Daemon_9
Morgan Shane has disappeared, leaving a bloody trail of mayhem in her wake. But is she a monster or a victim of something far more sinister than the authorities are imagining? And the biggest question of all: Can you unravel the mystery before the same dark force that targeted Morgan finds you?
Daemon_9 is not a movie… it’s not a game… it’s both. It’s like a horror movie inside an escape room that puts YOU in the heart of the story. Full-motion video, graphic images and challenging brain teasers intertwine to spin a deeply layered story of supernatural terror and mystery.
GAMEPLAY:
When you first launch Daemon_9 you are greeted by a message from an anonymous friend of Morgan’s who is on a mission to find and save her — and uncover the truth of what happened to her. Desperate for help, he is asking for your help. Your only tool is a backup of his hard drive. And that’s where your journey begins — sifting through the material he’s unearthed in his quest for the truth. But the real challenge is to keep from falling victim to the same dark forces that claimed his friends, and by "getting involved" you may have made yourself vulnerable.
The trail will eventually lead you out onto the web and into a different kind of web — one woven with international conspiracy and supernatural forces. You will need wits, patience, and nerve to unravel the mystery, save Morgan, and save yourself.
Steam User 23
Daemon_9 is a hidden gem among FMV and ARG (alternate reality) titles. This interactive thriller brilliantly weaves horror live action scenes and content whilst involving the players themselves in the story.
Pros
+ Decent acting and voice overs.
+ Extremely realistic photos, emails, real web pages etc.
+ Great special effects, particularly for the horror FMV scenes. For an indie title, these are the best of the best.
+ Combination of a horror movie and video game, where players are the main character.
+ Depending on individual playstyle, there are some different methods of obtaining the same information.
+ If players get stuck, there is a 'clues and hints' file in the game which they can use.
Cons
- A bit short, only 2-3 hours playtime.
Story
A 19-year-old girl named Morgan Shane has gone missing and is also wanted for recent gory murders, including that of her best friend. There has been a mysterious cover-up by the police and the University in which she studied and now no-one knows where Morgan has gone. There are suspicions that Morgan was a victim of something paranormal, something that the authorities do not want the general public to know.
An anonymous friend of Morgan's is asking for your help, to figure out the truth behind her disappearance and what happened in the final hours leading up to it. Your only tool is a hard drive with saved files of Morgan and her best friends' life. These include everything from social media photos, YouTube videos, websites and essentially anything you would expect to find of someone's digital life.
By choosing to become involved in this mysterious case, you have embroiled yourself in something much larger than what you had first anticipated and you find yourself a target.
Gameplay
Players must scroll through the various files on the hard drive to unravel Morgan's story. There are many small video clips to watch and files to read. These videos are all extremely well done and decently acted, not to mention the excellent horror scenes scattered throughout which are generally spooky with amazing special effects.
While combing through all of this online data, things will begin to happen on your computer that you did not expect, however you must continue your quest to find Morgan Shane. I have purposely kept this vague as I do not want to spoil the many surprises throughout the course of the game.
There are a few puzzles here and there, mostly consisting of finding passwords to unlock private sections of the hard drive, or re-reading sections of a website to find the missing clue. Daemon_9 perfectly integrates real websites into its gameplay and will automatically alt-tab your game to load the website. It also depicts real platforms which players are familiar with such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, just to name a few. Using such conventional technology, combined with the realistic FMV scenes, it really does an excellent job of placing players into this alternate world, essentially making us the main character.
The entirety of the gameplay takes place on a computer screen and there is no walking around or choosing dialogue options etc. It is all purely watching video clips and reading personal files on a hard drive. Despite this, I found this and the story to be absolutely captivating and there was never a dull moment, however, please take note of this before actually purchasing the game and do not expect intense action gameplay.
Side note: I have seen some people questioning the purchase due to the 'sexual content' tag. To clarify, it is all a part of the story and I cannot elaborate more without revealing potential spoilers. However, it should be noted that there are only very limited scenes that display nudity and even in such scenes, it is blurred.
Bugs and Glitches
I did not experience any issues with the game itself, however I did notice that in full screen mode I could not use Steam Overlay.
Price and Content
Despite the playtime of Daemon_9 averaging only 2 hours, I highly recommend this game even at its full price of $AU7.50. Daemon_9 is not a traditional 'game' but is more equivalent to an interactive experience, part movie and part game. I am yet to have played a title of a similar genre that had me as engrossed as this one did.
Conclusion
I cannot speak highly enough of this little gem, it has so much to offer players with its high-quality acting and generally spooky supernatural story. At such a low cost already, this is a title all ARG/FMV enthusiasts need to have in their Steam libraries and it's definitely a game that horror fans should deeply consider.
