The real problem with Infliction is that it decides to muddy the waters of that narrative motivation by introducing Lovecraft into it for some reason. That’s not its biggest narrative sin, though. It also doesn’t do a particularly effective job of telling that story, with very laboured performances and overly predictable revelations that fail to be “shocking” because you know they’re coming right from the start. Infliction doesn’t even try to distinguish itself from retelling one of the most common themes for horror in existence. Firstly you’ve seen this narrative play out in games before. What’s meant to be scary is what he has done and, without giving much away, this is a story of alcoholism, domestic violence, and a broken family. While the protagonist is doing this he’s chased around by a spirit-monster, but that’s really secondary and not the source of the real horror. Early on it’s quite clear that you’re inhabiting the body of a person who is in a kind of purgatory, forced to explore on loop a house looking for clues that piece together a mystery, with each loop getting increasingly bleeped up as the revelations become clear and the nice suburban house is filled with crumbling walls, grotesque nightmare paintings and even the odd trip to an asylum that just shows up out of nowhere.

The game’s biggest problem is the motivation behind its horror. Sadly, though, it misses the mark, and does so by a considerable margin. Infliction: Extended Cut throws the best pitch it can to be one of the many excellent indie horror games that are out there. A solid, intense horror game that runs for five hours is sufficient if it’s pitched right. Finally, horror is one of the rare genres where players don’t have the expectation that a game runs for 30 or more hours. You don’t need so many moving parts – in fact some of the best horror games don’t feature more than one enemy and an awful lot of walking around.

It presents an opportunity to limit the scale of an experience – a single house can be a playground for exquisite horror. Horror is reasonably within the means of smaller developers from a scope perspective. Indies love horror, and it’s easy to understand why.

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