Sophie’s Curse is from an era of small indie horror games that came and never really left. A short point-and-click horror experience focused around one or two game mechanics and a big spooky monster. It is nothing to shy from when you are looking to make a game, and quite a few of them out there manage to create memorable experiences. Although Sophie’s Curse is not really what you could call a “bad” game, it is hardly worth a recommendation. It must have been a nice experience for the developer and the people that found its proposal worth their time, and I wish all of them more of those. But taking into account all the good games there are out there, especially this cheap, I cannot really encourage you to play it.
Aesthetically speaking, there is nothing that really stands out about Sophie’s Curse. It is not a very pretty game and does not strike me as very unique. For starters, it is hard to understand what the black borders all around the screen, or the choppy frame rate of the transitions between each location are meant to accomplish. It could be that the goal was to create an aesthetic of its own, but it feels more jarring than anything and makes the game look dated even for its time. Aside from that, there is nothing very interesting about the environment itself, you are in a regular house after all, one that is supposed to be lived in. I would say that the lighting can create interesting moments were it not for the soundscape that spoils each apparition of the monster. Speaking of which, Sophie is nothing really special either. She’s a ghost of some sort who looks like a corpse. There is nothing particularly striking about her either. You’ve seen this monster a hundred times now on the internet.
So, Sophie’s Curse is a point-and-click; what else? Well, you are in a spooky house to look after an elderly man who’s already asleep. But really, what motivates you to be here is that you are looking for ghosts with your pal Henry, who will be messaging you from time to time on the computer in the kitchen. It’s not clear what the two of you want to accomplish, especially since Henry tells you about Sophie like you have never heard about her before coming here. Anyhow, there is some lighting equipment lying around the house that needs recharging. If one light goes out of battery, the whole system goes into shutdown and needs to reboot, leaving you vulnerable. So, you have to keep the lights on, but not too much. Sophie’s going to get angry if you do it in her face, which you’ll hear from time to time. This forces you to listen carefully and avoid doing anything for a few seconds. Lights can glitch, forcing you to solve a mini game on the computer to reset them before a timer goes off. Finally, Sophie can get curious enough to get a good look at you, at which point you’ll have to run in the opposite direction. You have to survive these hazards from 7PM to 7AM. The gameplay would be fine were it not for the fact most of these mechanics seem to overlap in contradicting ways. Sophie can appear just as the timer was going off or a light was about to run out of juice, resetting the whole thing. It makes the game very easy and bombards you with useless information more than it overwhelms you with stressful tasks. It is also quite buggy sometimes. Sophie can still get you even if you run the opposite way because you might have triggered the jump scare at the same time you begining to run away.
Sound-wise, I do not have nice things to say about the game. It being a jump scare-fest is already an uphill battle with most people’s enjoyment of a horror game, but this one really goes below the belt. Your cue that Sophie is around is usually a very faint sound of her breathing, forcing you to keep listening closely. Of course, that’s just so the game can startle you easier when she does show up in front of you, or kills you, with a big screamer. It’s not scary, it’s not original, and you’ll get more annoyed each time it happens. Other than that, the lack of music and the abundance of sounds that seem to be stock effects doesn’t help to create something memorable.
That’s what there is to say about Sophie’s Curse overall. It’s not a bad experience because it’s an awful game per say. But it misses the mark because it doesn’t really want to be anything more than a spooky horror game that uses the most conventional and cliché techniques the genre was full of at the time it came out. It’s only a small game that probably got the developer some attention, and that’s what matters in the end. Hopefully they made some better, more heartfelt games later on!
