4/5 ★ – YogiEisbar's review of Sorry We're Closed.

One of the last games I played in 2024 and it was a great one to at the end of the year. I picked it up because I saw, what I thought, were clear influences from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. I was right too! This is really gay! A big ol’ gay romance horror game. This thing was probably one of the most, if not the most, stylish games I played this year. The bulk of the work seemed to be done by two people on the dev team and what they crafted was just bonkers. A game that is ultimately about love, and what love means and does to people. Love isn't something that can be taken, it can only be given, but how do we choose who to give love to? What if they don’t give it back? What shapes can love take? Is love worth the risks and pain? What if we put too much weight on what love can do? I’ve said love too much, the word is losing meaning. It starts off very creepy and eerie, but nothing seems too out of the ordinary, they are just building suspense. People are going missing, lots of people are on edge. You close up the corner shop you are working in after seeing your ex on TV as a big actor, seemingly moved on from you and doing well. Everyone seems to know that Michelle is still hung up on their ex, a little down, clearly struggling with her love life. She heads to bed after meeting some of her interesting neighbours and tries to sleep. Seemingly in a dream, Michelle is visited by the Duchess. An incredibly intimidating and grotesque but also simultaneously tall dark and handsome demon who gives Michelle a third eye and opens the horrors of the Demon world. The Duchess wants your love, and they are going to take it by force if necessary. The Duchess NEEDS love, can you provide it? This third eye also marks Michelle as being cursed. As one who has the Duchess’s attention. Everyone else seems to know what happened to the others. And when I say others, I mean hundreds of others. You are one of many, who have all failed before. You are thrown right into things with an encounter with a seemingly passive demon as you try and make sense of the goings on in your new world. In terms of game play It’s got that isometric view of old Resident Evil games. The difference is when you aim, you go into first person. Michelle can also use her handy dandy new third eye to see things in the demon world. The third eye opens up so much gameplay AND design wise. You will have different obstacles in each of the worlds and have different ways of dealing with enemies in each of the worlds too. The game has to be designed around The Human World and The Demon world but both have to have 1st person and isometric perspectives in mind. It made me appreciate the design work that went in. You can also now see demons and angels around that weren’t visible before in your street, and even find out some of your neighbours are demons! I wonder who… These demons are all very interesting design wise by the way, they are all wearing revealing clothing, but aren’t hyper sexual. It’s a fine line when you have characters wearing leather and not very much of it, but they walk that line well, it never feels gratuitous. There are many civilised demons, not all of them are out to get you and you will interact with plenty of them as you navigate your way around. Okay, back to the moment to moment stuff, you get a few weapons and it’s functionally a pretty “normal” survival horror game. Move through the areas, get resources that help you survive and collectibles that you can sell for upgrades. You solve some puzzles, navigate around some enemies and try to get to the end of the areas you are thrown into while you try to break your curse. I don’t think the gameplay is the star but it’s good enough to build the game around in my opinion. You’ll need to stand still to shoot, pretty normal for an older horror game, it brings some thought about your positioning and timing. To add depth though, your third eye can be used to tackle enemies in a different way. You can either, with your third eye shut, shoot an enemy ANYWHERE in the body but for less overall damage. OR get the third eye open for a more precise weak spot, this weak spot will be the ONLY thing you can damage with your third eye open. You get rewarded for shooting these weak spots without missing too. Risk/Reward, do you trust your aim? The game isn’t really easy but it’s not super difficult either. It does have achievements for dying a certain amount of times. Not really a fan of a game that celebrates killing the player, Dark Souls 2 did that and felt a little weird. It’s a fine level of difficulty, just a lil nitpick with the game there. The game will have some boss battles, these are a spectacle in their own right. There are some banger tracks that are tied into the boss battles too, overall the soundtrack fits the game really well. More style oozing from this. This also goes for sound design. I thought, as I went room to room, that the door sound was really beefy and robust. You will hear the same sounds constantly, so this stuff needs to be good and not grating. The enemy sounds, the reload sounds, the door sounds. The characters don't have voice acting, just sighs and grunts but it’s fine. This stuff works really well. I think this is a game I could have talked more about, or…even talked less about in order to leave more mystery for you. However, I really enjoyed some of the thoughts it provoked and I wanted to talk about them. It’s also a shame it was released so late in the year and more people haven’t played it yet. So many visual style awards could have been picked up here, it truly was a treat. I would highly suggest picking up the Big Gay Jojo (maybe gay and jojo are redundant..) Love Horror Story!