Developer: Midnight Games
Publisher: Midnight Games
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Exorcise the Demons – Review
A lot of friendships have been tested over the years by games such as UNO, Monopoly, Risk and many other similar titles. Midnight Games just added one to the list with their newest title, Exorcise the Demons. The game is meant to be played with two players, one of them discovering the clues in the game and the other one who has to piece all of them together with the help of the Book of Rituals. Hopefully you are able to pick the right teammate, otherwise, you probably won’t succeed in exorcising the demons.
Story
You wake up as ‘John’ in an abandoned abyss. Straight away a woman’s voice starts talking to you and explains she is sorry. You are mumbling a lot like: ”Where am I? This must be a dream! Have I gone mad?” The woman who’s referred to by the game as ‘L’ is trying to get your attention and explain the situation you are in. After a while, you listen to her and start the presented ritual in front of you. When you succeed in the ritual you have unknowingly exorcised your first demon.
Starting the next chapter you wake up again in a similar fashion as the last time. Still confused and with little to no help and answers of the mysterious ‘L’, she pushes you to perform the next ritual. She slips up and tells you very vaguely that she knows you and that you had proven your worth to her once before. But that she will only give you all the answers when you finished all the ordeals without mistake and on time.
The flow of the game is quite linear, each chapter you uncover a bit more about the relation between John and ‘L’. Sadly, if you fail a lot of rituals after one another, you will have to hear the same conversation over and over again until you reach the next chapter. The story is basic at best, but it does put a small premise to an otherwise multiplayer experience.
Graphics
The graphical prowess of Exorcise the Demons is mediocre at best. Visually things look good at first glance but when you move in-game you see a lot of ragged edges popping up. This wouldn’t be that big of an issue if the game was a bit bigger, but now you have only seven different modules with a lot of repetitive elements in each. So in our opinion, the graphics could be a little bit more polished for such a small-scaled game. Things could have been improved by adding more variation or simply ironing out the rough edges of the limited content of the game.
Sound
The sound effects you hear in the background are wonderfully adapted to how the game should feel like. You know you have a time limit and are aware of the eerie surroundings and the chilling music in the background only makes it more real. It all resonates with a heartbeat in the background which grows louder and faster when you are nearly out of time. Sadly, the voice-acting lacks elegance. The voice actors could have had a little more enthusiasm when they were recording it because now it makes the conversations feel bland and emotionless.
Gameplay
Exorcise the Demons is some sort of a puzzle, adventure co-op game where you are thrown into an abyss with an altar and some levitating symbols around it. Your goal is to, as the title clearly states, exorcise demons. This you can try on your own or with a friend. We strongly encourage you to play this with a friend who has the Book of Rituals in front of him/her. Otherwise, you are constantly alt-tabbing out of the game to search in the Book of Rituals that you can store in a PDF-file on your desktop.
You have two modes available; the training mode where you can choose which rituals you wish to perform and the story mode. In the story mode, you obviously get the story behind the two characters John and ‘L’, allowing you to progress through the levels in a linear fashion. In the training mode, you can train your skills in different rituals. There are seven different types of rituals: Candles, runes, constellations, crystals, circle of protection, medallion and ouija. All those rituals are described in the Book of Rituals. Each ritual has a lot of different combinations that can be asked of you to uncover in the game, so you won’t be able to solve any of the puzzles without the book.
Sadly, Midnight Games didn’t make it possible to open the Book of Rituals when you are in-game. This is where your teammate comes in. The teammate has to explain what you need to look for and together you need to solve this ritual in a limited amount of time. If you succeed, you can earn rewards that you can admire in your collection log. Collectables can consist of figures, concept art, audio fragments, and tattoos.
Conclusion
Exorcise the Demons can be a fun game if you play it with a teammate. If you want to try it out as a single-player, it will probably be offputting after a while. Graphically the game proves to be unimpressive and even though the music and sound effects have a great finishing touch, it all comes crumbling down due to the bland voice acting. The game is very small-scaled and has only a few types of rituals available. This game could have been so much better if it also allowed a proper single-player experience and if the developers smoothened out the rough edges of the game. As it stands now, the game can be fun when bought in a sale, but otherwise, it’s a fairly mediocre gaming experience.
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