Distraint (PC) review "Vicious cycle"

There are two things you can count on with combat-free horror games: puzzles and insanity. As you've probably guessed, the 2D adventure title Distraint features both...

This one puts you in control of Mr. Price, a man who is about as battle-hardened as a necktie. You can tell from the get-go he isn't going to be fighting monsters or gunning down zombies. Instead, he's evicting vulnerable people from their homes with the prospect of becoming a partner for his employer, McDade, Bruton & Moore. So not only is this guy not much of a warrior, he's pretty much a little weasel. Sure, he's a nice guy, but let's face it: he's complicit in helping an exploitative system continue with its exploitation.

Price says he doesn't want to evict his first victim, a widowed old woman living in a rundown apartment who is now financially destroyed by an inheritance tax after her husband's death. However, he never musters the spine to do otherwise. He tells her he feels “really bad,” then distrains her living space. What follows after that key moment sets everything into motion...

Distraint cuts to the chase quickly. Its presentation start and remain fittingly dingy and dark, perfect for the kind of narrative-heavy with a bleak message. That's just the tip of the iceberg, though. You leave the woman's apartment, and a door mysteriously falls off its hinges. You try to summon the elevator, but to no avail. Instead, you enter the newly opened shadowy apartment, a TV pops on, and you glimpse a bloodied corpse sitting in a chair, its owner's head now spaghetti sauce on the wall behind it.



The game also wastes no time in throwing inventory puzzles at you. You come across a locked door and roll your eyes. Cool, I have to find a key. How inventive. However, you don't locate a key at first. Instead, you collect an ice cube from a bathtub, take it to the kitchen, melt it in the oven, and then get a key. Not long after that, you solve another basic puzzle that requires you to place books on shelves. Damn, this one is already off to a dull start...

Sure, it sounds like this one's going to bore you to tears, but then it gets steadily more surreal. In one room, Price's bosses randomly appear and start dancing while congratulating him on his ruthless tactics. In the next room, examining a corpse triggers a monstrous, undead creature to appear and chase him off the screen. After that, his deceased parents appear and drink his coffee, and the old woman he dealt with earlier materializes all over the place, usually crying her eyes out.

As you advance, puzzles grow a bit more elaborate, and Price loses more and more of his humanity and sanity. His journey takes him through a forest, a retirement home, a cemetery, and back to another apartment complex where can huff drug fumes emanating from the walls to get high and access parts of the building he can't see while sober. All the while, horrific visions appear and push his mind further over the edge. In one segment, he hunts for a lost dog and finds her dining on human entrails. Another moment sees him giving human flesh to a cook so he can prepare a meaty meal, all so Price can access a particular room and visit its tenant.



Puzzles thankfully avoid becoming convoluted, and instead pick up in regards to creativity and challenge factor. The aforementioned drug-fueled stage stands as probably the toughest, where you must breathe in a green mist, enter doors or interact with stimuli that only appear when you're stoned, and hope you don't come down before you finish any given task. You go through all of this so you can visit another person with property to distrain, where you find out he'll only agree to leave peacefully if you hire a band so he can have a killer party before moving out.

So you go back, inhale more whatever-the-hell-it-is, and find additional items and meet further people to solve this one.

The final segment reveals the cruelty of your employers, but it almost feels unnecessary. We know how cruel they are. We just watched Price do their dirty work. After that, you get an epilogue. I won't give much away, but things really come full circle here, so much that you might question why there's a sequel...

Brevity stands as the game's biggest asset. Its puzzles are not drawn-out; even the last one doesn't take super long to complete. Overall, its campaign wraps up quickly because the game doesn't bog you down with huge areas to search or piles of items to secure. Hell, your inventory only has three slots, and you almost never fill all three of them. So yeah, this one is on the easy side, but to its benefit. Little of the experience comes across as padding, and it comes together nicely.



My only major complaint is that you never really get a sense of impending doom here. Sure, the events play out in creepy fashion, but there's no real sense of danger. You don't feel a sense of moral dilemma because you already know Price is going to do the corrupt thing, only to, “Gosh, golly, I sure feel sore about doing that.” Do you, though?

Ultimately, Distraint is a worthwhile title to check out. It's not difficult, which helps it move along efficiently, but it also doesn't really put you in a position where you fear for your life or values. Neither do you fear for its protagonist's humanity or sanity because you know pretty well that neither of those things are going to survive. You only hope for a satisfying outcome, be it bright or poignant, before the credits roll.

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (October 21, 2026) 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.