Daemonologie sees the player interrogating and torturing the people of a small village in order to root out a supposed witch.
CONTENT WARNING – Torture
You have been called to a Scottish village in the 1600s. As a Witch Finder, your job is to root out witchcraft and its practitioners in any way you see fit. To do this, you can talk with the handful of people who live in the village, asking them about themselves and the other people. That said, if you do not seem like you’re getting the answers you’re looking for, you can hurt the villagers in order to force the ‘truth’ out of them.
The game makes you involve yourself in this torture, too. You don’t just give the command and fade to black. When you’re pulling at tongues with rusty implements or squeezing their fingers in a vise, you’re the one that will carry it out with button commands. It’s unsettling to watch this happen in pixelated detail, but I feel that’s a major point of this game. If you’re uncomfortable carrying out these cruel acts – possibly to the point of quitting the game (which I almost did, and likely should have) – then it’s a vital piece of this reflection on witch hunts in the past.
Daemonlogie has no interest in helping you come to a conclusion about the identity of the witch by the game’s end, so if you find out something useful, you’d better write it down. And even then, you’ll likely walk away uncertain if you ever found the right answer. This uncertainty paired with the disgusting methods of investigating make this game into a chilling look into the history and reality of witch hunts. If you can stomach this game (and endure its stop motion nightmares every night – these look fantastic but are also quite unsettling), you’ll come away with an affecting look at this grim part of our past.
Daemonologie is available now on itch.io and Steam.
About The Author
