GamesHorrorI play way too many indie horror games, and you absolutely shouldn’t miss Psychopomp Gold: it’s $9 and got 1,000 ‘overwhelmingly positive’ Steam reviews in just 1 weekWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesHorrorI play way too many indie horror games, and you absolutely shouldn’t miss Psychopomp Gold: it’s $9 and got 1,000 ‘overwhelmingly positive’ Steam reviews in just 1 weekWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Fading Club)
On one level,Psychopompis a game about brutalizing impossible flesh monsters with a hammer from the Home Depot—“hammer” is one of your primary ways of interacting with this world, and it tends to be the one that Gets Things Done™. But I don’t think the violence is why the free dungeon crawler has racked up an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam with 4,800 reviews at the time of writing. Psychopomp is a bracing nightmare, with dream logic, a surreal atmosphere, and breathtaking vistas that remind me of PS1 classicLSD: Dream Emulator, a creepypasta-core game from before there were creepypastas.
Before tackling an almost-inevitable (and heavily teased) sequel, developer Fading Club has returned with adefinitive “Gold” version of Psychopomp, with a $9 price tag netting you a game that’s twice as long as the free version that released in January, with new and revamped levels, as well as a more developed plot.
Subterranean
Psychopomp GOLD Official Trailer (OUT NOW!) - YouTubeWatch On
Psychopomp GOLD Official Trailer (OUT NOW!) - YouTube
Psychopomp GOLD Official Trailer (OUT NOW!) - YouTube
Psychopomp has a premise that I initially found off-putting: The protagonist, a seemingly-disturbed woman, crafts a helmet that lets her see the hidden subterranean structures under government buildings—the first “layer” of Psychopomp Gold (which includes the only levels present in the initial, free release) consists of a public school, a children’s hospital, and a wastewater treatment facility.
My worry was that Psychopomp might pan out as a puerile exercise in lazy tropes about psychotic delusion, a game-length version of the self-conscious “schizo posting” many online characters adopt, pretending to be “crazy” and dangerous. I’m happy to say this isn’t the case: Psychopomp uses recognizable paranoid delusions as a jumping off point into surreal, apocalyptic urban fantasy. Shin Megami Tensei is a videogame comparison that comes to mind, a teenage/young adult protagonist finding themself trapped in a world like our own, but horribly wrong. Psychopomp’s setting is hollow and dead, with a mysterious doppelganger Earth replacing the moon, and our main character is out to get to the bottom of things.
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Psychopomp has fantastic creature designs, with unique quivering, fleshy things emerging out of the darkness as you approach in each area. Most dungeon denizens are actually friendly, with cryptic dialogue that occasionally points to the objective of a delve. The children’s hospital, for instance, sports freaky nurses with gaping holes with their faces should be. When I first saw one emerge from the dark, you better believe it was hammer time, though it turns out these lovely ladies are actually the non-hostile NPCs of the zone.
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Dreamscapes
If the first layer consists of cramped tunnels with occasional glimpses at something vast and horrible, the second is like you punched through to a subterranean world: A modern-looking city infested with giant moths merges from an ocean of blood in one level, while another presents some kind of DNA factory with an entertainment district vibe.
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Videogame worlds can beanything, so it’s so disappointing to see them so often present the same derivative settings: Fantasy landscapes, ’80s anime cyberpunk cities, caricatures of Middle Eastern countries that the US has invaded. I relish that Psychopomp took a stab at something new, weird, and impossible, then executed it so well with limited indie resources.
ButPsychopomp Goldis definitely the way to go. The graphical improvements to the first layer alone are a welcome addition, while the new areas and level secrets make Gold more of a full-fledged game. It took me six hours to see the base and secret endings in Gold, vs a two-hour runtime for the original.
And now I’m eager to see Fading Club’s planned sequel. Part of me wishes the developer was similarly unfettered as when making the jump from Dreamwild to Psychopomp, to better create something completely new and surprising, but they seem to have a clear idea of where to go with a sequel, and have the added incentive to produce a direct follow-up to their most successful game to date.
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