Its that time of the year. The time of year when fall leaves are littering the roadsides and trees are changing colors and the TV and gaming consoles are getting a lot freaking scarier.
Horror games are a real thing. And Rule of Rose is one of the more popular horror games on the market. But is it fun…errr… scary to play? Here’s our Rule of Rose review.
Rule of Rose Review – About The Plot
Rule of Rose was released in 2006 by Punchline. Its a single player mode game.
Its 1930s England. You’re already thinking about Jack the Ripper, we know you are. But instead, consider a young woman named Jennifer. She’s shy, and lost after a bus ride lets her off at the wrong stop.
Unfortunately for Jennifer, things are about to get a whole lot creepier.
She discoveres a run down orphanage and worse more, the kids inside have their faces covered with bags. The entire scene is drab to say the least. Jennifer decides, for some bizarre reason, to trek around the orphanage. In some ways, Jennifer’s manuever aligns completely with every scary movie storyline we’ve ever scene which are often ripe with stupid decisions that lead to terrifying events. Yep, that’s where we are in Rule of Rose.
Things take more of a sci-fi twist when Jennifer falls asleep, only to wake up in some space ship surrounded by peopled called the Aristocrats of the Red Crayon.
It’s a private group that hides a lot of mysteries.
As Jennifer, you’lll need to make sure you don’t encounter enemies. You’ll also collect items throughout the game to help build your character’s vitality. And, much like a lot of porn games, there’s puzzles to solve.
These items, or treasures, are often found in jewelry boxes and in crevices.
There’s a dog that chills with you. So hopefully, you like pets. At least, digitized pets that don’t shed on you. Your dog helps you keep up with your collection as you make your way through the game.
In terms of characters, there’s not a lot of depth. Some folks complain about this aspect, but in truth, it’s a horror game and we don’t commonly find intricate personality details in horror game or movie characters. So that’s a wash in this review.
Rule of Rose is a bit of a violent game. Jennifer gets beat around a lot. A lot of Rule of Rose reviews condemn the violence as somewhat arbitrary and unnecessary to the story. I’m not sure on that, it’s a horror game, and the violence comes with the territory.
She can help heal herself by eating scones. It’s almost as if Starbucks wrote the storyline, but they did not.
Rule of Rose is a super creepy experience all around. You’ll often encounter pretty scary characters. One downside is that the game’s scenery doesn’t deviate much. Its mostly the same style rooms you explore over and over.
In terms of audio, the music is freaking creepy. The look and feel of the game is pretty haunting. Rule of Rose is a dark, unsettling, psychological terror. It aims to prod at your deepest fears and often uses violence to achieve such. You constantly feel you’re moving about a nightmare. You often feel through Jennifer a lot of unrealized, or un-dealt with, trauma and turmoil. It’s as if the Jennifer is living out her worst fears through a nightmare.
You can see all of this in the way the graphics play out.
The creepy vibes are consistent throughout Rule of Rose’s experience. But because the scenery doesn’t change a whole lot, it can begin to feel a bit redundant. Again, this is a 2006 game, so it’s important to consider that decades of gaming development have passed this one by. And that’s OK, but we shouldn’t compare Rule of Rose to games released today.
The graphics are pretty good – always dark and fantasy style.
Have a look.
As you can see, Jennifer is the mainstay character. Potent graphics make her fear almost always palatable to the gamer.
Overall, we like Rule of Rose as an old school horror game that’s a fun play every October. Clearly, there are more modern horror games for Playstation and XBOX that are much more intricate and graphically enhanced.