Grotesque Beauty – A Horror Visual Novel

Grotesque Beauty - A Horror Visual Novel, is, well, fairly self-explanatory. It is a visual novel with dark themes. Whilst it is noticeably short, its many different endings and reasonable price tag make it a decent experience for anyone looking for a spooky story with some decision making.
Pros
30 different endings
Descriptive dialogue with intriguing characters
Brutal, vivid death scenes
Simple but effective comic book visuals

Cons
Steam overlay does not work
Sometimes the text box is completely blank
No branching path or list of endings
Story & Gameplay
The game centres around two young girls Anita and Rachel. Anita is constantly home alone and has been having strange feelings of paranoia, so the two agree to have a sleep over to ease Anita's mind. Before long, things go from normal to extremely bizarre in record time. The two discover an odd, yet alluring painting in Anita's lounge room which makes them both feel uneasy and may be the reason for all of the recent inexplainable happenings. Like most VN's, every now and then, the player must make a decision that will alter their fate. These decisions are important and directly impact the ending, but due to just how many endings there are, this can become a tad cumbersome.
The developers do an excellent job at building the sense of dread and mystery within players, despite each playthrough being quite short. The story has 30 different endings, and all of these are vastly different to each other. It is clear that the Digital Bento team have immense creativity and a vivid imagination to produce as many contrasting endings as they did. Yet, without any branching paths to follow, replaying to get all of these endings is not something that appeals to me. Skipping text is also not instantaneous as the game features an abundance of transition screens which slow down the text speed significantly. Furthermore, there was a common bug where the text screen was completely blank, yet the story seemed to continue on (shown by characters facial expressions). Overall, whilst the story was a well-written nightmarish tale, its small playtime is shadowed by technical issues which is immersion breaking and a bit of a disappointment.
Visuals & Sound
The game is entirely displayed in a scratchy black and white scheme, similar to a comic book. I enjoyed this simplicity and lifeless theme. The scenes of the "monster" and death scenes are haunting, mainly due to the illustrations of the characters and their facial expressions. Grotesque Beauty is a good example of portraying horror and uneasiness using simple, but effective visuals. Although, this grayscale theme was irksome when reading for extended periods. The text box is black, and the writing is white, but the black text box background shutters around, making it painful to read the text. It seems to be a purposeful visual effect but it was more of a hindrance.
Sound is minimal. There are scenes of prolonged silence, and the characters are not voiced. However, I felt the eerie silence added to the mysterious narrative, enhancing the background ambience when it was there.
Technical & Stats
This game was played using mouse only and with the following PC specs.:
Intel i5-9400 2.9 GHz
16GB RAM
GeForce RTX 2060 6GB
2560x1440 resolution
HDD
Windows 10
Playtime: Depends on how many endings you wish to achieve. I achieved 8 in my time of 2 hours.
Controller Recommended? No
Replayability value: Yes, the game is designed around it, to see all branching paths and endings.
Achievements: No achievements.
Conclusion
Grotesque Beauty is a spooky and short horror visual novel. It is adequately priced at $AU8.50 and encourages replays to achieve the many different endings. The story is well written and engaging, but its lack of settings and apparent technical problems should be considered prior to purchase.
Follow our curator page: IndieGems if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.
If you would like to see more reviews written by me, please follow my curator page and help support my reviews Cookie Reviews.

