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Review
This game was originally made as a tabletop RPG and then converted into Twine years later.
It features a pretty great storyline about seven women who conceived children from a devil (or so rumours go), one of which is you. You have demonic power like using spectres and giving your blood to spirits for more power. Your goal is to find out the truth behind your birth and to determine your future.
The game is very complex, with multiple areas, each with their own encounters, and each encounter being a large puzzle.
There is art (handdrawn and then enhanced by AI, a process that makes it more coherent than pure AI), which helps the game quite a bit.
The big draw here, outside of the art and story, is the combat. And this is also why I'm giving a lower score than the other reviewers (but would be happy to revise upward if the author feels it's unfair).
You see, the way combat works is that you and your opponent(s) alternate turns. You have 2 actions (at first) and your opponent has a varying number of actions.
One action can be used to summon a spirit or spectre to help you. Doing so costs blood. Each spirit starts with one ability that costs a few 'control points' and one that costs all control points. It's helpful to save the 'all control' points one for last.
You can also spend you action using an item or attacking with a relic (a weapon).
The issue is that using your abilities gives yourself damage, and your enemy gives damage. That means you lose health very quickly. You have two rations in your inventory that can heal you, and occasionally you can rest, but essentially there is no way to just go out there and grind combat to level up. In 3 different attempted playthroughs on three different difficulties (completed only on easy) I wasn't able to level up myself (apparently there are classes?), barely levelled up one relic by paying for it, and never reached the level 2 abilities of the spirits. Every early enemy is very hard, each beatable alone but not 2 or 3 in a row.
Reading other reviews, it seems like everyone is in the same situation. Rovarsson beat it on hard with 5 fights by save scumming but mentions never having health. The other reviews on here also mention that as well.
Even on the easiest mode, there isn't really a way to heal, just skip fights.
Now, I'm sure there is some reasonable way to play through and hit up a lot of encounters and level up items. The author mentions some combos of attacks; there are spectres with abilities like 'boost next attack' and 'do triple damage' which could theoretically one-shot people. But all of that takes damage to summon the spirits.
I think this would work better as a TTRPG, as intended, because there the DM or player can 'fudge' things if it gets too intense. But for right now, as a computer game, I just don't see any way to play through and level up yourself or abilities. If the author provided a sample walkthrough for the first two chapters, like suggestions on who to fight first or how to get stronger, that would be interesting and helpful.
