I just played through lethophobia in one sitting and went on a rollercoaster of emotions. For something named after the fear of forgetting, the game certainly is very memorable and I keep thinking about it. It has made me feel things. Awfully nostalgic things. Sad, but not like horrible things like hungry orphans are sad, more like satysfying sad, like staring through a train window in a thick downpour of rain with appropriately sad music playing softly in the background.
Right off the bat, with all that walking, exploring, picking up items and sniffing around an old house, it reminded me, very fondly, about text-based adventure games of old. Not to mention the delicious little references to other popular things; books, games. Boo.
I also really liked the gameplay. Most of the time after finishing a task, a clue was provided as to where to go and what to do next, and it sparked such an "aha! i’m on a hunt" excitement. Very pleasant. The one time I got stopped for a longer while was the doll’s head. The game told me to look to my right hand; I had superglue there, so instead of thinking I’m lacking something, I spent like 20 minutes perfectly sure that I could… glue the pieces back together, somehow.
The beginning was fascinating, the middle- most gripping and engaging, but the ending… hm. Hmmm. I have strongly mixed feelings. Cannot decide whether I loved it or hated it with passion. That entirely depends on…- wait, huge ending spoilers;
[spoiler]I chose to snap the lid on my child self, hoping that it might help my character to leave the past behind and no longer be bound to haunt his house like a decrepid spectre dripping spiders everywhere. Alas, the ending merely offered to wipe my stats and start again (and the narrator implied that I have killed the hedgehog. I will have you know that I did not kill the little critter, and that my ghost is a pure cinnamon roll, who was too good for this world, too pure, and a disney prince, friend to all woodland creatures.) which, at one hand, is genius. I have started the game locked up in a dark, tight place, I have nearly died in a tight, dark place, and to a dark, tight place I return. Again. It reminds me of a looping, cyclical plot of dark souls, and that is a good thing.
But it also offers no clarity, no definitive ending, which feels a little unsatysfying. Have I collected all the shards of myself just to lose them again and again? That is not a good thing. That is a profoundly depressing thing.
My decision on whether I love or hate this ending depends on whether, had I chose to take my child’s self hand and pull him up to life, I would get any more substantial ending, or would it also loop me back to beginning. (Is the game depressing by design, or have I just made a bad choice?) Anyone who already played through this one can tell me?
I also disliked how the tension, the entire build-up, seemed to dissolve after I climbed up to the attic. It was this foreboding door, always there, at the end of the corridor, at the edge of thoughts, and the secret behind it just didn’t live up to the hype. The Sleeping Beauty and Princess Charming coming up to meet the moth-clad me was beautifully bittersweet, but it dissolved the tense atmosphere too early. I was expecting something horroresque behind that door, I really did. All those warnings, don’t go to attic, don’t even think about attic, there’s a monster in the attic…-
Cat and Boo coming to player’s rescue during the showdown with the medium was a sweet thing, but it also ruined the entire mood. How could I possibly stay serious in any way, shape or form, while imagining a hamster riding joust on a cat. That was just…- too much. [/spoiler]
My main criticism remains that in a game filled with animal friends; the cats, the miniature giant space hamsters, the spiders and their genteel king, the hedgehogs, the moths…- there’s an alarming lack of a comforting canine presence. To put it plainly, there’s not a single dog in the entire game. And I looked! Oh, how I looked.