Otherworldly (Switch) review "Treasure hunting has never been so dull..."

Otherworldly does a fair job of playing itself up before the game begins in earnest. Its store page talks mentions that it's set in a “dungeon-like place,” but then claims that calling it a dungeon would be underestimating its power. Well, that sounds promising... So you purchase it and begin the affair, only to get a short, effective premise thrown your way. The “Totally Not a Dungeon Because That Would be an Understatement” turns out to be loaded with riches that have lured a handful of hopeful thieves into the unhallowed halls. However, none have returned. No one knows what became of them, but witnesses reported horrified screams emanating from “I Know This Place Looks Like a Dungeon, but It's Not, You Guys.” And you're left wondering what sort of horrors the previous plunderers met down there...

The answer is: pretty much the kind of horrors you would see at Spirit Halloween...

You see, this title doesn't offer much beyond a shallow concept and objective. You enter Super Dungeon 5000, look for anything that sparkles and isn't nailed down, snatch it, and run. Should you amass at least $5000, you can then head for an exit and be done with that session. Of course, it's not like this place sports electric lighting so you can see where you're going. You must provide your own illumination with the whopping four matches your character decides to bring down. Thankfully, you can locate additional matches or even a longer lasting candle during your adventure.

This quest might sound like a simple in-and-out job, but there are two things preventing you from escaping alive. One of them comes in the form of basic skeletons, like the type someone might put in their yard on Halloween. They spawn and follow you like lost puppies, occasionally wearing down your health and sanity. Good thing ol' “Better Than Your Average Dungeon Because It's, Like, Scarier” provides food in the form of apples that pop up occasionally.



Wait, why does this place offer nourishment? It's got killer skeletons and floor gratings that expel super-heated steam obviously meant to kill you, but it's also like, “Hey, buddy! I know I'm kicking your ass for trying to steal my pretties, but here! Have a bite! My treat!” It's like getting a massage at a torture chamber...

Skeletons, if nothing else, annoy the hell out of you because they block your path. Occasionally, you walk into a room full of impassible fixtures, and the bone daddies decide to mosey in and stand in place, thereby permanently trapping you in the chamber. Your only option at that point is to exit to the main menu and restart. Yeah, you can fail without even dying, and somehow it feels more like a flaw than a product of challenge. Never mind that the game's default analog sensitivity renders obtaining items needlessly tricky. More often than not, if you find something to pick up, you spend a ridiculous amount of time positioning the reticle just right so you can actually interact with the item. By the time you secure it, a skeleton is likely to move into the doorway and force you to reboot your adventure...

By now, you're probably asking some questions that unravel the experience's logic. The protagonist knew they were entering a dark, dangerous domain, and yet they only brought four whole matches and no weaponry? Not even something small like a dagger or a candle? Seriously? Look, I understand leaving combat out of the affair to maintain fear factor, but there are ways to utilize a rudimentary battle system that makes sense in-universe while keeping things creepy. Silent Hill, for instance... If nothing else, fighting would have prevented those instances where skeletons screw you out of a win by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You don't even need to kill them, either. You could use a strike that merely pushes them aside, and that would've been adequate.



Things only worsen as you venture deeper into the corridors and meet the actual horror stalking the grounds: a spider-like skeletal monster that chases you relentlessly and kills you with almost no trouble. Honestly, if you attract this thing's attention, you're pretty much screwed. You can attempt to double back to the exit, but you can only escape this place if you managed to find a lockpick on top of nabbing the required $5000. Otherwise, you're just going to be another body added to the environment for creepy effect when another would-be thief shows up...

And that's it. No, seriously: I've gone over just about all the game's material, save for the occasional jump scare caused by apparitions that pop up and temporarily rob you of sanity. Otherworldly comes with a paper-thin amount of content, featuring procedurally generated hallways and chambers full of dusty, old devices and ruined tables. There's nothing about this place that separates it from any dungeon seen in almost any other crawler. Despite what its store page tells you, this game's “world” makes up the bare minimum of what you would expect from a dungeon.



By now, you've probably seen the “procedurally generated” part and figured something out: difficulty hinges on the hand you're dealt. Remember, you can only leave if you locate at least $5000 worth of treasure and a lockpick. During my second session, I managed to snatch exactly that amount of goods and find a lockpick in short order, running only into one skeleton and just barely scraping by the spidery horror, eventually hopping through the door. The playthrough took maybe five minutes. My reward was nothing, save for the satisfaction of knowing I survived. I was then challenged to try again and beat my old score, like we're living in the early '80s or something. Yeah, I remember doing this sort of thing with Asteroids way back, but come on, the medium has advanced so far since then. Even modern score attackers offer something besides just the knowledge that you've beating a personal record...

Honestly, Otherworldly features about twenty minutes worth of game, almost all of which you can experience in a single session. It doesn't showcase a running storyline or a campaign, but thrusts you into bland voyages into a basic dungeon that's played up to be something grander than it actually is. It's shallow on almost every front, offering an experience that feels decades behind the curve. Nothing about this piece actually comes across as “otherworldly.” If anything, for a dark fantasy work, it's quite ordinary.

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (October 17, 2023) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.