Tormentum: Dark Sorrow [Review]

Point & click escape rooms had a baby with Iron Maiden’s entire catalog.

Platform: iOS, Android, & Steam

Price: $4.99 on iOS, $3.99 on Android, $11.99 Steam

Story & setting

Your mysterious cloaked protagonist began Tormentum: Dark Sorrow imprisoned in some sort of medieval fantasy steampunk inquisition dungeon. In typical escape room fashion, the goal was to escape.

The entirety of Tormentum was beautifully painted from the characters to the panoramic settings. The art had a Frank Frazetta heavy metal style about it that gave the game a unique feel.

In game: A dark dungeon with a menacing horned knight stating: "This place will purge you of all evil hatched within your bowels.
All of the character talk purdy.

Puzzles

Tormentum: Dark Sorrow was a point & click, pixel hunt digital escape room. It leaned heavily on searching. There were some entertaining puzzles, but they were not the centerpiece of the game; the art was.

In game: A dungeon with a woman trapped in a small cage that hangs from the ceiling. A strange looking demon statesL "But why am I telling you this. Leave and don't wassste my time, human!"
A demonic guard just casually forgetting his place and giving puzzle hints. The usual.

Standouts

The art was gorgeous. Everything looked like a bleakly beautiful hellscape. It worked.

In-game: The hooded main character in a room filled with mummies and sarcophaguses.
Book your vacation in the next 5 minutes to receive one additional night at no cost to you!

I enjoyed the fictional world of Tormentum. It felt like a heavy metal album had been turned into an escape game.

There were some great puzzle designs.

Shortcomings

While I liked a lot of the puzzle designs, I found myself wishing that they had leaned into their ideas, pushed beyond basic execution, and asked me to more thoroughly master those puzzles.

The pixel hunt searching overstayed its welcome. It was easy to completely miss critical things within the game’s elaborate art.

In-game: A massive demon stating, "It is easier for a thousand crows to fly through a fiery mountain than it is for you to pass safely through my entrails, wretched human."
And they squeezed in a few stage bosses from Contra for good measure.

On more than a few occasions I made critical in-game moral decisions, by accident, without any intention or understanding of what was about to happen. These moments kind of pissed me off. If I’m gonna murder someone, I want to know that I’m about to do it.

Should I play Tormentum: Dark Sorrow?

Tormentum went all in on the art. If you like point & click escape rooms and this game’s art direction appeals to you, then it’s worth a few bucks and a few hours to play it.

If both the game format and the art don’t speak to you, then I don’t think it’s worthwhile. There were some great puzzle designs, but they left me wanting more. I found Tormentum’s interactions were often too opaque, especially when it came to moral choices, which frustrated the hell out of me.

If Tormentum feels like a fit for you, it’s got a dark and twisted beauty about it.

Download Tormentum: Dark Sorrow today.

Download iOS

Download Android

Download Steam (Don’t play it on Steam, $12 is too much to pay for this game)

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: