack will come from.  

 

THE BOTTOM LINE 

Based on this just this short demo (it took me about an hour to complete), I wouldn’t recommend this game if you’re looking for a great horror story, interesting gameplay or challenging puzzles. But I do think there’s an audience for it. Maybe you like to stream and entertain your audience with some high pitched screams. Or maybe you just feel like you’ve been missing a few heart pounding jump scares in your gaming life. If so, DeathOmen might be worth a try.