Source of Madness

Foreword: Not AI slop (at least not in the modern sense) This is an older creative use of early generative AI before the slop craze of more recent years, using some generated patterned cutouts to play into the game's narrative themes of eldritch horror, just as early diffusion models produced manmade horrors that were absolutely maddening and eye-straining to look at. What the game has always needed was more polish, especially for its control inputs. Was definitely an interesting art experiment.

I can see some of the points raised in the negative reviews, the game is quite often confusing mostly due to the AI-generated enemies. Yes - I'm reviewing positively a game that has heavily used AI: I think these developers are quite unlucky though as they used it "before it was not cool". It's quite funny that I like how it was used early on - they were crafty with it, and managed to generate some cool lovecraftian monsters - whereas now you just see it used for regurgigated, realistic (but uncanny valley), and mostly stolen from other people's art really as now the models do really excel at that aspect. The main issue with the game is that the combat feels like a very old game, where basically you have to get out of the way of an enemy first and foremost, and if you can guess some of the patterns or understand the animations (if there are any readable ones at all) all the better. If you approach it like this you can have fun, but otherwise you will be frustrated. The roguelike progression also is a bit weirdly done if I'm honest. What I can praise the most is the sound design which is really well done and atmospheric. Some of the creatures and their sounds are genuinely terrify…

I typically don't write reviews, but this is just... nope.

worth trying it out but the AI textures make the game unplayable. i understand it's supposed to be weird and dark and cosmologically evil and stuff but this is purely from a brain perspective. its hard to really understand where the boundaries of objects and creatures begin and end. mobs seemingly have no real rhyme or reason to their shape--they feel like splatters that move around straight out of a dev sandbox engine. the game feels good and the controls are alright and the abilities and trees seem meaningful and engaging to pursue. and its a cool concept lore-wise. but it just feels like no effort was put at all into the textures and the out-of-the-box AI-ness of them doesnt help at all. it hinders it, actually. ie, you think something is meant to be a door, but is it actually just a wall? something so basic and yet its so annoying when trying to just play and enjoy the game. feels like an image was half-rendered and the game was shipped anyway. anyways, good try. try again maybe?

While this game has potential with it's unique art-style, it feels somewhat like the devs gave all ideas into an AI and let it generate the game for them. - Movement is slow and feels squishy. - Weapons feel ok, but don't seem to be balanced (at least not in the beginning) - NPCs are easily overseen in the world - Enemies feel random, as if noone put any thought into them, just threw some fleshy looking bits together - You get thrown into the world without much explanation and don't really feel any purpose - The video bits that apprear random while talking to some NPCs or looking at world-stuff, all look very similar and are neither weird enough to bring out the "madness" of this game, nor are they helpful in any way to understand what's going on - This game lost me after an hour.. Sorry, but there is not much to recommend.. this game felt like a waste of time and didn't bring the eldrich horror to life, as it promotes.

For the price, it can be fun. uses a lot of generative AI. Might need some balancing on the holy cloak because I finished the first act on my first playthrough by healing between fights.