Survival horror has always been one of the most liked subgenres of horror and while these days, we don’t see many good examples of that subgenre, some indie games manage to come out and help us remember those good old days of that genre with their pretty well-made selves.
Limited saves, slow but gimmicky combat, overall hardcore game mechanics and heaps of puzzles. Those were what made survival-horror what it was and what Lamentum does really good as well.
Lamentum is a brand new survival horror game developed by Obscure Tales and published by Neon Doctrine. Big thanks to them for providing me with a review key, so I can prepare this review.
It is currently released for PC on Steam, and it is set to release on August 31st for Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.
Lamentum is a pixel art survival horror game taking place in the mid-nineteenth century New England. A gothic setting we all like and cherish with its dreadful, macabre themes. It is a game that is very good at relaying these themes to us, the player. It takes place in a huge mansion, full of deadly Lovecraftian creatures and horrifying secrets.
The protagonist is a young man named Victor Hartwell, once living a happy life with his wife Alissa. But unfortunately, that happy life suddenly changes when Alissa falls ill to a deadly disease. After trying every possible medication to cure this disease, Victor finally decides to get help from the Earl of Grau Hill Mansion, who claims that he can cure Alissa’s illness. Desperately, doing anything to help Alissa, Victor takes the love of his life together with him and rides to Grau Hill Mansion on the back of a carriage. But shortly after their arrival, things take a quick turn and Grau Hill Mansion starts exposing its deadly secrets to Victor.
While the game starts on a pretty limited ground at first, just like many survival horror games, it opens up and expands further as you progress. You find new items, solve puzzles with those items, open new doors, explore new corridors and basically try to unlock the whole map. The Grau Hill Mansion is so huge and most of its halls look like each other, it’s very easy to get lost in. Thankfully, we have a map that we can use, which doesn’t really act as a GPS. And that is a good thing, really. A map should be a map. It shouldn’t have a big red arrow showing YOU ARE HERE. Lamentum has a good map system.
While Grau Hill Mansion is full of deadly Lovecraftian beings, it is also filled with puzzles. Almost each and every section of the mansion has some kind of a puzzle. They are usually not annoying or THAT hard to solve, but they are still puzzles that require a certain amount of effort. The hardest thing is probably to remember what item or puzzle was where. Like I said, most halls look like each other so it is easy to forget the location of certain important rooms. But you get used to it. Just like we did in Spencer Mansion in Resident Evil, you start memorizing the rooms and the halls they are in. The mansion could be huge, but it’s not annoyingly huge.
Most of the puzzles you encounter during your journey in the mansion require you to memorize certain things. The location of an item, a page, some kind of a painting or a carefully hidden line in a diary entry. They are certainly not annoyingly hard, but they do reward and satisfy when you, when you get over them. Some of them give you weapons, some of them give you items to progress through the story, and some of them simply help you understand the story better by exposing more of the mansion’s secrets.
The overall gameplay loop is pretty simple. You find weapons to defend yourself but combat isn’t always the smartest choice. Because let me tell you, this game is not easy. It’s not one of those other horror games that gets easier and easier once you get more weapons. It’s nothing like that. Enemies usually move as smaller or bigger groups and they can quickly surround you before you can even realize it. They are merciless and they hit pretty hard. Victor can only take maybe 5 or 6 wounds. Maybe even lesser than that. He dies very quickly if you try to fight the enemies head on, without thinking about it.
The combat mechanics are a bit clunky. You get used to them after a while, but they still feel a bit slow. Maybe the developer team tried to capture that despair, and an inexperienced man’s sense with the combat. But I’m not sure if I like it or not. It sure feels realistic, and pushes you to run away from the enemies rather than fight them. But sometimes, you have to fight a group of enemies and in those situations, you might die pretty easily and quickly because the combat is slow and clunky.
But like I said, that might just be a design choice, and something to get used to. I personally enjoyed it because it felt realistic, considerign the protagonist was just a young man without much experience in combat. But not everyone is going to enjoy that, I’m sure of it.
In darker rooms, Victor has to equip a lamp. It’s not on by default and you can’t hold it in one hand. You have to specifically open your inventory and equip it, in order to use it.
To cure his wounds, Victor has to use Laudanum. Laudanum is an actual medicine. It’s like painkiller. It might even be addictive in some cases. While you can find this medicine in the mansion, they are still placed in pretty scarce amounts. You sometimes get half-a-bottle, and sometimes hit the jackpot and get a full-bottle. But they are still pretty scarce.
Just like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, my experience has mostly consisted of me running away from the enemies. In most cases, I chose not to fight them, because the game doesn’t have a checkpoint or autosave system. It has an old-school, save-point system. A safe room, so to speak. When you find these safe rooms, the music suddenly changes and the game tells you that you’re safe there. In these safe rooms you have your save-table. It is basically a regular table with some papers on it. If you have the ink required to write on these papers, you can save your game. As you might’ve guessed, you have to find these ink bottles first. They are in limited amounts, so you have to be careful about your saves as well.
These safe rooms also have storage chests that you can use to store your items in. Thankfully, they aren’t unique. If you store an item in a storage chest in the A room, you will be able to get it from the chest in the B room. So don’t worry, it’s not THAT hardcore.
Aside from its secrets and deadly monsters, the mansion also has some well-placed traps. They are not that many, but they are still there. So be careful when you’re exploring the mansion. Otherwise you might have to start from a very early save and get mad at yourself. Just as I did.
In terms of art design and overall graphics, while it is a pixel art game, the developers sure made an amazing job creating a gothic horror atmosphere. You might think it wouldn’t be possible in the age of photorealistic graphics, but it is possible. And sometimes, pixelated horror is even better than photorealistic horror. Because the more distorted an image gets, the more creepy it gets too. And let me tell you, Lamentum has some very distorted and creepy designs. Some of them are in the paintings scattered around the mansion, and some of them show up as your enemies. Those cosmic horror creatures. Lovecraftian monsters. Scary tentacles. They’re all there.
If you like gothic architecture and gothic arts/literature in general, Lamentum is gonna be a gorgeous feast for you.
Just as its art design, Lamentum has very good sound design too. The overall atmosphere in the mansion is relayed to the player via squeeking doors, footsteps, and of course the slimy, scary sounds of your enemies. They are especially dreadful in darker rooms when you don’t have your lamp equipped.
Overall, Lamentum was a very enjoyable experience. I still haven’t finished the game yet but I progressed enough to have a solid opinion about it. I only used images from the first hour or so of the game so you don’t get many spoilers but the overall game has a similar tone anyway.
If you are a fan of classic survival horror games, definitely try Lamentum. Do not be mistaken by its pixelated looks. It’s a very atmospheric, scary, survival horror game with almost every aspect of that subgenre. A big mansion, puzzles, clunky and tough gameplay mechanics, limited saves, and mysteries waiting to be unfolded.
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