Like this Review? Follow The Cpt Froggy Club Curator Page for plenty more!
The game starts with a gloomy fog covering the screen, then the silence is disturbed by the vibration of an incoming phone call. It’s your friend Anita, ringing you to make sure that you’re still coming over to her house tonight. She says that she thought you might have changed your mind, but you assure her that you’re still coming over and that you aren’t far from her house.
You play as Rachel, an old friend of Anita’s. Anita has been feeling afraid of being on her own recently. Her parents both work late, so you have decided to stay the night with Anita to keep her company, as you used to when you were both younger. She’s always been afraid of being on her own, but you had thought she was over it now. She lives about twenty-five minutes' walk away and before you know it, you’re there.
Upon reaching Anita’s house you’ll have your first choice of action to take; will you “Knock on Door” or “Serenade Her”? You will need to make many choices as you progress through the game, with each action you take influencing later outcomes. You enter Anita’s house after she greets you at the door, and after a bit of chit-chat Anita tells you about how uneasy she has been feeling lately.
Ever since this mysterious fog appeared around a week ago, which seems to be isolated to just the street where Anita lives, Anita explains that she feels like she is being watched, although she can’t see anyone around as the fog is so thick. It’s not just outside, the feeling of being watched is still there inside her house; she is unsure if she’s just being paranoid. Rachel always knew that Anita was a little skittish, but she genuinely seems afraid that something might happen.
After some more chat you both move into the living room where Anita offers you a drink. The living room looks just like it did the last time you visited, with one exception; the painting hanging above the fireplace. The painting is of a naked woman surrounded by fog, just like the fog surrounding Anita’s street. Anita then tells you how she doesn’t like the painting, and that her father is obsessed with it after getting it from some auction house.
After hearing about how they got the painting, Rachel connects the arrival of the painting and the mysterious fog with the uneasiness of Anita. Anita wonders whether Rachel is trying to scare her, or she is just being crazy. A painting can’t bring the mysterious fog to the neighborhood or make Anita feel like she’s being watched … or can it??? Suddenly there’s a loud bang on the front door; from here things start to get weird and creepy.
There’s not a lot in the way of Settings; Save (ten game saved slots), Load, Hide Message, Skip Message and Back to Title.
The game has that eerie feeling with the sounds and music, the graphics are well done with animated characters which had me checking myself a couple times (I was OK … honest). The storyline is good and there are thirty different endings to the game. I’m not sure how many endings I have currently found as I lost count and sadly there is no way to keep track of them unless you write them down yourself. Hopefully this is something which can be sorted sometime in the future. Overall though I’ve enjoyed playing the game and think it’s worth giving a bash. Thumbs UP!
Positives
+ Great graphics and sounds
+ Good storyline
+ Eerie atmosphere
+ Thirty different endings
Negatives
- Cannot track completed endings
- No achievements currently
- No cards currently
While staying at a friend’s house, things turn into a nightmare and a mysterious painting may be the cause of it all.
7/10
Key provided by developer/publisher for review purposes via THE CPT FROGGY CLUB!
Any opinions expressed are entirely my own!
For more reviews, great game giveaways and much more.
Come join us @ www.Zeepond.Com and The Cpt Froggy Club Steam Group

