Hope Deferred

This game feels like the unholy union between King's Field, Baroque, and the colour scheme of Dario Argento's Suspiria. Absolutely rancid vibes, deeply uncomfortable to play, disarmingly personal, generally cryptic as all hell. I love it.

shoutout to the dev for the free code, and to the Sword of Moonlight community

2/10 almost nothing here - not worth 20$ + works on windows 7

---{ Graphics }--- ☑ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☑ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☑ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☐ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☑ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☑ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☑ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☑ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☑ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☑ 10 ---{ Hope }--- ☑ Deferred

Playing Hope Deferred felt like stepping into a surreal nightmare I couldn’t shake off. The puzzles kept messing with my mind, making every corner feel unpredictable. I kept getting lost but in a way that made me want to explore more and piece things together. Fighting enemies felt slow and kind of pointless, so I just sneaked past most of them. Overall, the game’s strange vibe and atmosphere kept me hooked from start to finish.

There are many things I could type here, but the "about this game" section on the store page nicely outlines what to expect—rarely have I seen something so honest. If there's anything else I could add, it's that I don't think I'll ever look at wooden signs the same way again.

Firstly, a thank you to the dev who gave me a code at a convention and told me a little about the game! I think the game nails the old PSX aesthetic! The imagery is amazing. It's very simple, but everything has just enough detail to make each spot feel like a real, lived-in place, like it could exist. The story is a little confusing, but I feel this was done on purpose, as our character is supposed to be in a religious psychosis. It feels like it's meant to be told through the environment and with the characters themselves and their actions, not their dialogue per se. At the beginning of the game, I had wished the fighting mechanics were a little more drawn out, but the more I played, the more I realized most of the hostile NPCs are there for you to move faster, keep you out of an area, and contribute to the environmental storytelling. It works pretty well with the oppressive feeling the game is giving off. I had a lot of fun finding all those little hidden paths, opening every door and chest I could find. It was a blast to find a new key and then suddenly remember a whole area I’d forgotten about. Then go back and sometimes get a whole new unlocked area or a new spell or armor piece.

Absolutely loving this so far. It's a shame modern gamers pretty much guarente we'll never get a AAA game like this ever again, but its amazing that indie devs are picking up the slack. I know this one started development a long while ago, but so many KF-likes are starting to pop up now, and I am SO for it. Especially games built in the SoM engine RIP Mick, aka Holy Diver, your work on the SoM plugin will be legendary.

A very strong argument for "video games as art". My time with this game is much greater than my Steam hours because I had to use the Sword of Moonlight Game Launcher to circumvent one of the bugs softlocking the game (that may be patched in the future, but SoM is expectedly finicky on modern hardware); it almost feels like cursed software at a point when the game is already an incredibly surreal experience, even the glitches feel within the realm of intention. Hope Deferred attempts to make the player as uncomfortable as possible; it's made in the King's Field engine without dungeon crawling, combat is actively discouraged by being risky and tedious, and certain areas revolve around *platforming* in an engine designed for walking flat dungeon floors. Everything in this game subconsciously feels "wrong" from the start, not to mention the overt hostility in sound design and color filter in the first area. Hope Deferred is adjacent to psychological horror that descends into a narrative of trauma and depression, yet still feels oddly comforting and highly personal at points. It has an insane amount of secrets to uncover, a good sense of humor, an insane developer, and a very touching story. This is among those games that changed me, like Drakengard or Evergrace. Well done fairy baddie Tell All 10/10 I'm forever tormented + the moon is a woman because I like to look at her

Why did YOU go to Hell? Hope Deferred is not like other Sword of Moonlight Engine games. Yes, it has the combat staples you'd expect, it has melee and spells, and it has esoteric NPC dialogue and signage, but there's much more here than simply another homage to early From Soft games. Hope Deferred is a game that references all sorts of games and media that came before it, not the least of which in how it almost never directs you on your journey. You begin in a cell, surrounded by other prisoners, with no where to go. None of the prisoners want to leave, being too afraid of the jailor and the punishment that comes with disobedience. If you manage to escape, you'll be on your own, and just about everyone you meet will tell you the same thing, "There is no escape". Will you attempt to make it to the end regardless? Hope Deferred is more of an experience than a game. You can play it like you would most any other game, but if you choose to look a little deeper and consider what options are truly available to you, you might discover what lies at the depths of this experience. Regardless of how you decide to engage with this game, it is a dark and sometimes disturbing foray into sin, punishment, despair, and the thoughts that survivors have when they are left behind. I don't think anyone will play this game and then have nightmares, the dread and horror are much more existential than experienced, but the subject matter explored here is the kind that most people prefer to leave well enough alone. The whole game can be completed relatively quickly if you know what you're doing, but due to the lack of direction, there's a good chance that you'll be wandering around, searching for what to do next, without any real idea of what the game wants you to do. Depending on how you feel about lack of direction, you'll either love this or hate it. I wouldn't recommend this game to people who just want a good time, or are looking to scratch their Kings field itch, as that's not really what's on offer here. But if you view games as being experiences and you want one that's unlike most others, this game is a real gem. Hope may be deferred, but that doesn't mean it's gone forever