Quick Review: Face It - A game to fight inner demons

Someone has read too much Carl Jung.

I love games where I can barely
see anything. /s

A creation of Tlön Studios and Ilex Games, Face It – A game to fight inner demons (that’s how it’s capitalized) was published by Gamestorming on June 9th, 2017. You are a protagonist, selected among a couple of available skins, moving through the darkened maze of what appears to be their own mind. Everything is foggy, there are ghosts chasing the character around, there are fire pits and spikes all over the place.

The plot makes use of symbolism and concepts to represent the protagonist fighting against what ails them. Love, courage, fight, hope and other positive elements of the human psyche are power-ups letting them walk through fire, cross chasms with new platforms, and so on. And on each level, you have to find blue keys that will open the doors leading to the exit. If you collect all the letters of the word CURIOSITY in a level, you unlock that level’s bonus course, a much harder one located in what’s called the Darkest World.

I wonder what to do. I wonder: Should I jump?

The game is split over 4 worlds like this. I figure total completion of the game would involve beating all of the regular levels, but also unlocking and beating very Darkest World level. You can rotate the camera 90° with Q and E, if you need a different point of view to figure out where to go next – and that’s helpful, since with the ambient darkness it’s very hard to see the path at times. Hell, the only Darkest World level I tried, I couldn’t beat it; the path was blocked by instant-death yellow fire. Or, to quote Let’s Player Raocow, “Yellow hurts? Okay, yellow hurts.”

Also, there's a lot of text everywhere. Tell me, just who
writes this much text for no reason? ...Okay, that one hurts.

There is some idea here regarding level
design and puzzles. Not enough to keep
one invested.

Can’t say I really enjoyed this one. It really feels like it’s trying to shove a whole bunch of philosophical and metaphysical concepts into its narrative, with long pages to read that break the flow of the game. It does try to have a few neat ideas here and there, like attributing power-up effects to positive emotions. The level design relies on your ability to turn the camera around, as it’s often necessary to see where to go next, but it makes some levels needlessly labyrinthine. There are save points in places, but not always in safe spots; I distinctly remember dying right after respawning because a damn save point was located near the spawning place of several enemies, where the PC was stuck on a tight ledge with spikes on the path forward. That’s not good level design! But really, the cherry on the sundae is the attempt at giving this game depth by quoting psychiatrists and philosophers. It smells an awful lot like a “Trying too hard” attempt, the sort of thing that’s mocked about indie games that try to be “art”.

Mysticism is fun and all, but I think I'd
enjoy it more if it weren't so dark.

You can skip this one, believe me. But if you must, well, Face It – A game to fight inner demons is available for 3.99$.