Today, I will be covering a quite interesting game, a game made by a small Chinese indie team, although, fair warning, it does use AI for 2 aspects of it, 1 you can ignore, the other you can turn off.
Remember when lovecraftian games were rare? Pepperidge Farm remembers, back when all we had was Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of The Earth, and the tabletop games, these days, its as oversaturated as it gets, and finding good stuff among the piles of trash can become quite the ordeal.
Anyway, this one, although quite rough around the edges, does wear its lovecraftian influences quite openly, most notably, the Call of Cthulhu tabletop rpg, and, there are quite a lot of references to the short stories and novels sprinkled throughout.
So, let’s check it out.
Remember when lovecraftian games were rare? Pepperidge Farm remembers, back when all we had was Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of The Earth, and the tabletop games, these days, its as oversaturated as it gets, and finding good stuff among the piles of trash can become quite the ordeal.
Anyway, this one, although quite rough around the edges, does wear its lovecraftian influences quite openly, most notably, the Call of Cthulhu tabletop rpg, and, there are quite a lot of references to the short stories and novels sprinkled throughout.
So, let’s check it out.
Story & Setting
Born a human, but in truth, a facet of Yog-Sothoth, created from the Great One as an insurance against the end of all.
You are, The Star Key, now ascended to the hall outside the universe, with a simple objective, to traverse the multiverse of possibilities, and to stop the end of the world, each and every time.
But, your powers are limited, with the help of Yog-Sothoth, you can manifest yourself on the body of an investigator, becoming them, learning their past, and shaping their future.
With some support from your master, off you go, to correct the timelines and maybe die a few times while doing so, don’t worry your body might be temporarily mortal, but your consciousness is not.
Kept intentionally vague, due to the fact that everything after the prologue is self-contained stories.
You are, The Star Key, now ascended to the hall outside the universe, with a simple objective, to traverse the multiverse of possibilities, and to stop the end of the world, each and every time.
But, your powers are limited, with the help of Yog-Sothoth, you can manifest yourself on the body of an investigator, becoming them, learning their past, and shaping their future.
With some support from your master, off you go, to correct the timelines and maybe die a few times while doing so, don’t worry your body might be temporarily mortal, but your consciousness is not.
Kept intentionally vague, due to the fact that everything after the prologue is self-contained stories.
Presentation
This game follows the tried and true strategy of, grab x and turn it into anime girls.
This time, eldritch horrors, truly, my little horror outside comprehension can’t be this cute.
And, its main artstyle is pixel art.
Although, most of the anime girl treatment, is usually left for some of The Great Old ones, not every creature.
As for the vibe itself, although the modules (more about this later) do have the cosmic horror themes, in execution, its more akin to being Pulp, rather than actual horror.
Having some knowledge of the Mythos does help a lot in some modules, like identifying what you are dealing with the moment certain tells are mentioned, and, there are some other references to pop culture, the one I remember the most is a Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul reference in one of the modules, or another module in which the start is a massive Aliens reference.
The pixel art itself is pretty good, and makes some boss fights quite memorable, its the same with party members and relevant NPCs, making them stand-out in their respective stories.
This time, eldritch horrors, truly, my little horror outside comprehension can’t be this cute.
And, its main artstyle is pixel art.
Although, most of the anime girl treatment, is usually left for some of The Great Old ones, not every creature.
As for the vibe itself, although the modules (more about this later) do have the cosmic horror themes, in execution, its more akin to being Pulp, rather than actual horror.
Having some knowledge of the Mythos does help a lot in some modules, like identifying what you are dealing with the moment certain tells are mentioned, and, there are some other references to pop culture, the one I remember the most is a Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul reference in one of the modules, or another module in which the start is a massive Aliens reference.
The pixel art itself is pretty good, and makes some boss fights quite memorable, its the same with party members and relevant NPCs, making them stand-out in their respective stories.
