Vlad Circus: Descend into Madness [Xbox]
Developed by Indiesruption, and published by Blowfish Studios, Vlad Circus: Descend into Madness is a psychological horror game with puzzle elements where you play as former circus clown, Oliver Mills, upon being released from Pennhurst Asylum. Taking place in 1929, 8 years after the famous Vlad Circus burned to the ground, and Vlad’s brother, Josef Petrescu, was found guilty of arson. After receiving a letter inviting you - and all of your old circus friends - to return to the Petrescu mansion, things start to get weird.
Two difficulty options are available: Challenge and Story; with what it says is ‘a more demanding combat experience’ in the Challenge mode, though this seems to be quite a reach. The use of lighting - and lack thereof - is really well done, giving the Petrescu mansion and its surroundings a creepy atmosphere throughout, however, even on the Challenge mode, you quickly learn that there is not much in the way of a threat, so the creepiness begins to wane a little. The pixel art is really well done, still managing to provide plenty of detail, especially in the creepy little portrait of Ollie in the bottom left corner, and all of his unnerving expressions. There’s not a lot of music aside from some somber piano pieces, but the environmental sounds of the rain and the thunder, as well as the spooky murmuring, the scattering of rats and Ollie’s hallucinations all add to the vibe, causing Ollie’s stress meter (shown under his portrait) to rise; maxing this out will cause him to pass out, so you need to be sure to pray and fend off those demons.
Most of the gameplay in Vlad Circus requires you to locate things in order to progress; a key to open a new door, a piece of smelly cheese to make you vomit, a clock hand to let it signal 8pm; and once you’ve found whatever it is, you’ll take it back to wherever its needed before moving onto the next. You have a limited inventory, though a few cloth bags can be found in the world to increase this one space at a time; you’ll sometimes have to drop items in order to pick up new, potentially more important ones, though thankfully you keep a diary filled with notes and remarks about your current objectives, as well as information about any dropped items, so you know where to find them if the need arises later. You have a kerosene lamp that you need to keep filled, using barrels located in a few areas of the map and this will help you navigate the darker areas.
There is a lot of backtracking, which under normal circumstances is fine - and to some degree, completely expected - but here it just seems so long and time-consuming, with Oliver trudging round in circles completing a bunch of fetch quests and trying to avoid the very-non-threatening reanimated headless corpses cutting about in the scud (in their birthday suits, for any non-Scots here), and creepy, laughing hyenas. The combat is almost entirely pointless, which made me wonder why they even gave the choice of including it back at the beginning. For more than half of the game, it felt like really could have been removed completely, as the enemies just float around your perimeter, swinging a knife at you if they get close enough but not posing too much of a threat - however there are a few slightly more tense moments further along, where having a knife or a pistol at my disposal became very much appreciated.
The characters follow many of the traditional circus-performer “freak show”-type tropes that each of their personas fit into. You fill the role of the depressed clown, Lazy Ollie; there’s the bearded lady, Alessia, who is the love of your life, though she’s with another man (and pregnant from another); the former strongman, Dominique, who was badly injured in an accident at the Asylum; magician Harry, Alessia’s lover; conjoined twins, Betsy and Ginger, with their opposing personalities; ventriloquist Jake and his apparently sentient puppet, Venancio; fakir Ranjit, who has self-amputated an arm in his quest for enlightenment; and of course, the leader of the pack himself, Vlad Petrescu, who has summoned you all here. Their backstories are mostly quite surface-level, with many of the conversations revolving around the events of that fateful day, all those years ago, though it is still interesting to piece everything together - even though you can figure out the ending fairly easily.
The ending is sadly very anti-climactic, being clichéd and predictable, which is a shame. It’s not a long game by any means, but the payoff for doing all of the backtracking just didn’t feel worth it - actually souring our previously more-positive opinions of the game. It’s not a bad game, it’s just that whilst the story itself is interesting, the predictability of most of it just makes it lose its shine; the backtracking took its toll, too, a tedious task that could have been dialled back, even just a little, to make it a bit less of a chore. You have the ability to run, but in the absence of a visible stamina meter, the frequent pauses to gasp for air make it feel frustratingly worthless (until right at the end when you get a stamina elixir), so you end up doing this sort-of half run/walk to try and prevent yourself running out of breath, and it just takes so long.
Overall, Vlad Circus is an interesting title, but one that I felt fell short in a lot of areas. I love a good puzzle, but much of this didn’t require a lot of actual puzzle solving, instead being led quite straightforwardly from one task to the next; and with the ‘big revelation’ of the ending being something I sniffed out a mile off, it just felt so dissatisfying. It’s an interesting premise - though one I feel should have ended differently - but I still had a decent time throughout. If you want to give Vlad Circus a go for yourself, you can pick it up for £16.99 on Xbox.
In the end, we decided to give Vlad Circus the Collecting Asylum rating of 7/10.
Are you interested in Vlad Circus? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Blowfish Studios for the Vlad Circus: Descend into Madness Xbox review code!
