Shame Legacy is a first-person survival horror game developed by Fairyship Games and Revenant Games and published by Destructive Creations. Set in a 19th-century cultist village, you’ll have to attempt to survive by hiding and escaping the crazy villagers all while solving puzzles along the way. There is a hunt taking place and unfortunately, you are the prey these insane villagers are after. The legacy of your family has finally caught up with you but not in any usual way that you would expect. A very short horror adventure that shares many similarities with the Outlast games for better or worse, let’s get into it.

The Priest in the opening scene

Survive The Hunt

You awake in a village with not much clue of where to go or what to do while a distant fire burns away in the night. It doesn’t take long for you to realize you’re in a dangerous place surrounded by twisted cultists who are on the hunt for you. A great atmosphere right from the start that kept me on edge for roughly about 20 minutes before I started to notice Shame Legacy’s flaws and repetitive nature. Accompanied by a story I felt wasn’t properly explained and forgettable characters made for an underwhelming experience by the end of my three hours with it.

It’s a really short game and many of its sections are very similar and feel far too repetitive. I didn’t understand much of what was going on during the entirety of my time with it, as the storytelling seemed to boil down to a priest character occasionally turning up and saying some stuff I didn’t understand whilst the rest of the story might have been delivered in the notes you can find along the way, but I wouldn’t know as I’m sure all my notes were glitched. When I found a note and interacted with it, it wouldn’t display any text, instead just asking me to press A to continue, which was odd seeing as the first couple of notes I found near the start had text boxes popping up which leads me to believe these were buggy.

There is a cool and frightening persistent monster who shows his face multiple times along the way. This soon wears off due to how much he continually shows up. During each chase, he loses you and finds you again moments later meaning you have a small moment of reprieve before recommencing the chase. This grows tiresome as in these moments where he spots you again the game forcefully slows you down to a walking pace and kills the momentum. Glaring pop-in issues during these sequences make it hard to work out where to go, as you can be running in what you think is the right direction only to be met by a tree or other miscellaneous objects blocking the path. It also can be awkward to work out where to go sometimes which only adds to the frustration, further ruining any impact this monster could make.

Some cool horror tropes are littered throughout 

The game’s journey only consisted of sneaking through a section filled with way too many cultist enemies that at times feels impossible to navigate, to walking through boring and barren sections only to reach the next chase sequence. The villager sections were quite cool in all honestly until they introduce the wailer enemies. These are humans who are hung up on crosses and scream when you get too close, alerting the villagers to your location. This is as good a time as any to mention the game’s Panic System and how it differs itself from just being an Outlast clone. Here unlike in the Outlast games, you can actually defend yourself should a villager grab a hold of you. Should you successfully complete the simple QTE (Quick-Time Event) you can use your character’s cane to smack them down for a brief period of time. Once attacked you enter the Panicked state and if you’re attacked again before you can find a weird potion drink that calms you, you will die.

This is what unfortunately grated on me by the end. One section has you trying to sneakily traverse around a war camp that is overrun by these cultists. One part has three cultists patrolling around two wailers which felt overwhelming and frustrating. Not only were there too many enemies but if you find yourself in a panicked state within the range of a wailer, the persistent enemy turns up and insta-kills you. Further ruining the tension this monster instilled in me at the start of the game.

A spooky atmosphere in places

Don’t Panic

Shame Legacy isn’t much of a looker either. Don’t get me wrong, it can look quite nice in places but looks a tad dated for the most part. Opting for what seems almost like a selfie filter from Snapchat or Instagram on all the blood, making it look very weird. There are some standout moments where the game looks decent but these are few and far between. There’s a cool choice of different settings ranging from the woods, a war camp, and a snowy area but all of the surfaces look oddly shiny for some reason, even wooden huts. It all just feels a little out of place. The audio and atmosphere can be pretty good until you start running into the previously mentioned issues and these all start to wear off. It has some nice ideas and could have been a great alternative to the Outlast series but a lot of it just fell flat for me.

Overall it starts off strong but quickly becomes its own worst enemy. It just becomes too repetitive for such a short game. Enemies become frustrating to deal with, and the chase sequences lose any sense of danger when you’re having to endure them every 10 minutes. This is without mentioning the frame stutters and glaring amount of pop-op during my time with this. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend Shame Legacy as there isn’t a lot of meat on these bones. A nice idea in principle but ultimately just misses the mark.