The music however, its ok, not bad, not good, the limited selection of tracks gets reused quite a lot, since this is an indie studio, I can forgive that, although once you learn which track is used when, you can pretty much take an educated guess as to what’s coming next the moment it starts playing. But, there was one time in which the game did subvert my expectations, in one time it used the bad ending theme to mislead me.
The game does have a few issues with translation, although it used to be worse, and a recent patch improved them significantly, some typos and misspellings remain, and its somewhat common to see wrong use of words, but, its nothing outrageous or that would kill the vibe outright.
Some modules, are text adventures, with some decorated boxes, and some background, they suffer with text sometimes being cut by the paragraph length not being able to fit in the boxes.
There are also times, in both exploration and text adventure modules, in which the artstyle limitations are circumvented by going purely to text, accompanied by a picture, and leaving it to the player’s imagination to fill in the gaps.
I also quite like the design of the Main Hall, as well as the design of some of the Great Old Ones, I think my favorites would be Yog-Sothoth and The Hound of Tindalos.
Finally, something that a lot of people might dislike, the voice acting in this game, its AI generated, although the option is turned off by default, its there, there is also a text-to-speech option if you want it.
I didn’t try either, so I won’t comment on their quality.
Also, the first time you open the game, the text is in Chinese, so you will have to stumble your way through the main menu to find the settings and change it to another language.
The game does have a few issues with translation, although it used to be worse, and a recent patch improved them significantly, some typos and misspellings remain, and its somewhat common to see wrong use of words, but, its nothing outrageous or that would kill the vibe outright.
Some modules, are text adventures, with some decorated boxes, and some background, they suffer with text sometimes being cut by the paragraph length not being able to fit in the boxes.
There are also times, in both exploration and text adventure modules, in which the artstyle limitations are circumvented by going purely to text, accompanied by a picture, and leaving it to the player’s imagination to fill in the gaps.
I also quite like the design of the Main Hall, as well as the design of some of the Great Old Ones, I think my favorites would be Yog-Sothoth and The Hound of Tindalos.
Finally, something that a lot of people might dislike, the voice acting in this game, its AI generated, although the option is turned off by default, its there, there is also a text-to-speech option if you want it.
I didn’t try either, so I won’t comment on their quality.
Also, the first time you open the game, the text is in Chinese, so you will have to stumble your way through the main menu to find the settings and change it to another language.
Mechanics
First and foremost, the modules, think of each module as its own self-contained story, which is what you will be playing through, you can only play 1 module at a time.
Modules come in different flavors, but presentation wise, its just exploration in which you control your character and travel around, and text adventure, in which you play like its a choose your own adventure, with only the combat bringing back the graphics.
In this game, you can create your own investigator, who essentially becomes the avatar for the Star Key.
In creation, its the usual RPG creation, pick/create a class, a background, spread points around, and pick some traits.
Your Class determines which skills are your main ones, which makes them easier to level up, you can also make a custom one, picking your major skills.
This uses a system similar to the Call of Cthulhu ttrpg, when you are prompted to make a check, you want to roll a number lower than your skill, with hard success and critical success being applied only in some special cases.
You can level up a skill up to 90, there are also some items which can guarantee success in some skills, or items which have special effects depending on the type of success, or items which deteriorate if you fail some checks. I was quite disappointed I couldn’t 100% make myself on this aspect, then remembered that my irl skill level would be akin to an extremely high level investigator in Call of Cthulhu, the woes of being perfect I suppose.
The traits are the most important, as they aren’t just for roleplaying, they can impact your experience in a module.
Some are akin to your nature as a person, which can lock you out of some decisions, but, you can unlock and take those decisions anyway (this is a way in which the game avoids softlocking you in a module), but you will have to pay a penalty for going against your nature, for example, because I made myself, and picked the arrogant trait, that trait usually got me into a lot of avoidable fights.
Another one is personality, which rewards you for “staying in character,” for example, as I made myself, I picked adsurdism (I was impressed they actually had it as an option), and more often than not, found myself being rewarded for having my character behave like he gives 0 f****, much like myself, sometimes chuckling when an option which I 100% would do in real life was tagged as adsurdism.
