Lust from Beyond is a new erotic horror title coming from the studio of Movie Games Lunarium. In all honesty, I have to admit I cannot recall playing any erotic horror game in recent years, which only makes this a totally new experience for me. Before I started the game, I looked a little into the video trailers with gameplays and screenshots and stepped in to check it out. Movie Games S.A. was kind enough to provide me with a review copy of Lust from Beyond on PC, where I was instantly thrown into the bizarre world filled with pleasure and pain.
Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, H.R. Giger, and Zdzislaw Beksinski, I could only imagine how the game developers seamlessly blended erotic elements with brazen sexuality, horror, and pain. At its core, Lust from Beyond is a horror game with typical horror elements with enemies chasing you around and visuals that scream all-out creepy. However, the selling point of the game is its erotic features and sexual content, which the game is trying to mix together when it says pleasure and pain.
Before you even begin your adventure in this erotic horror fantasy game, you are given the option to play the censored version or go for a full Lust from Beyond experience with the uncensored version. I get that the censored version will be for most video reviews where nudity is going to be an issue, but it pixelates the nude parts of characters, paintings, and even sculptures, drastically killing the experience the game is made for. I figured that if you have chosen an erotic game like Lust from Beyond, you have to go with the uncensored gameplay to play the game as it is designed to be played.
The game begins with you playing from the POV of a female character called Amanda, in a strange alienish world, standing right in front of a pregnant figure and inserting your hand inside it to bring out a small creature needed for a ritual. After exiting this location, you are teleported into a mansion, where you learn about the priest-looking figure called Theodore. Theodore takes the creature for the ritual and asks you to call up everyone in the mansion for the cult’s ritual that will enable them to get the Seeing One.
The scene then transforms to our main character of the game, Victor Holloway, again in the first-person view. Victor is an antiquarian, inside his shop where he has to complete the simple task of completing an order for a customer. This is the first basic task you are given in the game, as the game sets you up with similar tasks all throughout the story progression. Victor is plagued by nightmares that haunt him in a twisted world. These unexplainable nightmares are worsened when his relationship with his partner is being affected by it, forcing him to visit a doctor in the strange town of Bleakmoor.
Bleakmoor is where your exploration really begins and is also where you get to see Lusst’gha, the land of eternal pleasure crafted by desire. This is the same place that Victor gets to see in his nightmare, almost like a calling for him to enter this strange realm of sexual fantasies and desire. While exploring, you will come across many items that you can interact with and inspect. However, some items are tied to the story and picking them up triggers the next path you have to go to.
The gameplay is not just exploring but also solving puzzles. These puzzles are pretty easy to solve, but this is also where I ran into the first problem. Most puzzles are tied to objects that you have to find, most of these objects are something you might have already inspected and ignored as it did nothing by picking it up. However, when you start a puzzle, you immediately learn that the objects that you ignore to pick up were part of the solution of the puzzle. This threw me off completely and had me picking up objects that were not needed, forcing me to sort my inventory after intervals.
The puzzles also feel like they have been forced to be a part of the game, just to cater to this genre. Granted that puzzles are a big part of horror games that have survival and exploration elements, puzzles in Lust from Beyond feel kind of seem out of place as they force you to through a location. But puzzles are far from the main issues at hand, which I believe are the story and gameplay mechanics involving enemies. As far as the story of the game is concerned, I struggled to keep up with the plot when each chapter kept feeding me with a ton of information.
Now let’s talk about the enemies in the game, as a horror game, you can already expect enemies chasing you around when spotted. But you will be surprised when I say that you have one very ordinary power of beating enemies at their own game, and that power is running. Yes, running and evading is the best way in the game to dodge enemies to the point where you don’t even have to worry about them. While the game emphasizes stealth and avoiding being physical combatant with enemies, you do have a few weapons at your disposal in the later stages of the story. You also get your hands on a revolver that you can use on enemies, but still not as effective as running away.
Final Verdict:
Lust from Beyond in undoubtedly a unique psychological horror game that I have played recently. However, its main selling point is the erotic nature and depiction that is evident in its visuals and story. Though it is a horror game in its core, the shoddy plot and story could have been better written in a more procedural manner for the player to keep track of the things that are going on. Coming from a small studio, I still have to commend the devs on the game being original and a unique experience for all players. Visually, the game is fantastic and does not shy away from throwing every erotic depiction you can imagine. Despite its flaws, I will still highly recommend Lust from Beyond to everyone, even if it is just to experience its erotic features.
Final Score: 7.0/10
