Lust for Darkness

Lust for Darkness looked interesting enough to buy at a heavy discount -- some sort of Eyes Wide Shut kind of thing with added horror elements. I didn't expect much from it though. I've seen Playway S.A. publishing a lot of straight up trash on Steam and the developer's name either -- Movie Games Lunarium -- wasn't promising much of an actual game.

Lascivious walking simulator

Compared to Agony -- a similar title -- Lust for Darkness was at least shorter at 3 hours and considerably less janky. Performance was similarly shoddy though and who knows why -- probably just poorly put together. The game doesn't look good enough to be that taxing. Even when Steam overlay was reporting a steady 60 FPS, the game didn't feel smooth enough to be so.

The credits had something about the character models being from somewhere else... Maybe Lust for Darkness is one of them so-called asset-flips. With everyone wearing masks, Lunarium avoided needing to to do facial animations as well.

Gameplay is largely your standard walking simulator stuff with some running away from a monster. A slight touch of stealth and puzzle elements. Jumpscares managed to get me few times; otherwise the game wasn't scary. I did like the Giger-inspired scenery though.

Lust for Darkness has the same problem as Agony: it isn't interesting. Narrative, quality of writing and spelling... everything story related is terrible although the premise definitely wasn't the worst. But shoving naked character models and genitals at the player don't make up for it.

Lunarium is already making a continuation, again backed by crowdfunding. I've put the upcoming title, Lust from Beyond on my wishlist too but I have serious doubts they are able to make a much better game. An early gameplay footage shows they are adding more of everything, even facial animations but we shall see how it turns out.

I still think the theme has potential but I don't know how exactly you'd make a good game out of it. Maybe going more towards an immersive sim would help. You can already open all the drawers and cupboards, pick up stuff to eyeball it. Allow the player to also throw stuff around. Make the world feel more tangible instead of a static exhibition -- more interactivity. And write an intriguing plot naturally.