The rewards and penalties, are in the form of luck and sanity, either giving or taking away.
Luck is used as a resource for multiple things, you can make luck checks, luck can be used to reroll a result, and luck can be used to improve your hitting chance in combat.
Sanity is another stat, high sanity makes checks easier, lower sanity makes you a better spellcaster, but, reaching 0 sanity, gives the character a random negative trait.
Luck and sanity can go up to 100.
The other traits, are more akin to passives which trigger under specific conditions, this type of traits, have 2 sides, sleeping and awaken, each having a different effect, you can only have it either sleeping or awaken, not both.
Once your character is complete, you can take them to a module and play, you can have companions, either other characters created by you, or characters you unlock by doing things around in the modules.
Modules come in different flavors, but presentation wise, its just exploration in which you control your character and travel around, and text adventure, in which you play like its a choose your own adventure, with only the combat bringing back the graphics.
In this game, you can create your own investigator, who essentially becomes the avatar for the Star Key.
In creation, its the usual RPG creation, pick/create a class, a background, spread points around, and pick some traits.
Your Class determines which skills are your main ones, which makes them easier to level up, you can also make a custom one, picking your major skills.
This uses a system similar to the Call of Cthulhu ttrpg, when you are prompted to make a check, you want to roll a number lower than your skill, with hard success and critical success being applied only in some special cases.
You can level up a skill up to 90, there are also some items which can guarantee success in some skills, or items which have special effects depending on the type of success, or items which deteriorate if you fail some checks. I was quite disappointed I couldn’t 100% make myself on this aspect, then remembered that my irl skill level would be akin to an extremely high level investigator in Call of Cthulhu, the woes of being perfect I suppose.
The traits are the most important, as they aren’t just for roleplaying, they can impact your experience in a module.
Some are akin to your nature as a person, which can lock you out of some decisions, but, you can unlock and take those decisions anyway (this is a way in which the game avoids softlocking you in a module), but you will have to pay a penalty for going against your nature, for example, because I made myself, and picked the arrogant trait, that trait usually got me into a lot of avoidable fights.
Another one is personality, which rewards you for “staying in character,” for example, as I made myself, I picked adsurdism (I was impressed they actually had it as an option), and more often than not, found myself being rewarded for having my character behave like he gives 0 f****, much like myself, sometimes chuckling when an option which I 100% would do in real life was tagged as adsurdism.
The rewards and penalties, are in the form of luck and sanity, either giving or taking away.
Luck is used as a resource for multiple things, you can make luck checks, luck can be used to reroll a result, and luck can be used to improve your hitting chance in combat.
Sanity is another stat, high sanity makes checks easier, lower sanity makes you a better spellcaster, but, reaching 0 sanity, gives the character a random negative trait.
Luck and sanity can go up to 100.
The other traits, are more akin to passives which trigger under specific conditions, this type of traits, have 2 sides, sleeping and awaken, each having a different effect, you can only have it either sleeping or awaken, not both.
Once your character is complete, you can take them to a module and play, you can have companions, either other characters created by you, or characters you unlock by doing things around in the modules.
Companions you take from the start, only serve as fodder, they don’t comment nor interact with the story in any way, its only the main investigator the one who takes decisions, and more often than not, suffers the consequences.
You see, as you playthrough and finish modules, there is a meta progression aspect, you can earn traits which are permanent parts of your character, which means, that you can slowly see your character grow into a seasoned investigator, but these earned traits, can be both positive and negative, so, do be careful with your actions. The more modules you complete, you can earn extra passives for yourself.
It is common in some situations, in which you can pick who will be doing the check, so having a varied party can help, and in some situations, you are allowed to pick a different skill to use in the check, but, some skills will have a penalty, for not being the most suited for the situation.
You also unlock Mythos items, which are really strong items you can take from module to module, but, your character can only take 3 at a time, you earn them by finding secrets in the modules.
