[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Pestilence through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Release Date: TBD
Systems: Windows, Steam OS
Publisher: Kooky Studios
Developer: Kooky Studios
Time Spent: 33 Minutes
I have some thoughts about the Pestilence Demo, in part from a mechanics standpoint, but also from a story point of view, although the latter could be a moot point depending on the perspective of the playable character in-game once it's released. The puzzles themselves, the setting, the jump scares, and even whatever you call scares that aren't jump scares but still make you not want to enter a room, were still effective.
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I was at first a little confused when the game started. I could hear a clock ticking, but the screen was black. Maybe I made a mistake by increasing the graphics too high from the default low? Was this another situation like Unreachable, where the opening cinematic stuttered so much that I couldn't always tell what was going on, except here I was just looking at a black screen? Once the game started and you walked out into a hallway, I immediately got Silent Hills vibes, which proved true as the door you passed through sent you back to the same hallway, but from the opposite direction. I get the idea of including something like this in your game, especially in the beginning, but for me, it kinda took me out of the experience, wondering if this was just going to be another hallway walking simulator where scary stuff happened around you.
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Thankfully, this was not the case once your playable character blacked out, and then you woke up in a seemingly locked prison cell. So not unlike Amnesia: Justine, kind of. You then were able to explore a large garage structure, solving minor environmental puzzles like turning the power on by reconnecting disconnected wires, filling a generator with gas (after locating a gas tank), and remembering where the breaker box was located. None of the puzzles were overly complex, although I did power my way through one code-based puzzle when I knew three of the four numbers. My biggest gripe with the puzzles overall was that there were some parts that the game wouldn't let me solve out of order. For instance, I came across some wires that were disconnected that were very obviously supposed to be connected, but because I hadn't connected the first set of wires located in another part of the room, I couldn't connect this second/third set first.
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The story, I was a little less on board with. Pretty early on in the game, it felt pretty obvious that the character I was playing was supposed to know the dingy garage with its empty liquor bottles, grungy couch, dirty sleeping bag, and blood-splattered footprints. The voice-over narration that your character would interject with seemed more like the kind of person who would know this place than someone who was kidnapped by the owner of this garage. And the violent and aggressive interrupting voice seemed too similar to the interior monologue to be a coincidence. About three-fifths through the demo, a radio broadcast provided significant exposition, specifically directed at the player character, that cemented the theory that you were playing as someone who suffered from some type of schizophrenia-type disorder who had kidnapped and brutally murdered multiple people over an extended period.
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I thought that I wasn't particularly okay with taking on the role of someone who violently kidnapped, murdered, and mutilated bodies because it was in his nature, but this isn't an entirely foreign concept in narrative storytelling. Games like Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs involve kidnapping and mutilation. In Layers of Fear, the Painter (the player) had previously physically and psychologically tortured his wife over decades while also being abusive towards their daughter. If playing as those disdainful characters didn't bother me, why does this character in Pestilence? The only thing I can initially think of is that, because Pestilence is a contemporary story, maybe even taking place as far back as the mid-late 1990s, based on the computer used, but maybe it's just a really old computer. Maybe if GTA had the option to mutilate bodies in a bathtub after hours of torture, I might be more adverse to the series.
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So this is where I lie with Pestilence. The game ran perfectly fine on the Steam Deck without any modifications or compatibility settings needed. I enjoyed the setting, the puzzles, the scares, but I'm somewhat iffy on playing as this particular character. And I think that's really all I can say. It will be interesting to see where the story goes in the full game and if there's an attempt to make the character either sympathetic or even somewhat redeemable. Or it will just end with cops surrounding the guy's garage and being shot to death while spirits of all of his victims look on as the last drop of blood leaves his body, nodding in approval.
Roll credits.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Lost in the Fire, the Fire of Hate
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