Fearmonium | Switch Review

For years, I kept myself inside a video game bubble of platformers, sports games, and action RPGs. A child of the 80s, I tried Castlevania and Metroid and didn’t like either of them. I didn’t understand the puzzle of being unable to access an area until another achievement was met. As a result, when the term “Metroidvania” or, in GO Cast terminology, “Gear Gated” gets attached to a title, I found myself avoiding it.

Let’s travel back to 2021 when I decided to step out of my comfort zone. For other reasons, I also avoided rogue-likes. Then I asked for a suggestion to try it out. Rogue Legacy was suggested and I was hooked.

So, here we are at the end of 2023. I decided to step outside of my comfort zone and try a Metroidvania style game. Fearmonium was sitting there waiting for me with open arms due to the art style and horror movie themes. As we are about to find out, I had slightly less successful results.

Story

Fearmonium‘s story is dark. I mean dark. Max is a depressed young man. His new step-father kicked him out to live with his grandfather, but then his grandfather dies, and his mom and stepfather move into Max’s grandfather’s home where the abuse has started. His mom threatens to tattle on Max to save herself from abuse. Max’s girlfriend, the only thing that makes him happy, is moving away.

You, the player, do not control Max. No, Max goes to sleep, and you control a clown that haunts his dreams. Your initial goal is to upgrade from being a fear to becoming a full-fledged phobia! You spend the game traversing the depths of his mind, his depression, and his other fears/phobias.

You meet who can only be assumed to be the main boss of the game: Lady Depression. In the beginning, Lady Depression is there to help guide you as she lounges in a bubble bath “ooo ”-ing and making a handful of suggestive noises. She wants to help you become a phobia and keep Max down. Since his tears give her power, she wants you to be a phobia to create more tears, thus keeping Max eternally depressed. A side character, Anti-D (as in antidepressants), pops up a few minutes later and mentions how completely useless she is.

In my early time with the game, I hesitated to continue. Am I really supposed to make this poor kid feel hopeless and possibly worse? Yes, the “possibly worse” is hinted at. Thankfully, the answer is no. You meet other clowns who are helpful and guide you along a better path.

The rest of the game you battle Regression, Diffidence, Bullies, his stepfather, and other classic tropes of depression stories which lead up to the final boss battle. You help Max gain confidence and the ability to fight back both mentally and physically.

Mechanics

The game plays along like any platformer or gear-gated game in the past: moving in all directions, one button jumps, one button attacks, special attacks, and special moves. From screen to screen, you battle a wide variety of enemies as you find your way through the map, which you can conveniently access at any time. Lady Depression appears in quite a few places. Not only can you use these events to manually save your game (do not forget to save when you meet her), but you can also use her bathtub to transport to other areas of the map where you’ve already met her. Don’t get frustrated thinking that you’re stuck in an area that you can’t jump out of. Just go find the nearest Lady Depression and transport back to another area! And save when you get there.

I played on the Switch. I found the controls to be rather soft and the responsiveness was just barely bad enough to cause a battle loss in several areas. From what I could find on the Internet, console and PC players did not have the same experience with the controls. Another issue was trying to play on the handheld. Granted, my eyes aren’t what they used to be, but the boss battles in particular were quite difficult due to the lack of screen real estate. In this game, you must be facing the enemy for an attack to hit. On the handheld, the screen was so clogged that I couldn’t tell which direction I was facing and often missed on my attacks. Switching to docked made my life tremendously easier as I could see which direction I was facing, evade attacks, and spot visual clues more easily. Meanwhile, those soft controls still wreaked havoc from time to time.

You are given the tools and skills necessary to defeat your enemies. As the difficulty progresses, so does your arsenal. There is a constant challenge throughout the game but, even for me, it was rare that I felt I would never beat the enemy, especially after I docked my Switch.

Beating the bosses grants a feeling of relief and empowerment. If you have a personal connection to what these bosses represent, you may even feel cathartic upon their defeat. For example, who wouldn’t want to beat the crap out of their abusive stepfather?

Visuals/Music

This was the brightest of the bright spots for this game. The art style was fun and beautiful! The photos alone made me want to play this game. Walking around a dreamworld of horror themes is a great way for me to spend 8-10 hours. The character design was both playful and scary. Your character is a younger female version of Pennywise from the Stephen King book (and movies), It. The level design is strategic; fans of gear-gated games will appreciate the care put into the map.

The music is creepy. Warped music boxes, minor keys, and more kept this player in an eerie mood. Like most games with a small memory footprint, the music can be repetitive but when it’s this good, you might not mind hearing your favorites as you return to certain areas of the map.

Final Thoughts

Besides the dark and depressing theme and the horror elements, this game probably isn’t that different from any other gear-gated game you’ve played in the past. Arriving at blockades until you’ve earned a key or a skill is nothing new. I believe it would take a fan of gear gated games and a love of horror movies and a lack of personal experiences whose resulting PTSD could be triggered to want to purchase this game. If you meet that criteria, I highly recommend getting it on PS5 or Xbox. I truly believe you will enjoy it. My frustrations were either mine alone or caused by the system that I played it on. While I am scoring this one at a 5.5, another gamer might enjoy this one at an 8 or 9 level. It wasn’t a bad game. It just wasn’t for me.

To hear me talk more about Fearmonium, be sure to listen to the December 13 episode of The Gaming Outsider podcast around the 47:27 time stamp.

This review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy of Fearmonium provided by PR Hound for coverage purposes. It is also available on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC via Steam.