The Urge

Welp, I'm a serial killer with my latest victim.

I have an interest in serial killers, but I’m not a big fan of graphic gore.So this game hits a good spot for me.

The first scene is of the protagonist torturing their victim. There are ‘funny’ tortures you can use as an alternative to gory ones. These strike a weird note that’s not quite funny enough. There’s none of this sort of humour in the rest of the game so I can only imagine it’s here for the squeamish players.

There is a point where if you run a red light you end up in prison. I played the other branch where you wait for the light, and enter a romantic storyline. I didn't replay to explore the prison story line.

The rest of the game is a sort of slice of life as the killer falls in love, dates a person they don’t want to murder, and they move in together. It’s kind of ordinary. The observation about putting aside your own interests and hobbies a bit when you’re part of a relationship is well-trodden ground already. Contrasting the killer’s wildly unorthodox murders with the commonplace activities of work, cooking and coupledom is slightly interesting but isn’t developed.

Unfortunately there’s no strong punchy point the game wants to make. It gets full playthrough from me because I like serial killer stories. There’s only two points where you can make a meaningful choices, which is disappointing. The author is telling me a story, but sadly not a story that engages me.

The text effects are decent and spooked me out once – where a description of a potential victim is suddenly interspersed with KILL CHOP MURDER in red letters.

I like that the characters are all non-gender-specific.