Review: Vlad Circus: Curse of Asmodeus (Nintendo Switch)

An excellently creepy game from the very beginning, Vlad Circus: Curse of Asmodeus is a pixel art survival horror game that thoroughly absorbs you into its chilling world. It is a prequel to Vlad Circus: Descent Into Madness. If you’ve played the earlier game, the sense of crawling unease in this one will likely be enriched, but it isn’t necessary to fully follow the story and get drawn into the world.

You play as the morally questionable Joseph Petrescu. The game opens to reveal you, robbed of your memory, trapped in a dank dungeon strewn with medical paraphernalia and the gruesome remnants of the experiments carried out with it. You are offered no clue as to how you got there – or how you got so horribly disfigured either. Your task is to figure that out.

The gameplay is simple. You explore the dungeon and interact with things you find there to piece together the story, collecting items to help you along the way. Medication keeps you healthy, keys you need to progress are scattered around, weapons can be used against your enemies. The relatively uncomplicated format doesn’t detract from the game. The options to combine the items you find to best utilise them still require a level of creative thinking that elevates the point-and-click function.

Vlad Circus: Curse of Asmodeus most shines when it comes to its story. As you explore the dungeon, you encounter mirrors where you are forced to confront your mutilated face, triggering flashbacks to your last memories leading up to the disaster that brought you here. Petrescu is an alcoholic who sought out his estranged brother to beg for help. In exchange for a second chance, he agrees to manipulate a talented performer into running away with the circus, only to be drawn into the sinister machinations of a cult.

You play through both storylines, jumping between the two each time you encounter a mirror as the narrative gradually builds into a cohesive whole. The pacing of the story is incredibly well constructed. You weave between the two sides of the plot effortlessly, each one teasing you with glimpses of what awaits you. The story itself is compelling, combining a creeping sense of dread with an intriguing mystery and a sequence of moral conundrums that generate a great sense of suspense.

The pixel art style lends itself incredibly well to enhancing the story, equally suits both the sepia-toned circus scenes and the dark, dank dungeon chapters. The slight blurriness inherent in wide shot pixel art cleverly hides secrets in the pixellated shadows and makes the more detailed close-up shots all the more impactful when they leap out at you like a sucker punch.

Vlad Circus: Curse of Asmodeus is a relatively short game that tells its story fantastically well and draws you fully into its blood-curdling world.