Exorcism: Case Zero

The art direction is excellent and the theme is spot on. I love the idea of an exorcism simulator, and sales blurb sounds like the kind of resource balancing I would enjoy. Unfortunately, the gameplay does not live up to the theme, not by a long shot. Gameplay suffers from repetition and a serious lack of depth. There simply aren’t enough interesting decisions to make or compelling things to manage. Core gameplay revolves around the 4 Exorcism Rites buttons. You click one of these buttons and an animation plays that adds or subtracts points to the various pools, such as Faith, Stamina, Host Health, etc. But these four decisions just aren’t very compelling or fun. There are various combos to consider, but it’s all very clunky and obtuse. For being the core game, these buttons aren’t very engaging or interactive. You push one of the buttons, and a very repetitive animation plays in the background for awhile. By your 2nd or third playthrough, you aren’t even paying attention to these Exorcisim Rites at all. You push the button and ignore it, watching the screen for “monsters” to click on. When the Exorcism Rite animation finally ends, you choose the next button. Its clunky and doesn’t flow well with the rest of the game. And the resource management “combos” just aren’t all that fun or compelling—Its weirdly granular, vague, and unintuitive for a game that is mostly trying to be a “Task Juggler” like Five Nights At Freddies or Diner Dash. Most of all though, the Exorcism Rites, resource management, combo move game is just not very fun. I discussed the gameplay some with the very polite game developer, who explained some of the philosophies in his game design, but in the end, you can’t explain away lack of fun. Beyond the 4 Exorcism Buttons, there are a few other things to juggle, but they aren’t very compelling either, and they seem unrelated to the core “exorcism combo game”. While the exorcism rite animation is playing in the background, you will stare at the screen watching for monsters to appear. When a monster appears, you click on it, and the monster vanishes. That’s it. If you don’t click on the monster fast enough, you will take a hit to your Stamina or Faith points. Its vaguely fun looking for that creepy baby doll when you hear the crying, then you click on it and it vanishes. None of the “monsters” do anything but take hit points if you don’t click them fast enough. No depth means no interesting decisions. Some of these monsters should do different things, like sap your Stamina over time so you can make an interesting decision such as, “should I deal with this low attrition monster now, or take the small Faith drain and deal with something else?” Instead its just a question of reflexes and paying attention. Your exorcism rite is playing in the background, so you don’t even have to think about that, its just, “did I see that baby doll fast enough or did I click on that bat fast enough?” No Depth. In Five Nights at Freddies or Diner Dash, you have a lot of different things to consider. Freddies Monsters all have different behaviors and effects to consider. Diner Dash has dozens of timed tasks to manage, and all of depth flows together into cohesive gameplay that flows well. But Case zero seems to have two, clunky mini-games that don’t flow together or interact much. Game 1 is the 4 Exorcism Buttons (Not very fun or very interactive). Game 2 is clicking on the “monsters” fast enough. You don’t play either of these games at the same time. You pick an exorcism button, then stop playing that game while you play the reflex game of clicking on monsters. Then you go back to the Exorcism button game and choose another button before going back to the reflex game. None of this gameplay is very compelling. There are some flies that flock on your screen and obscure your vision and the interface a little. They are sort of cool, but are mostly a minor annoyance. Other than that, its just clicking on whatever apparition or bat that’s flying at you. It just vanishes when you click on it. Wouldn’t it be more fun if I had to choose the correct cross or holy water or bible to use on each monster, and actually do something other than just clicking it away? I’m one of the first reviews on this game, and I predict you will see a lot of people give it a thumbs up and talk about how creepy it is because the art direction is so good. But most of these people won’t have more than 1 or 2 hours of playtime, because the art direction gets old FAST and alone isn’t enough to carry the game beyond an hour or two. $5 isn’t a ton of money, but I have more than 30 games in my wishlist that cost $5 – It adds up, and I feel like I made a mistake choosing this game over several others I’m considering. At time of review, I’m sitting on 2.5 hours of time on Case Zero, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to request a refund.