Update #4

Claire really nails the suspenseful atmosphere without relying on darkness or jump scares. Instead, it combines detailed lighting and unsettling imagery to great effect. The story’s vague but interesting enough, with cutscenes and scattered notes hinting at Claire’s past. I liked the pacing and thought there was a good mix of gameplay and story content.

Other than that, I don’t have many positives to mention. Navigation was a persistent problem. The map, displayed in an overhead perspective, doesn’t quite match up to the sidescrolling scenes. It’s easy to get disoriented, even without taking into account the enemies that roam the halls and will gladly chase Claire through multiple rooms. These enemies were the low point of the game for me. They’re more annoying than scary, but do a considerable amount of damage and tend to camp certain areas. I ended up ignoring several optional objectives after getting tired of running back and forth past the same monsters. Random menu bugs and a pointless sanity system added to the inconvenience.

I loved the art style and animations, but the gameplay eventually became tedious. The mechanics are fairly simple, which is fine, but they’re not used in an interesting way. Most of the platforming involves changing to the right season when you encounter a particular obstacle eg. winter freezes lakes. At first it’s a bit more complex than that, because the game takes place in a fantasy universe where the flora and fauna respond in unexpected ways. I had fun in the beginning interacting with these objects and discovering their capabilities.

Once the game enters its last two thirds, it becomes all about backtracking through the same four zones. Sure, new paths open up through these zones, but there aren’t many new ways to interact with the environment. The game quickly became repetitive and I didn’t feel that its other elements made up for the simple platforming. I found the puzzles pretty basic, and the story a bit too vague to instill any feeling of emotional investment.

An on-rails dungeon crawler in which all your skills, equipment and items take the form of collectible cards. I had some reservations about picking this game up because it seemed a bit too simplistic. I did end up enjoying it, but its stripped-down mechanics frustrated me at times.

The story’s threadbare and, while the papercraft aesthetic is neat, the dungeon levels are pretty bland in layout and appearance. Combat is the main focus, and fortunately it’s more complex than just clicking on monsters. A variety of status effects require you to click elsewhere on the screen, and AOE attacks provide some need for positioning. The different types of monsters have unique mechanics and I had fun fighting most of them. Plus, there are frequent minibosses with multiple attack phases to spice things up.

My main complaint is that completing the story felt too easy and I didn’t come close to dying. There are healing springs scattered all over the place, equipment cards with passive healing effects, and a very powerful health potion that can be refilled after every floor. Even the minibosses don’t pose much of a threat due to their low hp. I was often able to complete a phase before the boss even had time to attack. After my first run to beat the Archdemon (about 8 hours) a freemode opened up allowing me to continue descending through the dungeon on higher difficulties. In my opinion this is where Book of Demons suffers from its simplicity. I already looted nearly all the available cards during my first playthrough, and there’s not much left to do but grind for slightly stronger versions of them.

There were also a lot of little annoyances that started to get on my nerves toward the end. In particular, the movement controls can feel unresponsive and make it a chore to dodge projectiles.

It’s pretty cute and the assets are above average for an RPG Maker title. There’s no combat, and most of the gameplay involves getting to know the characters and solving a number of small mysteries. There are some simple minigames and sidequests thrown in. I found the characters and story intriguing, but they could have used more time to develop. Each of the endings felt a bit too abrupt.