This review copy was provided to the OCG-Curations curator.
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Steam User 42
IndieGems Curator
Immersive and fun ARG
Daemon_9 is one of those different kinds of experiences. It is a mix of point and click exploration with high quality fmv content. You take over the role of someone who is investigating a series of happenings between two best friends that lead to a cover up murder case. This will start out as simply watching some videos and exploring around but than you of course get sucked into the mystery and are "involved".
I don't want to say much more on the story because it is simply worth the experience. I will say that since this game is an ARG (alternate reality game) you will also be visiting some outside sites. These sites are also very excellently crafted. They are
Golden Content; But Still A Bit Short
It's really my only con with this title. It's got really high quality content that I enjoyed every second of but unfoutunately it was over within 2 hours for me. If I didn't take a peek at the tips for a particular moment I was stuck at, it may have taken 3-4; but either way it felt like a bit of a short experience. As great as the content is it's a bit like watching a movie as well. It will be good to revisit every once in a while but since you know everything after the first experience; replay value diminishes.
In the end though this is a fantastic and excellently crafted experience. I remember stating this for Roundabout and I'll state it here; there is a lot of love and care that went into everything in this game. You can tell that they had a great and fun time crafting the world, lore, and video content. Definitely check this one out. It's short but is an excellent experience.
Steam User 18
Daemon_9 is a coming-of-age story of two best friends, Morgan and Anna. In Daemon_9, we play as any online user who obtained access to copies of a murder case related to Morgan and Anna. Here, we watch videos to understand the story behind the tragic night of March 18 of 2018; we investigate websites to unearth potential conspiracies that may be related to the homicide of March 18 of 2018; we crack password puzzles, and decrypt codes to access sensitive information about Anna's fatal ending.
For her most recent birthday, Morgan received a new laptop from her mother. Immediately, she began using it to write papers and complete other schoolwork. However, Morgan soon enough begins to experience glitches in the computer that expose her to ancient Chinese culture, its beliefs, and ideas. Anna struggles to understand Morgan's fascination with the laptop, but particularly with this new culture. As Morgan spends increasingly more time on her laptop, Anna begins to fear this new electronic machine might replace her as a childhood friend.
Meanwhile, Morgan is immersing herself in ancient Chinese folklore, studying its language, chatting with interested people online, and even getting a tattoo of an ancient Chinese symbol. Anna is bewildered at all of this. Morgan's rapid newfound identity and independence threatens her codependency to Morgan. Assuming this change in personality must indicate something more sinister is at play, Anna begins to film her, harass her, and take the issue to their friends in order to find out the "truth."
Morgan becomes increasingly upset at Anna's invasive tactics. In an emotional confrontation recorded by Anna without Morgan's consent, Morgan demands more space from her because she feels like she wants to become her own independent woman. Morgan also tells Anna how she's annoyed by her constant need to film everything, and warns her to respect her privacy. Anna, feeling like she has no other option, threatens to post all the videos of Morgan online as a last cry for help. But before she does, she wants to see if she can reason with Morgan one last time.
On March 18 of 2018, Anna was murdered by Morgan. Daemon_9 will have you believe that there were other, "dark" or "paranormal" forces that took over Morgan and forced her to kill her best friend. In reality, Morgan was pushed over the edge by Anna's harassment. Morgan had no space, no privacy, and no room to find herself and grow as an independent woman. Daemon_9 will have you believe that a Chiyou Zhou, an ancient Chinese demon, possessed Morgan from within her computer via visual and text incantations. When in reality, Morgan's computer, along with her new college experience, were a gateway to new cultures, ideas, and beliefs that resulted in a change in Morgan that Anna could not accept.
Steam User 15
A young woman named Morgan Shane has gone missing, after murdering her life-long best friend Anna. She was last seen wandering alone, down a dark highway dressed in nothing but a bloody white shirt. Two officers patrolling the area found her, but one of them ended up becoming yet another bloody casualty of her psychopathic rage. All of her friends say that this definitely isn't normal behavior for Morgan, that she has somehow changed tremendously over the last couple of weeks, and they fear that she has become the victim of some sort of possession; especially after reviewing the police car footage. Could the internet be a gateway portal for paranormal and demonic activity?