When you finish modules, you can interact with interludes, which allow you to top up your health and sanity, roll to increase your skills (or get “negative” traits if you fail), or switch your traits between sleeping and awaken. But, this is available, only for the main investigator.
Sometimes, you will have contested checks, mostly when interacting with other characters, in this case, you want to get a better success than them, simple as.
Sometimes, there will be whole party checks, but, its quite merciful, as just 1 character passing means success for everyone.
Some checks happen by surprise, and some checks have hidden results to keep you guessing.
Since this is the Cthulhu Mythos, expect many MANY sanity checks, which are usually tracked individually for party members.
You can earn luck by finding clues in the modules, but, this luck only goes to the main investigator, you can also earn luck and sanity through items.
Inventory, is tracked individually, so, quite often you will be sharing what you have with the party, there is no inventory limit.
You can also craft items, using either materials found or obtained from disassembling items, there are a lot of recipes, all of which are unlocked from the start, but, more advanced items require a crafting check as well to be made.
You can only have up to 3 active party members, in combat you can go above the cap, but only with summons.
You see, as you playthrough and finish modules, there is a meta progression aspect, you can earn traits which are permanent parts of your character, which means, that you can slowly see your character grow into a seasoned investigator, but these earned traits, can be both positive and negative, so, do be careful with your actions. The more modules you complete, you can earn extra passives for yourself.
It is common in some situations, in which you can pick who will be doing the check, so having a varied party can help, and in some situations, you are allowed to pick a different skill to use in the check, but, some skills will have a penalty, for not being the most suited for the situation.
You also unlock Mythos items, which are really strong items you can take from module to module, but, your character can only take 3 at a time, you earn them by finding secrets in the modules.
When you finish modules, you can interact with interludes, which allow you to top up your health and sanity, roll to increase your skills (or get “negative” traits if you fail), or switch your traits between sleeping and awaken. But, this is available, only for the main investigator.
Sometimes, you will have contested checks, mostly when interacting with other characters, in this case, you want to get a better success than them, simple as.
Sometimes, there will be whole party checks, but, its quite merciful, as just 1 character passing means success for everyone.
Some checks happen by surprise, and some checks have hidden results to keep you guessing.
Since this is the Cthulhu Mythos, expect many MANY sanity checks, which are usually tracked individually for party members.
You can earn luck by finding clues in the modules, but, this luck only goes to the main investigator, you can also earn luck and sanity through items.
Inventory, is tracked individually, so, quite often you will be sharing what you have with the party, there is no inventory limit.
You can also craft items, using either materials found or obtained from disassembling items, there are a lot of recipes, all of which are unlocked from the start, but, more advanced items require a crafting check as well to be made.
You can only have up to 3 active party members, in combat you can go above the cap, but only with summons.
Finally, combat, the combat system is simple, each participant gets 1 action per turn, and the order is resolved according to the speed stat of everybody, both allies and enemies.
You can use 1 free action per character, to use an item from their inventory, either to yeet it at the enemy, or to use them on themselves and/or the party.
There are bonuses and penalties for certain actions, depending on the formation of your team, with front being better for melee and back being better for guns, changing around the formation in mid fight is 1 free action.
There are a lot of items, many of which are context sensitive, either for the fight, the type of enemies, the current buffs, debuffs, and status effects, class, traits, unlocked spells, etc. All of which can be improved by using luck.
Spells cost mp and sanity, but, if you run out of mp, you can still use spells, but using extra sanity. Summoned units die if the caster who summoned them is downed.
But, remember, only 1 main action per character, so, choose wisely, and take speed into consideration.
Combat often uses the same logic for checks, but a successful dodge of a melee attack gives a free counterattack.
Also, most of the Great Old Ones, are immune to all status effects, and most debuffs.
If you die in combat, you can either load a save, or restart the fight with a buff, there is no penalty for restarting with a buff, its solely a hit to your pride. You can also choose to restart, and simply choose not to take a buff.
