CALENDULA (PC) review "Fatal error"

A knee-jerk reaction kicks up when you begin CALENDULA. You see the Unity logo appear and immediately think this is another one of “those” games. You've played through enough cheap horror on Steam that any sight of Unity or FPS Maker draws an instant cringe, even though chances are you've played your share of fantastic titles made with the former. Still, Unity has garnered an ill reputation over the years, so seeing its name pop up at the beginning of scary fare doesn't bode well.

And honestly, that woe works in the game's favor here...

You see, already the game is building expectations by telling you it's a Unity-made offering. Your mind likely works at that moment to dredge up some banal mess of tired cliches and familiar assets, unaware that you're barely going to cross the title screen... This one wants you assume you're hopping into a standard video game so it can more effectively commit to its con: by presenting itself as an actual game that players can never truly start.

You see, CALENDULA isn't your traditional horror app, as you begin the experience by not even technically beginning it. Its Steam page touts it as a “game that doesn't want to be played,” and it quickly makes that notion apparent as it fails to let you embark in earnest. Upon opting for a new game, you receive an error message telling you its current video settings are not adequate. So you dink around in the options menu, hoping the popup is part of an act and not a sincere mark against your system. You eventually locate a box that says “mirror,” which you check off. The screen distorts and flashes, then sends you back to the introductory animations.



Upon reentering the main menu, you try again. “New Game” predictably does nothing, but you notice there's a save file you can load named “Genesis.” The file loads and you enter an eerie, dimly lit hallway, unable to turn completely around or venture back. You can only march onward toward a dark door, realizing you have no way of escaping whatever could lie behind it. After all, this affair doesn't want to be played, so what better way stymieing your efforts than to force you into certain death? You don't linger in this world long, though, as the game eventually ushers you back to the its main menu.

This piece works like a cursed or haunted piece of media, similar to offerings like Pony Island or SIMULACRA. Your objective concerns figuring out how to get into the “game” itself, while the app bars you from advancing beyond its title screen. At first, your solutions prove cut and dry. You click a box here, mess with an function there, and you get glimpses of an otherworldly place with no provided context or setup. You wander hallways made of raw meat, venture down staircases and into infernal temples, and even find yourself in a pure white room surrounded by hundreds of eyes. This title doesn't go out of its way to frighten or jolt you. It's more of an unsettling piece that takes you through surreal environments that, simply put, just feel malevolent.

That's all part of perception, really, and it's a reminder that we all expect horror works to unfold as if they're dramatic events, tales, or retellings of haunting experiences. You know, ghost stories, allegories, and the like. CALENDULA isn't really any of those things. Here, you catch flashes of perplexing images and areas that feel so alien and out-of-place that their mere presence is terrifying. You aren't sure what you're seeing, but the way its presented immediately tells you it can't be anything good.



So you press onward, receiving clues from an ominous eye located at the bottom of the menu. Sometimes, you need to fiddle with centering to uncover a code that allows you to load another save file. Other times, you mess with the color saturation to unveil another hint. One of the most vexing segments involves the screen splitting up into tiny, scrambled squares, rendering navigation through the title screen a nightmare. You do the best you can to maneuver your cursor, but doing so is difficult when it's on the left-hand side one second, then in the bottom right the next, then upper center after that... You soon find out you must screw with the resolution to progress.

Honestly, I would evaluate this product as a brilliant horror piece, were it not for one bugged segment. The aforementioned chamber full of eyes has a tendency to crash, as something doesn't quite load properly. There two workarounds players have found for this, and only one worked for me. In one solution, you do a hard reboot of the game by closing it out on your desktop and restarting it. This measure doesn't always work, though, as some folks reported performing these actions numerous times before the game finally worked properly, if at all.



Here's what worked for me, though: going into my Nvidia control panel and capping this game specifically at 59 FPS. Apparently something about the animation doesn't work properly for some systems, causing the game to fail to load a critical part of the eye stage. I'm glad I was able to discover a way around this issue, but really I shouldn't have had to spend time hitting up Google to figure out how to continue the campaign.

Despite that one stumbling block, though, CALENDULA remains a solid, unnerving work of surreal horror trapped within a cursed program. If you're tired of haunted houses filled with poorly written notes or outings where you run away from monsters acquired from asset packs, then this is your ticket out of Steam's dumpster full of overly familiar nonsense.

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (October 24, 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.