Media in Review: Paranormasight - The Seven Mysteries of Honjo
Paranormasight is a neat little adventure game that takes place in 1980's Japan as nine strangers try to kill each other with their curse stones to obtain the Rite of Resurrection. It's got some good horror vibes, and while it never gets any worse than "spoopy", it does have a few decent jump scares and the music does a good job of maintaining the mood. The detectives in particular have a really good jazzy theme, and the "things are spooky now" intense chanting music is certainly something.
The bulk of the plot takes place on a VLR-style story chart that works better than I expected it to, with a handful of puzzles where you have to coordinate people being in the same place or learning information on one route to use in another. It's never that complex and I really only had to reach for a guide when it came time to get the true ending, so it gets points for being mostly intelligible on the game side. My favorite bit was a puzzle early on that gets a bit meta and shows that it's clearly taking some notes from Danganronpa and similar works, but it never really goes for anything like that again. Kind of a shame, but I won't disagree that it's the kind of thing you have to do in moderation.
The plot itself isn't the most interesting thing I've ever read, but it has a cool concept and that carries a lot of the weight here. At roughly 10 hours and $20, I've spent way longer and way more money on far less interesting games, so it gets bonus on both fronts. Definitely give it a look if you dig VLR or the Famicom Detective Club games, you won't be disappointed.