Demo of retro RPG-styled nonlinear survival horror also available on Steam and itch.io
When will adventure game protagonists learn? If you’re lost and alone and the only refuge is a creepy old mansion, don’t go in the mansion! Then again, it’s a good thing they never catch on, because we get to live vicariously through their mistakes, such as in Dragon Emperors’ newly released Cursed Mansion.
Players control a young woman named Rose, who gets caught in a “mysterious storm” somewhere in the woods and seeks shelter in a – you guessed it – “huge mansion which at first glance seems to be empty.” Obviously this turns out not to be the case, which she realizes almost as soon as “the door slams shut and traps her inside.” Now Rose must find a way to escape, but to do so she’ll need to collect items, solve puzzles, and escape a variety of “deadly situations” as she begins unraveling the manor’s “painful history.” It won’t be long before you discover that “something truly sinister has happened in the mansion … and it’s still very much alive, lurking in the shadows.”
Inspired by horror movies such as Ju-On and Insidious, and presented in the style of a 16-bit pixel art RPG with a bird’s-eye perspective, Cursed Mansion takes place entirely within the titular “demonic space that preys and feeds on fear and despair.” Promising “mystery, malignant spirits, and misery everywhere,” the game seeks to immerse players in a haunting survival horror atmosphere that “leaves one with goosebumps.” The house consists of “dozens of rooms to be explored,” each filled with items, clues, and potentially deadly traps. Progress is nonlinear, with various story branches depending on your actions and choices, leading to multiple possible endings – some of them very, very bad for the young protagonist, as “there are many ways things can go wrong.” You can save your progress but certain elements are procedurally generated, so that “every time the game resets, the events that have previously happened might or might not happen again.”
Originally released through Steam Early Access in April 2021, the full version of Cursed Mansion is now ready and available for download for Windows PC. To try the game out first, a playable demo is also available, both on Steam and itch.io.
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