A very strange and interesting roguelike, I'd describe it as "Silent Hill meets Condemned, with 200% more meat and enough mimics to give a DnD player PTSD flashbacks". I especially like how weird and twisted the enemy and gun designs can be, such as a triple-fire shotgun made of 3 of them welded together with meat and the Cringe (a.k.a. the deadly wailing doorframe). The "friendly" meats are no less messed up too, poor Huggs took a lot of accidental hits due to surprising me around a corner or being near a mimic when I attacked it.
Between the low-fi graphics, the freaky enemy designs and the constant feeling of being unsafe and stalked by monstrosities, this game gets genuinely tense and scary at points without resorting to hardcoded jumpscares.1 Before you know the signs of a nearby mimic, having them attack out of nowhere is genuinely terrifying, and even once you know what to look and listen for, they'll still get you by sneaking up behind you or hiding among cluttered areas that make it hard to pick them out. I especially panicked whenever grabbing the last key for a floor, since that always was followed by every unkilled mimic going active (complete with a chorus of the moaning and crunching noises they make when coming out of hiding state) and swarming to stop me before I could reach the elevator.
The non-mimics were thoroughly spooky too, from a murderous pair of legs, to a floating meatwad that charges all over, to an eyeball chandeleir/crusher combo. I figured SH had grabbed up all the interesting meat monster designs there were, but each new meat critter surprised me with how messed up and dangerous it was. Mr. Pants was the bane of every run he showed up in, the persistent little jerk.
This is an excellent roguelike, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves over time. I started playing just before the memento-picking update, so just that was already a nice improvement, and I like the hud placement changes and Field additions that keep appearing with each update.
SPOILERS (AS OF BUILD 05.21); DON'T READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU'VE BEAT FLOOR -3 OR ARE THE DEVS:
Just curious, now that I've beaten Castle and reclaimed Her Head, is there anywhere else to go, or are any other completeable objectives like getting Son his refreshment implemented yet? I'm assuming this is it, since this is a very early demo version, but it'd be nice to know if there's anything else left to do.
I really liked just how much scarier Castle was than the usual monsters. Immensely tall, horrifying appearance even by meat standards, doesn't hide, has a blade arm, and is willing to chase you forever unless you find a hiding spot like the exit "elevator" with the note. I also noticed that once I found a triple shotgun and started taking big chunks of his health with it, he started running away instead of idling or chasing, which made it really satisfying to finally track down, corner and end him.
Also, not sure if it's a glitch or intentional, but as soon as I put Her Head on the black poles, my view was filled with light like it would be during spawning into a floor, but it stayed permanently even though I could still move and interact. It stayed like this until I save and quit then rebooted the game, where I'd respawn in the field just before putting Her Head on the pole, and it would happen again if I redid it. I'm guessing that's the "congrats, you beat the demo" indication, but I figured I'd say something just in case it wasn't.