Excluding some things like module specific mechanics, or things I am gonna leave for you to find, that’s pretty much it.
Keep in mind, that modules can also be downloaded, you don’t have to just play the official ones. You can also create your own modules. But, at the time of writing, most of the community is from China, so, finding modules in English can be quite difficult.
The other use of AI, is in a little function, in which you can have conversations with Yog-Sothoth which its pretty much ChatGPT, and, you can completely ignore this mechanic.
You can use 1 free action per character, to use an item from their inventory, either to yeet it at the enemy, or to use them on themselves and/or the party.
There are bonuses and penalties for certain actions, depending on the formation of your team, with front being better for melee and back being better for guns, changing around the formation in mid fight is 1 free action.
There are a lot of items, many of which are context sensitive, either for the fight, the type of enemies, the current buffs, debuffs, and status effects, class, traits, unlocked spells, etc. All of which can be improved by using luck.
Spells cost mp and sanity, but, if you run out of mp, you can still use spells, but using extra sanity. Summoned units die if the caster who summoned them is downed.
But, remember, only 1 main action per character, so, choose wisely, and take speed into consideration.
Combat often uses the same logic for checks, but a successful dodge of a melee attack gives a free counterattack.
Also, most of the Great Old Ones, are immune to all status effects, and most debuffs.
If you die in combat, you can either load a save, or restart the fight with a buff, there is no penalty for restarting with a buff, its solely a hit to your pride. You can also choose to restart, and simply choose not to take a buff.
Excluding some things like module specific mechanics, or things I am gonna leave for you to find, that’s pretty much it.
Keep in mind, that modules can also be downloaded, you don’t have to just play the official ones. You can also create your own modules. But, at the time of writing, most of the community is from China, so, finding modules in English can be quite difficult.
The other use of AI, is in a little function, in which you can have conversations with Yog-Sothoth which its pretty much ChatGPT, and, you can completely ignore this mechanic.
Final Thoughts
Its a very interesting take on the Lovecraft Mythos, you can tell the devs are quite the fans of his work, with the myriad of references.
Although not a pure cosmic horror, as you can actively fight against the Eldritch beings, there is a pretty good explanation in-universe, with you having the backing of Yog-Sothoth, and, the fights against Great Old Ones, ain’t easy, so, even though it embraces the pulp elements, it retains the spirit of cosmic horror.
The quality of modules can vary, I’d say there are a few which are hit or miss.
From the official modules, I’d say my favorite is Cursenday’s Black Carnival, which is the most complex and developed module of them all, almost making it unfair for the other ones to be compared to it, yet, it had the most fun story, and the most branching paths. I genuinely wish the other modules had the same depth.
My least favorite… Well, I absolutely hated Moonshade Monolith, probably the only module I’d skip if I want to play again with a different investigator.
Apparently there are multiplayer modules, but none of the official ones support it, and I didn’t bother trying, as there is no way I can convince my friends to play this.
I didn’t like that companion investigators don’t interact at all with the current story, I can understand the limitation, but, I would have been fine if their presence was at least acknowledged, even generic dialogue would have been fine.
I don’t like the combat in this game, it feels extremely restrictive, and, more often than not, brawler characters become worthless in Great Old Ones fights, as the Old Ones usually have higher defense against normal physical attacks, and items which give status effects (which are common) become useless as well due to the immunity.
There is a high spell variety, but, usually very little reason to use most spells.
Most skills are useless, as, more often than not, utility characters have lower speed than dps characters anyway.
Its quite easy to have a very cluttered inventory, specially since the clue system pretty much pushes you to be the typical adventure game protagonist with kleptomania, there was only 1 module in which my tendency to pick up everything was addressed, I was actually surprised it happened, cause most games just ignore that.
Its very easy to maintain high sanity, the only time I had a low sanity character, was when I went out of my way to have them at low sanity, just because they were the spellcaster.
