It is September and that means that I am going to be playing more spooky games than normal. Though it is still 75-80 degrees out I am still feeling the upcoming season. I had this week’s demo in the library for only a few days and I am excited to talk about a spooky game that weirdly had me tense the whole time. This week is One-Eyed Likho (ELO for short).

One-Eyed Likho is a first-person horror puzzle game by Morteshka. The game will be released on Steam and has the good old “coming soon.”

ELO is based on a Slavic fairytale, and I know nothing of it. The Likho represents evil and misfortune and is usually depicted as a being with a singular eye. The being lurks in the shadows prowling and spreading inescapable misfortune and misery (Oldworldgods.com).

It makes sense that the player controls a smith who is weirdly concerned with feigning ignorance concerning the Likho and the powers that it wields. The demo immediately drops you into a dense forest with a seemingly quirky tailor in search of misery and anguish. ELO teaches the player through scrolls and manuscripts that there is in fact a being with one eye that was mentioned throughout history, specifically in reading The Odyssey.

You are then immediately plunged into tense, claustrophobic tunnels, solving puzzles and running from an entity that may or may not exist.

ELO is your typical horror walking simulator. You can run and cannot jump. You are given a light source in the form of matches that you can throw to light up dry grass and light the way in dark areas. The puzzles that the demo introduces ease the player into understanding that fire is integral to puzzle solving and that sometimes…unfortunate things may happen to you if you focus too hard on looking for the answers to puzzles.

The game is dark and the greyscale only makes differentiating spooky stuff from literally nothing even more difficult. The game looks really good in the dark and when the matches illuminate the space. The art direction amplifies the spookiness and creates a unique atmosphere that you don’t often in spooky games.

The whole demo had me on edge because I always felt as though someone was behind me, and then turning around to see that no one was there. There were a few spooky parts and I fell for them.

The sound design compliments the rest of the demo well enough. The forever silence coupled with spooky music at certain times makes for a lot of looking to make sure that no one is behind me. If there is no dead silence then it is filled with the sound of wind blowing, especially during the quaint walk through the forest at the beginning of the demo.

One-Eyed Likho is an interesting game. I liked the demo a lot just from the art direction alone. The game is very intuitive; it knows what it wants to get across and it does it well. It introduces the folklore in a way that makes you want to learn more about it, and the puzzles so far do not borderline on complete pacing halters. They are easy and drive the character and the story forward. There are spooky moments but I think that the atmosphere is what drives the spookiness. In all it’s a really good demo for what is to come.

So far, so good for spooky demos/games this year.

Cannot wait to play more of this game when it releases.