Lucifer Within Us | PC Review

I had not heard of Lucifer Within Us until I played the demo during the Steam Game Festival Autumn Edition (Oct. 7 – Oct. 13, 2020). I was intrigued by the artwork and the premise of the story, and decided to give it a go. I must say that Kitfox’ demo really impressed me. As the game was set to be released on October 15th, this immediately catapulted the title to the top of my wishlist. I wanted to know more about this cyberpunky exorcism story and decided to buy it when it was released. Did it live up to my expectations? You’re about to find out.

Digital Exorcist

In Lucifer Within Us, you play Ada who is sent to St. Walpurga Abbey to investigate a suspicious death. Ada is a digital exorcist working for the Church of Ain Soph’s Inquisition. This means she can detect what is in people’s hearts, detect daemonic presence, and get rid of it. For that, she needs to first establish a correct timeline, find the evidence, confront the suspects with their lies and find the holes in their explanations. This is not easy and requires multiple rounds of interrogations and examinations to get to the truth.

Daemon Hunting

Next, Ada needs to get a confession from the suspect and deduce which daemon is possessing him or her so she can exorcise it. Sometimes the victim can still be saved; other times there’s not much left of the suspect’s soul and mind. It’s a very important job, and not one without consequences. It’s also a brutal job, but someone has to do it in the name of Ain Soph, the one true god. And Ada is the perfect, badass woman to do that. She will find the One Truth.

Who Done It

Lucifer Within Us is a procedural, isometric adventure game with point-and-click mechanics. You control Ada by having her explore the crime scene, add evidence to her notes and talk to suspects. This is all collected in the lower part of the screen, where there are tabs for the evidence and suspects, and a big area for the suspect’s testimonies. This is a very important area, as this is basically where you solve the crime. You do this by questioning the suspects and comparing their testimonies, and then confronting them with evidence that exposes their lies. Eventually, this will lead to you finding the killer and the daemon possessing him. So, from your point of view, there are two victims. It’s up to you to save them both. It’s what Ain Soph would want.

Classic Future

The graphics are great. I always love the isometric view in games and the graphics in Lucifer Within Us are very stylized, giving it both a classic and futuristic look that serves the game well. The portraits of the characters are great and it all works very well in setting up the world around you. What also contributes to this is the score and the voice casting. A synthy score again adds to the classic and futuristic feel of the game, and also gives it a religious feel. That’s appropriate, since the game takes place in an abbey and has a strong supernatural sense to it, and brings St. Walpurga’s Abbey to life.

Wanting More

Every mission took me about an hour to complete, and that also brings me to my only  point of criticism: the game is too short! It’s only four missions and I highly enjoyed playing them, so I was a bit disappointed when the game was already done after these four missions. It also left me on a cliffhanger that made me want to continue even more! I feel like I’ve played book one of a series and I really want to go to book two. Luckily, there are several achievements that I still have to get, including one that said I didn’t find all physical evidence and contradictions in a few crime scenes. That surprised me, so I will go back and see if I can get those achievements.

Conclusion

Lucifer Within Us definitely left me wanting more. A lot more. It ticked multiple boxes for me and I really hope more missions and sequels will come in the (near) future. I want to explore more of the world beyond the St. Walpurga Abbey and take on more daemons as Ada. She’s a great character to play with and this game lived up to its promise. I highly recommend playing it.

This review is based on a purchased copy of Lucifer Within Us on PC. It is also available on Mac.