Did any game fail me more than Decarnation? This horror of his game Shiro his puzzler never stopped going to places I didn’t expect, in unexpected ways. It always surprised and challenged me, but at the same time made me feel confused.
The story revolves around Gloria, a 1990s Parisian cabaret dancer. She is nearing the end of her life (as suggested by various people in her life) and struggling with her relationships with her girlfriends, her mother, and her employer. Gloria is verbally assaulted by the sculptor creating her statue, and physically assaulted while the statue is on display in a museum. These events left Gloria a little mentally debilitated, and with her family friends unwilling to stand by her, she decided to accept a job offer from a wealthy (but questionable) art patron. Did.
We’ve now learned to never trust wealthy (but questionable) art patrons, haven’t we? Kidnap those who can’t, that’s what’s happening here.
I don’t want to go into too much detail about the plot, as revealing plot developments is essential to the overall enjoyment of Decarnation. As I said, the story takes unexpected turns, but it does so in a believable and empathetic way. Thankfully, I have never experienced the problems Gloria faced, but I was able to empathize with her plight and understand the decisions she made along the way. I don’t often cheer on French cabaret dancers in video games, but that’s okay.
Central to Gloria’s story is the fear she faces even before she is kidnapped.Can I use it as a reference? sucker punch here? In that film, the main characters created multiple layers of fantasy to protect themselves from guilt and confined hostile environments. It’s kind of what’s going on here, and Gloria finds herself fighting or fleeing grotesque monsters born from her own reality. It doesn’t matter if they are real or imaginary. The point is, Gloria struggles to find a way to deal with them.
It’s impressive that a developer can make such an impact with a game’s pixel art graphics. Retro visuals are actually a very good choice. The pixel art provides just enough detail without showing so much that the monster loses its impact. I know what you’re fighting against, but there are plenty of gaps that your imagination fills. And isn’t your imagination scarier? After all, you know what scares you.
Dealing with these monsters changes radically throughout the game. Early on, Gloria has to shine a light on them before they reach her. Soon after, she has to scream at them while running away.
And would a horror game be complete without a rhythm-based dance-off?
In fact, that’s where things start to get a little chaotic. Decarnation has a number of mini-games, most of which are directly tied to what is happening around Gloria. As with the story, you never know what game developers will throw at you next. Also, sometimes those games don’t work. That is, it is physically so, but in context it seems to be forced. Given the emotional impact of the story, it was somewhat annoying to be dragged out of the narrative by bizarre quick-time events and pop quizzes about what ever happened. Also, there is no real penalty for failure. The minigames are not stressful, they just sit there. Or maybe that’s the point. Things are yours to decide, Gloria.
The music also deserves a special mention. The game’s terrific score by Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill) is offset by some pretty decent pop songs that come in at odd times and tend to be longer than they seemingly need to be. I don’t know if it’s a glitch or if it’s another deliberate element to drive the player out of tune.
I’ve used multiple words to describe different elements of Decarnation, and they apply to the game as a whole. In other words, it is misaligned, disjointed, disjointed. It’s strange to be praised for the story, but criticized for the minigames. Anyway, it’s worth playing if you enjoy slowly burning horror. It works more as a visual novel than as a horror/puzzle game, but regardless of why you fell in love with it, it will continue to surprise you for a rather short period of time. To be honest, with so much out there these days, this is more than I can say.
