Stormling Studios brings out another chilling horror with the release of Lunacy: Saint Rhodes.
Lunacy: Saint Rhodes is a first-person survival horror game developed by Storming Studios and published by Iceberg Interactive, also known for their prior horror games such as Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage and Conarium, and have released a new horror game called Lunacy: Saint Rhodes.
Lunacy: Saint Rhodes is an immersive survival horror. The survival horror sub-genre has been around since the early 1980s with the release of games like Haunted House, which was developed by Atari for their video game console. This subgenre puts more emphasis on less combat, as you would need to investigate and explore rather than fight, and a more horrific enemy design when creating the game as it is story-driven.
As you start Lunacy: Saint Rhodes, you are treated to a cinematic that sets the tone of the game. You play the main character, George Rhodes, who is being called by a suspicious detective, informing him that he has inherited a family home. You find out from the detective that it was connected to an old case years prior and that the detective needed George to come in for permission to check the house while he will have to also deal with the proceedings of the official paperwork. George is intrigued and somewhat confused, yet he agrees and the shadowy journey into the Rhode family history and this strange property begins.
The journey in Lunacy: Saint Rhodes starts at the outskirts of Rhodes Village, an ominous and run-down village similar to the one seen in Resident Evil Village; from there, you must make your way to the main house. You arrive first in a very dense forest area at night with lots of wind and in the middle of a thunderstorm. This is also where the basics of gameplay are explained, such as crouching and moving or cleaning your glasses, as they can get dusty or wet. Another part of having to clean your glasses would be to clean the blood off of them when attacked by an entity, as it will obscure your vision.
Having learned the basics and found the first point, along with the first house you are able to access on your spooky journey, you will discover strategically placed objects which play tricks on the eyes. This gives the atmosphere a great feel and creates an immersive experience while the building of anxiety from simple tricks of the mind is used to hide the many secrets littered throughout the map.
Within the houses in Lunacy: Saint Rhodes, you will discover hidden secrets, some useful for moving forward, others used to paint a vivid picture of the history of both the town you are exploring and around the history of the Rhodes family.
Once you make it to the main house, the Rhodes family house mentioned in the inheritance, you will have to scour the house for clues and solve puzzles that will help you move forward in hopes of finding out the horrors that had befallen the Rhodes family and the rest of the residents of the village. To do this, you must consult your journal often when it comes to finding clues for the puzzles hidden within its lore. You will uncover more of the story hidden within Lunacy: Saint Rhodes through letters, torn journal entries, and the characters’ interactions with each other.
As the story unfolds in Lunacy: Saint Rhodes, you will find photos that will trigger the family tree mechanic. The tree will grow as you find out about more family members, creating twists to the story as you make sense of who you are as the character, along with the darker and much more twisted past that plagues your very bloodline.
Once you have found the key items to moving forward in the house, such as finding the basement, you will get to experience the game’s more haunting aspects. When you activate a device in the basement, it’ll send you to the human world into a demonic nightmare bathed in a red and black atmosphere. This demonic world has some stealth aspects to it, so while patience is key, crouching and watching where you walk would be your best bet.
After making it to the other side and completing the objectives, a new mechanic will be introduced to you. You will find a palm-sized blue crystal that later finds itself embedded within a skull that reveals items hidden from the naked eye. Using the crystal too much will attract unwanted attention from shadowy beings intent on killing you, although they aren’t the only things hunting you within the darkness of the night. In order to get away from the beings, you will need to charge and release a pulse of energy from the crystal. It won’t kill these shadow beings on the first pulse, but pulsing it a second time will cleanse the shadow from existence.
Although the shadows only appear in large groups when you walk the roads between buildings, you will still have to face beings that are just as, if not more dangerous, within the homes of both the Adams and Rhodes families. When you explore the Adams family home, you will come across a maze beneath the house. Through the twisting tunnels, you will need to charge crystal balls with power, though something sinister stalks the maze halls. This being cannot be repulsed by the skull like the shadows.
This is where picking up journal entries come in handy. There is an entry in the journal that shows how to draw sigils to trap and banish entities. Making use of this, you can draw sigils in designated points in the maze that trap the entity and eventually kill it. The trap sigils can be charged multiple times by using the crystal in the skull.
The controls were really smooth, and there weren’t any issues when making use of the different items that you picked up. The animations for the journal, map, and family tree being opened work in a similar way to a pause button which allows you to navigate or check lore while running for your life.
The visual effects for Lunacy: Saints Rhodes were really smooth. The game was optimized really well when it came to chasing sequences or even when there were large groups of entities on the screen, and even the small details such as broken bottles or pots have been added that adds to the fact that the house and village have been abandoned for a long time. There were even cockroaches which, if you watched them carefully, would lead you to hidden rooms.
The animations of the entities were really well done, especially the animation of the entity that lives within the Rhodes Mansion, as she is one of the few you have a lot of encounters with. While the animations of the spirits, in the beginning, lead you into a false sense of comfort as you get used to their movements and animations, making it easier to figure out how to get around them. This can quickly change into a more erratic and harder-read pattern if you get too complacent, especially in chase scenes where more entities can spawn.
The sound engineering was brilliant; everything from the sound effects to the voice acting raised the immersion of the game. The sound effects and music worked together really well in order to add to the highly immersive feel as you walked around.
The voice actors managed to convey the emotions that their characters were feeling at that point in time. Whether it was anger, sadness, or even confusion, it was done well and added to the immersive feel. Overall, Lunacy: Saint Rhodes is a fun, immersive, first-person survival horror with a chilling yet compelling storyline that keeps you interested as you find out more about the horrors that befall the Rhodes Family.
