It seems that Pandora’s Box has been opened, or at least that’s the impression you get when you take a look at online stores full of scary and bloodthirsty games. What a good time for horror fans. But with so much competition, games have to do everything they can to stand out from the crowd. Anglerfish from the Danish Professional Villains succeeds in this because the game is full of unpleasant, funny and, above all, brutal surprises.
It all begins on a dark night in Mols Bjerge. You go to a bachelorette party at a dingy, secluded bar with a group of friends, all masked and dressed like Japanese schoolgirls. In short, horror tropes abound and, quite literally, all hell quickly breaks loose when the Bar fills with bloodthirsty vampires. Your only exit is through the basement, with a series of gloomy underground tunnels that are so winding that they seem to imitate a poisonous snake underground in East Jutland.
Despite the macabre elements, don’t expect to be scared to death. Jump scares are about the only thing Anglerfish doesn’t utilize, and with the top-down third-person perspective, the brutal enemies that seem so distracting are almost always kept at a distance. While the player is spared his life, our poor protagonist isn’t so lucky. There are a lot of enemies, very fast and sometimes it can be a bit chaotic due to the controls that take momentum into account. It’s not like Hotline: Miami, because luckily it’s not too difficult to send most vampires back to the underworld a few layers below with the help of your powerful and reliable shotgun.
Still, you will die many, many, many times (as the game itself already warns). And then there are the surprises. Enemies often appear in new locations, puzzles you’ve already mastered change out of nowhere, and sometimes the game outright kills your character without you having the slightest chance of preventing it. As a result, you have to start over many times and now have new knowledge that allows you to progress a little further than you did last time. But knowledge is practically the only thing you take with you. Unlike other roguelite games that change your skills or environments to provide a different and unique experience every time, you always fight through the same narrow corridors and use the same weapon.
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At first, one might assume that the many deaths are a way for the developer to drag out the game. But surprises can also be positive. Like in The Stanley Parable, you play with the player and their expectations, you never know what’s around the corner. I don’t want to say too much, but the game often surprises you with absurd cutscenes, a sudden boss fight, or even a temporary gender switch that you weren’t expecting. Although the anglerfish often teases you, it is never completely cruel. New shortcuts are constantly opening, and if you get stuck for too long, you might get a power-up or the game might automatically solve a puzzle for you.
A whole game lasts about 3 hours and honestly it doesn’t make it much clearer what’s going on. But that doesn’t matter, because the story of the game, which has cannibals, psychological trauma and (probably) something to do with family problems, turns out to be more of a labyrinthine horror box than a trip to the cinema. The game recommends playing it twice more, and while it’s impressive how the developers manage to improvise from the same riff (the music is excellent, by the way), the additional plays still seem a little longer than the first one, taking up a lot less time take.
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Apparently monkfish isn’t for everyone. The game is a little masochistic at times, and if you think games should always be fun, you should find another game. But if you like games that surprise you and play with your expectations, this unique horror game, which sells on Steam for a reasonable $9.75, is definitely worth a try.
