Hidden Horror.
Almost instantly, Clea reminded me of another side-scrolling horror game I’d played this year; The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters, a game I thoroughly enjoyed. Both games have you play as a female protagonist, hiding from various threats as you duck into hiding spots and solve a series of navigational puzzles. While the games themselves do share in their own differences and similarities, I just couldn’t get into Clea’s largely clunky and less forgiving design. There is a solid and well-made game here both visually and narratively, but the limitation on what you’re able to do led to several instant fail states, ruining much of the fun.
Clea is, first of all, a rather short experience, easily beaten within just a few hours. This is actually to the game’s strength as it tends to repeat its core gameplay loop throughout each of the six chapters just a bit too much. Each chapter has you visiting a multi-level environment where you’ll traverse each maze-like location, hiding away from lurking threats, finding keys and various items, and solving puzzles along the way. While much of that sounds typical of the genre, Clea doesn’t really do much more than that and can sometimes only feel like it’s offering the bare minimum.
The story of Clea finds the young girl and her brother, Ed, alone on her Birthday, with their Nanny, Florine, leaving the pair to seek out their parents as Chaos Servants, monstrous cult-like figures, have broken loose around the mansion. Not content with waiting for their Nanny to return. Clea and her brother then leave the comforts of safety to then seek out where their Nanny went, and where possible, their parents could have gone as well. During this exploration, Clea will encounter a demonic twin of herself, taunting her through each interaction. The truth to the whereabouts of her parents, and the twin itself, is the core of the narrative that makes up Clea.
The story is more or less decent enough, with additional components rolled out via documents and journals you’ll find as you explore, mostly set up in a way where you’ll unlikely to miss them, usually accompanying the start of the level or alongside cakes that you’ll use to save. Depending on your difficulty, you can save freely, or have to rely on candles you’ll track down, items that are fairly scarce as they also have the benefit of banishing some, but not all, of the threats that stalk the halls.
The mansion itself is a maze of doors, halls, and locations that can be a bit of a nuisance to navigate. Most of the game has you finding a certain pattern to the rooms, tracking down key parts, combining them, and finding the exit. One key, for example, had me wandering around for almost an hour trying to track it down, only to catch a sliver of it out of the corner of my eye as it was hidden behind a large potted plant. There was also a key to Florine’s room that I wasn’t able to use, as, without a map, I could not for the life of me remember where that door was. After spending way too long trying to track it down, I ended up accidentally finding the final door, and just couldn’t bring myself to reload the game to make use of that key.
Each of the locations you visit is aesthetically different from one another but serves the exact same design purpose and overall layout. You’ll have stairs either on the far right or left, and various doors, bathrooms, and closets in between. This layout can result in you easily getting lost, and backtracking considerably, especially during a puzzle to hit specific switches in a row (twice) and the final chapter where you’ll backtrack through a large chunk of the entire game.
As you walk through the halls, you’ll be stalked by several different types of enemies, each with their own design, some more creepy than others. The design work in the enemies is solid, and hearing their footsteps and your heartbeat racing does make for a solid form of intensity as you run for the nearest closet. Now, the locations of these enemies are not scripted, so it’s far too easy to run into them, become trapped, or even die as you both transition through the door, instantly killing you. You can peek under the door to see what is on the other side, but it’s all too easy to forget about this feature when you don’t hear any noises to alert you and these cheap deaths just happen far too often and can result in a lot of backtracking or getting your bearings from your most recent save. In fact, it’s this aspect of quick instant kills that can often feel far too cheap and less about making a mistake on your own and facing the consequences.
Clea can do a few basic things; walk, run, sneak, peek ahead or behind her, and use items. Walking never seemed to really trigger many enemies for me, and while sneaking is pretty much whisper-quiet, I never really found it to be that useful. Running will easily alert nearby enemies, as will flushing a toilet, and you can often use this to your advantage. By running and making enemies known to your location, you can jump into a nearby closet and thus have an idea of where the enemy is, making your exploration somewhat safer. You can also use the sound of your run to make them backtrack away from where you need to move to, making a stealthy getaway in the process.
Oddly enough, in the final chapter, you’ll find a few upgrade stations, that seemed out of place considering you’re pretty much at the game’s end. You can choose either more inventory space, more visibility when peeking, or making Clea move faster. It’s rather odd that these systems were not made available much earlier in the game when their inclusion would have made more sense. As they are, it’s far too little and far too late for them to be of any importance as you’re just about to wrap credits.
While much of my review has been less than positive, Clea does hold its own when it comes to its visuals and sound. The game has this storybook quality to its paper-doll aesthetic, and when combined with the shadow work of your light sources, it can just visually impressive all around. The walking and sneaking animations are well done, and the overall character design work is superb, with some pretty creepy threats, especially the Chaos Servant with the spider-like arms sticking out of its back. The game is certainly meant to be played with headphones, hearing the direction of the creaking floorboards and steps, making your escape that much easier, but altogether creepy as you know they are stalking the halls, waiting for you.
While I’ve certainly played better in the genre, this isn’t to say that Clea is not something to watch out for, I just personally didn’t get on with it, but do understand that there are those who are going to really dig into what this game offers. Again, the story, visuals, and audio are all great, but it’s the gameplay that just didn’t sell me on what the game was offering. The all too easy cheap kills and unclear instructions on where to go sadly pulled me away from my initial enjoyment of the game. Clea is certainly not a bad game in the slightest, it just makes several design choices that I simply don’t agree with, making my time more about frustration than the horror it’s trying to provide.
Developer - InvertMouse. Publisher - InvertMouse, Sekai Games. Released - October 30th, 2020. Available On - Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PC Rated - (T) Blood, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.