It's hard to say a lot about this release without totally spoiling it, so therefore this review will be fairly brief. If you've never heard of, or have never played, an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), then now is your chance to discover and experience a fascinating genre of gaming that is by-and-large both overlooked and underdone. What ARGs are set up to do, is take you outside of the game itself and mesh the developer's fiction with your reality; by putting out videos in real places like YouTube, and creating realistic websites for fictitious companies, among other things. It brings a whole new meaning to armchair sleuthing, and Daemon_9 does an outstanding job at creating an incredibly immersive world right from the get-go. It's an ARG that will totally suck you in, so long as you're willing to throw disbelief out the window for about two hours to enjoy something that will completely encapsulate your mind.
The scope of this release is highly impressive for a small indie team. The acting is phenomenal for a low budget release with obviously amature actors/actresses. It's also really commendable that a young woman would agree to appear nearly nude (with panties on and censored breasts) in a game like this. Likewise, the special camera effects are nearly as great as what would be featured in some top name films, like Paranormal Activity. Many over-the-top, expensive lengths were gone through to ensure player immersion through total devotion to the ARG genre; such as the purchase of several website domain names and subsequently some fairly lavish coding for each one. The only real negative thing here is the brief duration of the game, since most of the puzzles can be solved fairly easily.
Without a doubt, Daemon_9 is worth every penny of its asking price. It's one of the most creative horror games to have surfaced in a long time, and it definitely deserves far more attention than what it's earning. There was a massive amount of effort put into every detail, both small and large, in this release, and it's a huge undertaking for such a small team with a low budget to pull something of this nature off. I host three websites of my own, and they definitely aren't cheap for those of us that aren't top dogs. If you're looking for something that will totally absorb you for a couple of hours, then this is it; just be prepared to suspend your disbelief for a little while.
Rating: 5.0/5.0 - An astonishing achievement, this game must be played.
The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore
The developer provided a free copy of this game for review, through The Horror Network's Curation page.
Steam User 17
Pretty cool game, if you want to put on your detective hat! Get a hard drive full of videos and text files, and try to figure out the murder mystery.
I played this game on ubuntu linux 18.04 with radeon mesa drivers. The keyboard shortcuts were somewhat limited, but I otherwise really admired the non-standard interface. The game is written in a developer-created javascript engine with blink video assets.
Be aware that there are parts of the game that require accessing online game assets. My system was unable to play the online video, due to codec incompatibilities.
I think the developer made a very interesting piece of entertainment.
Steam User 6
I have always had a soft spot for FMV based games. From Tender Loving Care to Her Story to The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker I have enjoyed them. When I heard about Daemon_9 it looked like exactly my type of game. It is a weird but awesome blend of gameplay. The game puts you in control of someone using a laptop to access an external hard drive they received in hopes of figuring out what happened to a woman named Morgan Shane who is missing and is suspected of being possessed and killing her friend. You access different files and folders to view movies, visit websites, recover deleted files and more all in an effort to better figure out what went on. I highly recommend having a pencil/pen and paper handy to jot down what may seem like clues. The game does a good job of not making them too obvious while not making things a pain to figure out either. You will notice that many things you find such as websites or folders may need passwords, decrypting, etc and it is up to you to find the clues to what those pieces needed are. As the game goes on you are able to piece together more of the story and also meet more characters. One nice thing is that you don’t have to find or do every last thing in order to finish the game. The voice acting and performances were pretty decent overall. They were not flawless but the effort was there and it worked together.
I played Daemon_9 on Linux. It never crashed on me once. There was no manual save option however the game did save every time you quit the game. Alt-Tab didn’t work. The game did open on the wrong monitor for me and had to be moved over to my main monitor manually. The game used up 1% of my CPU while playing and my total system RAM usage was 1.9GB. It used just 399MB of disk space. I finished Daemon_9 in about 3 hours.
If you enjoy FMV games such as Her Story, Tender Loving Care or The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker I think you will enjoy Daemon_9. I paid $5.74 CAD for it but would say it is easily worth $15.
My Score: 8.5/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 19.0.4 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Manjaro 18.0.4 | Mate 1.22.1 | Kernel 5.1.4-1-MANJARO
Steam User 9
Wow - this game is really, really good! It reminds me of Welcome to the Game mixed with something like The Bunker (it has live action stuff in it). You basically search through a hard drive watching videos and looking for clues as to what happened to this girl and how to help her. I'm about an hour in so far and it's riveting stuff. The production values are pretty high for a game that was SO cheap. I honestly have no idea how they managed to put this much work into it. I'm very impressed.
At this point, I am not finished the game but I still wanted to recommend it as it is well worth the current sale price of $5.99. Fantastic game to play for Halloween too. Right up my alley.
Update: I've finished the game and it's easily one of my favorite games of the year. It's almost my most viewed series by a MASSIVE margin on Youtube. Thanks to anyone who watched!