DEVOTION

Developer/publisher Red Candle Games Format PC

The best horror is steeped in sadness, and Red Candle Games’ ghost story about a fragmenting family in 1980s Taiwan is positively saturated in it. But the real tragedy of Devotion is that only those who downloaded it on or shortly after release can play it. An in-game poster containing text likening Chinese president Xi Jinping to Winnie The Pooh caused such offence that it was hurriedly pulled from sale. There’s been no suggestion that it will see the light of day again any time soon.

It’s a shame for a game that deserves attention of a less controversial kind. In every way but length, this is a step forward from the studio’s fine debut, Detention. Like its predecessor, Devotion is a period drama in a convincingly realised setting: the apartment in which the story takes place is empty but feels lived-in, its decorations giving you a window into its subjects’ lives even before the flashbacks start and the spirits show up.

As a combination of societal pressures, human frailty and rotten fortune steadily turns the screw on this outwardly happy family, there’s a certain inevitability to its downward spiral. Yet the storytelling is at once sharply specific and heartbreakingly universal. Chastened by his wife’s relative success, embittered screenwriter Feng Yu comes across as an unsympathetic lead. Yet as his daughter’s health worsens, his desperation to put things right at any cost is genuinely affecting.

That restless churn of emotions is reflected in environments that change when your back is turned, a familiar horror-game trick that’s used for subtler ends than simply shouting ‘ boo!’ in your face – though it happens to be pretty good at that stuff, too. Devotion’s bleak spell lingers beyond its fleeting shelf life; surely now, after such a premature demise, this haunting tale deserves an uplifting epilogue.