Recent reviews by DEVIL HYENA GIRL

Unfortunately it locked in an incorrect placement of a tile, providing no way for recovery, and permanently preventing my save from reaching 100% completion. In general the tile error logic is pretty buggy.

All the energy of a haunted video poker machine you find in your gruncle's garage

Really fun and short

Fun little game!

Concluse 2 is what happens when you have so much intense creative energy to put into a project that you just keep pushing on it instead of stopping. It is a game that pauses only briefly to say "can we do this better?" but never stops long enough to worry about its jank. It is confident in what it is delivering upon in a way that can only be induced by lightning, divine inspiration, and the sort of cockiness that more creatives should possess.

The best summary I can give of Concluse 2, as I have given again and again to my friends, is "what if a guy made a Homestuck out of Silent Hill 2." What if the mind-twisting feeling of watching 360p videos of a 19 year old play through Silent Hill on their PSone via YouTube was piped directly into the cosmic planar Original Charactersphere of Homestuck-likes.

Was it Silent Hill 2? Or 3? Or 4? Or the first? Though the planting of Michael's missing wife is the most evocative of 2, the character development plays more straightforwardly ala 3, while maintaining many of the vibes of the first, and some of the surrealist monster designs of 4, and i could name a dozen other media properties off the back of my hand that i'm 95% were direct inspiration. I wish I had this clarity of vision, for I too wish that every time I saw a cool piece on inspiration I *immediately* knew how to expand my magnum opus.

Like an evolving conclusion, the inspirations coalesce into a multi-armed narrative that touches not only parallel, distant worlds; but parallel, alternate paths. Realities played elsewhere, in other times. Should you play Concluse? Should you watch the YouTube series all this is based on? Should you jump directly into Concluse 2? Okay you should definitely jump directly into Concluse 2, and if Chapter 2 title drop of The Drifting Prefecture and the unlocks of the secret mirror universe idol band music videos make your head roll 190° in enthralled confusion *then* proceed to immerse yourself in the rest of the sprawling heap.

I think the thing that surprised me the most about Concluse 2 was two elements: First, the sincerely wonderful scenery design, especially in the titular Drifting Prefecture. The tight city scenery is so deeply evocative, feeling truly like an infested delapitated place, and even on the easiest difficulty settings gave a haunting feeling that I reveled in. Second, the strict adherance to constantly being the coolest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game I've ever played.

This game has such a small team working on it and it's 30 hours long. Do you know how much of it is *cutscenes*? I cannot even begin to describe how many cool things are in this game. So here's a list of some of them:
- You perform mortal combat finishers with a fishing rod in a boss fight
- Fight a giant baby in a tank
- 3D print The New Flesh with the help of a carnivorous eyeball robot
- Arson
- Surprising amounts of regicide
- Michael learns HYPERBEAM
- Throbbing Cronenbergian guns
- Apocalyptic family collapse
- Evil airport
- Fight the evil Grand Wizard. Yeah, that one. No no, yeah. Yeah that one. With the hoods and everything. Kill them. Super dead by the time you're done with them. They try to summon a big worm and it goes horribly for them. It whips.
- Anime Visual Novel portraits
- Duck Dynasty Dad Fight
- Evil Goo
- Evil Goo Drugs
- Thomas Edison sucks ♥♥♥♥ once again

You might at this point say "*what are you talking about*?" and I would tell you that it's a fair point for you to ask me that. Look. I can't say you'll necessarily enjoy this game. You may not even find it particularly playable. There's a lot of jank in here. But there's also a LOT of incredible storytelling that is delivered with such earnest panache that I thoroughly loved every second of it. Do you know when the last time I was hooting and hollering at a video game before this was? I don't remember either, honestly. My brain was basically entirely consumed by Concluse 2 from December 2023 to April 2024. I could not stop talking about it. I will not stop talking about it. I NEED Concluse 3 to be real one day, or I might sincerely evaporate from anticipation.

One final note for my fellow queers: T4T Michael / Caroline is my headcanon. Look how clocky she is in Chapter 3. I know that's the PSX graphics, but I can believe.

bailing at the jumping puzzles. no

There's a jump scare that felt cheap but otherwise it was a really creepy game that made a very compelling atmosphere.

this happened to me at ikea

Has basically nothing going on.

This is probably my favorite recent imperfect game.
I think it's really cool that there's like, a very granular infrastructure focused game like this. It does a lot of good adventure gamey stuff while also avoiding doing weird inventory puzzles. It's also definitely a eurojank game, full of eastern europe cultural artifacts and odd design decisions which might seem weird and counterintuitive. It's like the machine fixing puzzles of Myst mixed with the "carry this object" puzzles of Amnesia and the environmental design of a walking sim. There's no enemies, this is an adventure game through and through!
The only thing weird about it is how it gets better designed as it goes. There's this awful horrible raft ride in act one which is the WORST part of the game, it's so awful i couldn't blame anybody for dropping the game there. I had to noclip to get myself out of some spots in act 2. But then in the last act of the game there's a REALLY good boat scene, and the contrast is kinda jarring! But also, kind of inspiring! You get to see developers hone their craft while you're playing the same game!
It's honestly really cool that a game can be this big and epic and expansive and never really veer into science fiction or fantasy too hard. The most unreal aspect of the game setting is these radioactive mushrooms growing in places, but beyond that everything is very real and grounded. And i think that's pretty impressive to me since video games are usually a medium so based in fantasy!
This game is as big as Half-Life 2, and in the same engine and has:
- No combat
- No enemies
- No scince fiction
- No aliens
And still works really well! And that's really impressive.
The only recommendation I would make is going into the settings and modifying the flashlight and camera batteries to just make them never run out. That mechanic feels wholly unnecessary to the flavour of the game, often more frustrating than interesting, and removing the tension of trying to find batteries really lets the walking sim parts shine. The developers seem to have realized this over its long development history, as in the final act you're given an upgraded flashlight which doesn't have the same battery drain issues.
If it weren't for the weird quirks, the awful Act 1 design problems, and the battery mechanics, this would easily be five stars. But it's already basically an instant recommend. Mark Infra goes down in my brain as one of my favorite scrimblos. Good job folks, this game is a winner.