It's always commendable when a developer decides to create a game that revolves around folklore from their own culture. Home Sweet Home did an outstanding job bringing a chilling tale centered around Thai mythology to life. Paper Dolls was an incredible homage to terror from Chinese legends. Now Pulang: Insanity promises to do the same, it's a psychological horror game that is steeped in Indonesian culture and superstition. It isn't necessarily a first for the genre (DreadOut, Pamali), but it definitely is an under-explored mythos in the world of horror.
The biggest element that seems to be make-or-break for most people regarding this title and its 'mixed' rating on Steam is the story. As aforementioned, it's a psychological tale, and as usual with all stories of the type the narrative can be pretty confusing if you're not fully invested in the experience. You play a man named Rudy, who lives in a lavish mansion with his wife and daughter. The mansion seems to have problems of its own, as you come to find out all of the maids have quit, and his young daughter is acting weird. Before acquiring all of his luxuries, Rudy lived an unemployed life, drowning in debt and poverty, until one day he performed the Pesugihan ritual; a black magic spell where the caster becomes instantly rich beyond their wildest dreams, but they must keep performing offerings to satisfy the Toyol (an undead infant that is conjured within the ritual). Of these offerings, a minimum of three human sacrifices are needed.
The story evolves from there, and although it takes the long way around, it gradually unravels the closer you get to the end of the game. Eventually, everything is spelled out during the final sequence to clear up any confusion that may come along with its convoluted telling. That said, the plot is told in such a way that it keeps your mind focused on the game, and it keeps you pondering exactly what happened between Rudy and his family. The voice acting is actually pretty good, the translation is very well done, and there is enough turn-taking between cutscenes and note pick ups to keep even the most nit-picky horror fanatic satiated at how the tale is conveyed.
As for gameplay, Pulang: Insanity is your typical horror walking simulator, complete with key and object finding; at least that's how it presents itself during the first hour of its campaign. It has a deeply immersive atmosphere that hearkens back to the Silent Hill franchise, an inspiration that can even be seen during its main menu sequence. The environments are teeming with fog and rain effects, and the graphics look really superb for a low budget indie title. The sound effects really suck the player into the midst of it all, and the droning ambient soundtrack is the cherry on the cake that tops off what would be an overall complete package of mesmerizing terror. That is, if the game didn't suddenly change direction half-way through. It's at the midway point that you'll discover that there are multiple one-hit kill enemies, and that their AI is a frustrating implementation that completely tears apart all of the deeply engaging content that the developer strived to create up to this point.
There are only a few different "enemies", and from what I could tell by the patch notes the problem that I'm going to talk about has only been an issue since May 2020, when there was a patch to make the "enemy AI more aggressive". Essentially, you'll come upon a few areas where there are some floating monsters who follow you around. That's about all they do, if you run into them you die, but with the developer's update they follow you so fast that you can barely escape them. It also doesn't matter if you turn off your light source, crouch, or try to hide; they don't need to see you to follow you. In fact, when you load into an area that has one of these foes, they'll completely make a B-line straight for you from their spawn location, and since they're ghosts they'll just clip through all other objects and houses. There's an invisible string tethering you to them, and the most irritating thing is that you'll end up running straight into them every single time. The worst is a bird-like creature much later in the game that is so fast you cannot outrun it once you ever see it, and you can't miss it. This is where I quit and just watched a walkthrough instead, where someone who played this title back at release didn't have these issues.
Another problem that does need addressing, albeit to a lesser extent, is the optimization. Running this game on an i7-6700k/GTX 1080 at a resolution of 1080p, I was unable to find any setting where I pulled a stable 60 FPS. For context, though a bit dated, my rig can still run every modern AAA title at 60+ FPS effortlessly. At worst, the frames fell to 40 FPS, and this mostly seems to happen both outside during the rain, and with the flashlight on. The problem becomes less prominent further into the game when you have to use the lantern, and when the areas are more closed in.
Pulang: Insanity really his the nail on the head in almost every single way. The manner in which it tells its story, which utilizes a great variety of both cutscenes and notes, is very close to an AAA grade title. Though some may argue that the plot is overly complex, it's all explained in the end and if you really follow the lore and the notes, it's easy enough to at least keep a thumb on what's happening and what may have potentially gone down. Additionally, the game houses some of the most immersive atmosphere and ambience that you'll have the pleasure of coming across in a small indie release, and the developer was able to successfully recreate that Silent Hill feeling in a lot of different ways. It's too bad that a game that has so much going for it has to get a refund and a non-recommendation due to something as simple as incredibly frustrating AI that borderline breaks the entire game. If this can be fixed, I'll turn my negative review into a positive one, and implement a higher rating.
[h1]Rating: [b]3.0/5.0[/b] - Average, can take it or leave it.[/h1]
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