Death Mark / 死印

Hey, hey... Have you heard the rumors about that weird review blog? It’s about some weirdo who keeps on writing about all sorts of obscure and gross murder stories. They say that if you read the intro to one of his posts, you’ll die just like the people in the story that post is about, unless you read the rest of the review as well...

The game begins with you suddenly finding yourself in front of an ornate mansion with no memories, and a strange bite-shaped mark on your right wrist. It turns out the mark is a “death mark” branded onto you by an evil spirit, and it heralds the inevitable death of the marked person. The mark also causes mental deterioration and memory problems as the person’s death approaches, which is why you’ve suddenly found your mind to be a blank slate.

Luckily for you, the mansion is owned by a woman named Saya Kujou who is connected to the occult and has been investigating the death marks. Unfortunately, it seems that Saya succumbed to her mark shortly before your memory reset. Tragic timing, indeed. A talking doll, Mary, remains in the mansion, and serves as a guide in your quest to find a way to overcome the death mark.

For all the game’s talk of death being inescapable for a marked person, it’s actually pretty simple to remove the mark: all you have to do is destroy the spirit that marked you. (Before the mark kills you, obviously.) ...All right, maybe that’s a bit easer said than done. But at least it gives you some hope! Of course, since you’ve lost your memory, you have absolutely no idea which evil spirit marked you, but that just means you need to take care of each one you can find.

Death Mark is an adventure game where you investigate each spirit’s haunting ground to learn the spirit’s origin, and then confront the spirit to banish it. The gameplay is pretty straightforward. In the investigation segments, you move from screen to screen, searching and examining the locations for clues and useful items. You’ll also sometimes be presented with a “Deadly Choice,” where you need to make a time-limited multiple choice decision to survive. Items you can examine or interact with shine when you pass your flashlight over them, nearly eliminating the frustration of pixel-hunting. The confrontation segments are round-based, where you need to use an item each round in order to survive the spirit’s assault and ultimately banish it.

The game is freaky and unnerving. It’s also scary... until it’s not. Naturally, each time you investigate a spirit it just so happens to be night. And spirits only seem to haunt decrepit, abandoned places. And the spirits cause all sorts of weird things to happen in these places. When you first start playing the game, it’s very easy to get absorbed into the atmosphere and feel like you’re really risking your life trying to find this spirit. But eventually you realize that the only way to get a game over is the Deadly Choices and confrontations. And if you fail one, you can just immediately restart from the beginning of the segment. So there’s literally nothing to be afraid of because it’s just a game, you always have clear warning of when it’s possible to fail, and even if you do fail you don’t lose any progress. This is in contrast with horror games like Amnesia or Silent Hill, where you never know when a monster will pop out of the darkness to maul your face off. Also, while the game is generally good about giving hints on what to do next, there were still some points where I was reduced to wandering around in search of the next event flag. Obviously, nothing happens until you trigger the flag—and no matter how spooky a place looks, if you wander around for 10 minutes without any incident whatsoever, it stops being spooky and daunting.

Even if it isn’t scary, Death Mark is still, as I said, freaky and unnerving. The locations are grim and haunting, and the monster designs are twisted and gruesome. The game pulls no punches when it comes to guts and gore, so this is definitely not the game for you if that sort of thing makes you squeamish.

While this isn’t a direct mystery game, there is unquestionably an element of investigation and problem-solving. Researching and defeating the spirit hinges on how the spirit was formed, and that means you need to pay attention to all the items and notes you gather. You also need to figure out what the spirit is hung up over or trying to accomplish, and how you can use the tools given to satisfy the spirit. Although there were a few places where I had to resort to just guessing or looking up the answer, once I knew the answer I could always see how the game had hinted at it.

People who have been marked by spirits seem attracted to Kujou Manor, which means that you get to investigate with a buddy. You can only have one partner at a time, since traveling in a larger group would make it too easy for the spirit to find you. There is typically a choice of two to three potential partners per chapter, which can be changed at any time. Unfortunately, your partner barely matters. There are some event flags that require a certain partner to trigger, but that’s it. While the specific words used in the dialogue change based on your partner, the general conversation will always be the same regardless. There are also some moments where you’re given a choice of what to say or how to respond, but your answer doesn’t change anything. When done properly, false choices can help give the illusion of freedom or let you develop your protagonist’s personality, but the veil of freedom is so shoddy in Death Mark that it just highlights the linearity.

The investigation partners feel like they’re there mostly so the protagonist has someone to banter with. They don’t get much development, and most don’t have much depth. Since you can investigate with any potential partner at any time, all the substantive character time happens in the brief cutscenes. The game spends much more time developing the monsters and their backstory—which I can’t blame the game for, since the monsters and legends are the main focus of the game.

The game’s main story lasts five chapters, with a bonus sixth chapter. There’s a bit of a quality drop in the middle (with the third chapter especially feeling half-baked), but the beginning and ending chapters are solid. As the game progresses, the protagonist’s quest naturally expands from defeating each individual spirit to figuring out what has suddenly caused these evil spirits to start appearing. Near the end of the last story chapter, it begins to feel like the game will either leave the main plot unaddressed as sequel-bait or hastily resolve it at the last second. While the conclusion is relatively short, it still manages to bring the game to a satisfying and unifying resolution.

Death Mark clocks in at about 10-15 hours, so it’s not that long, but will probably last a couple of sessions. While the game won’t scare you like a proper horror game, if a horror-themed adventure game about spooky Japanese urban legends interests you, Death Mark is a decent pick-up on sale.