Some modules, can become unnecessarily difficult, solely due to you taking the wrong types of investigators, for example, Lies and Fraud is extremely difficult without a fighter, or, you will be missing a lot of clues in Soladnit if you don’t have a good detective.
I would also add that characters go down very easily, but, its Call of Cthulhu, that’s normal. Thankfully, there is no permadeath.
Don’t ask me about the module editor, I didn’t try it.
And, that’s that, will you give this game a try?
Although not a pure cosmic horror, as you can actively fight against the Eldritch beings, there is a pretty good explanation in-universe, with you having the backing of Yog-Sothoth, and, the fights against Great Old Ones, ain’t easy, so, even though it embraces the pulp elements, it retains the spirit of cosmic horror.
The quality of modules can vary, I’d say there are a few which are hit or miss.
From the official modules, I’d say my favorite is Cursenday’s Black Carnival, which is the most complex and developed module of them all, almost making it unfair for the other ones to be compared to it, yet, it had the most fun story, and the most branching paths. I genuinely wish the other modules had the same depth.
My least favorite… Well, I absolutely hated Moonshade Monolith, probably the only module I’d skip if I want to play again with a different investigator.
Apparently there are multiplayer modules, but none of the official ones support it, and I didn’t bother trying, as there is no way I can convince my friends to play this.
I didn’t like that companion investigators don’t interact at all with the current story, I can understand the limitation, but, I would have been fine if their presence was at least acknowledged, even generic dialogue would have been fine.
I don’t like the combat in this game, it feels extremely restrictive, and, more often than not, brawler characters become worthless in Great Old Ones fights, as the Old Ones usually have higher defense against normal physical attacks, and items which give status effects (which are common) become useless as well due to the immunity.
There is a high spell variety, but, usually very little reason to use most spells.
Most skills are useless, as, more often than not, utility characters have lower speed than dps characters anyway.
Its quite easy to have a very cluttered inventory, specially since the clue system pretty much pushes you to be the typical adventure game protagonist with kleptomania, there was only 1 module in which my tendency to pick up everything was addressed, I was actually surprised it happened, cause most games just ignore that.
Its very easy to maintain high sanity, the only time I had a low sanity character, was when I went out of my way to have them at low sanity, just because they were the spellcaster.
Some modules, can become unnecessarily difficult, solely due to you taking the wrong types of investigators, for example, Lies and Fraud is extremely difficult without a fighter, or, you will be missing a lot of clues in Soladnit if you don’t have a good detective.
I would also add that characters go down very easily, but, its Call of Cthulhu, that’s normal. Thankfully, there is no permadeath.
Don’t ask me about the module editor, I didn’t try it.
And, that’s that, will you give this game a try?
Pros
- + Faithful to Lovecraft's Mythos
- + Easy access to community created modules
- + Charming pixel art
Cons
- - Bad combat
- - Varying quality between modules
- - Many typos and translation related issues
7
Gameplay
The investigation aspect is pretty good, gathering clues and sometimes being fed red herrings, and slowly unraveling the mystery is really fun, but the combat isn't that enjoyable.
8
Graphics
Charming pixel art, I really like the portraits, and some of the monsters have really cool designs.
8
Story
This is judging only the official modules, with each one being a self-contained story, although quality varies, and some can be a drag, it does tick the right pulp and cosmic horror boxes, good read.
6
Sound
The music is reused a lot, and its forgettable, imagine that, the sound effects are ok, I will not comment on the use of AI.
8
Replayability
Thanks to the community content, and the branching paths within the modules, you have access to a lot of content, which you can replay with different characters if you wish.
7
out of 10
Overall
Depersonalization is a fun and quirky game, which is quite rough around the edges, its faults add up to its charm, although the official modules vary quite significantly in quality and depth, the stories they tell are quite intriguing and entertaining enough to get to the end, there are many mechanics to play around with, and the elements from The Call of Cthulhu TTRPG are very well implemented in videogame form, its also a love letter to Lovecraft's work, if you are a fan of pulp and cosmic horror, can't go wrong.
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