It's been a while I played any horror novels. It felt nice for a change. I used to be a great horror fan, watched all possible horror films I could only find. It is a bit nostalgic to dive into some scary, gruesome story once in a while. Thanks.
The novel is created in dark colors, visuals look simple but quite atmospheric. The story is short but it contains 30 endings. It's amazing how many ways exist for you to die at just one night, at one house xD I applaud to the writer's imagination. I mean the endings are quite diverse, you may survive if you choose right, plus there are some 'open' endings I personally enjoy a lot. It's up to your interpretation to decide what kind of ending it is.
Unfortunately, once again I'm not satisfied with the technical side of the game. Too many similar games recently, sadly. Welp,
--I wish I was rewarded with achievements for all the endings;
--it'd be nice to have the list of endings in the menu;
--too few save slots AGAIN (｀□′)╯┴┴ There's a helpful steam guide but as the story is short, it's easy to get all the endings on your own IF ONLY I could save before the choices:(( not enough save slots for that:( just one page, that's too little!
--skipping is too slow due to lots of transitions between lots of new scenes, plus you can't skip all those animated moments;
--only full window mode, at least I didn't see how to change that. Usually while playing I write down my thoughts, so I need to minimize the game but when I click window key it triggers skipping, so not only ctrl forced the game to skip for whatever reason and when I have to use a backlog it's just unreadable with light text on a white background. Very inconvenient!
--typical F12 for screenshots doesn't work here, it's been a while I played such games, I have a new computer since then, so I had to spend lots of time to actually find that comment where one of my steam friends recommended me 2 programs I need to use for that xD
--lots of typos, and I may be wrong but I think that mixture of past and present tenses in the same sentence can't be right grammatically. Anyway, the game needs some editing for sure.
But all those issues aside, I liked the game. I guess the main reason we read horror stories is to feel scared, right? The feeling we don't usually experience in real life. I mean some supernatural fear, like while fighting against monsters. And at first I thought it was not scary enough, just gory. One of the reasons I stopped watching horror films as they were mainly disgusting but not scary. But then I had such a bloody, nasty nightmare, first in so many years I felt shaken to the core. I couldn't fall asleep despite being very tired and sleepy. And I mean it as a good thing, I llove powerful emotions. I wouldn't like to experience nightmares often, I know some ppl really suffer because of them, but once in years felt kinda exciting! Thanks again.
Horror stories seem so far from our actual reality but more reason to enjoy that unique experience. When I play visual novels, I always self-insert, give MC my name, honestly imagine how I'd act in those circumstances but horror... Gosh, I have no idea what I'd do if I face a monster: will I save my life sacrificing my friend, will I honestly be able to sacrifice my life to save others, will I be strong enough to fight against such monstrous creatures, will I be smart enough to find a solution, will I be lucky enough?! I guess it'd be the same way as it was in this game xD Looooooots of ways to die and so few chances to survive xD All the time I watch horror films, read horror stories or even real news about criminals I try to imagine if I'd be a victim—will I just scream, trip over my own foot and die or will I actually be able to fight in this or that way. I hope I'll never know. I hope horror stories will be enough for such an experience. And I'm grateful for this emotional, thought-provoking ride.
More thoughts about the game in a Reading Nook

Grotesque Beauty is a visual novel that stands out from the norm of the genre with its monochromatic and quasi-simplistic art style. The author claims it was inspired by Junji Ito's works and I can kind of see the correlation. However, a story that starts promising - subtle and eerie - can quickly devolve into an action-packed survival experience that requires picking the right choices to survive... and I think that's where it started to slip for me. When the "main antagonist" is given a face and it becomes a game of cat and mouse, the mystery and psychological elements are thrown out of the window.
My biggest issue with this game, however, is that it is short... very short. A single playthrough offers about 20-ish minutes of gameplay. If you're like me and prefer to experience the most a game has to offer in a single run (or at least have it feel that way) then you may find Grotesque Beauty lacking. I discovered about 3 endings before my curiosity and interest waned. While I don't mind branching paths in videogames, I think fragmenting a (short) story into 30 different conclusions (some being early 'bad endings') to be a bit too much.
If you chose to experience all the game has to offer then I think you're getting your money's worth.
Would I recommend this game? I wish there was a neutral option because that's what I'd choose here yet I recognize it can still be enjoyable for some, if not most horror fans. The game, however, didn't click for me... and that's fine.

As a fan of Digital Bento's previous offering, A Salem Witch Trial, I was pleased to see a new release, especially a horror offering such as this, and just in time for the Halloween season no less.
Grotesque Beauty bears little aesthetic resemblance to the developer's colourful predecessor, this time being presented in a muted—though no less striking—palette of black, white, and grey. The minimalist approach to the visuals shouldn't dissuade you, as each illustration is lovingly crafted and framed to maximize the accompanying text; this same approach is taken with the soundtrack and sound effects, both of which are admittedly sparse, but still manage to marry well with the story as it's being revealed. Whether intentional or otherwise, the main menu theme subtly reminds me of the Tales from the Darkside theme, which I helped set the mood for what is to come.
In terms of length, a single playthrough is only going to take roughly an hour or so, but there are thirty available—often grisly—endings scattered throughout the myriad branching points; the process of getting new endings can be mitigated by saving at opportune moments, compelling you to reload and seek out each alternate path. In my nearly four hours, I've managed to get about ten of those endings thus far, and have every intention to continue playing until I've seen the rest, as the story tends to take some rather drastic, unexpected, and suitably sadistic turns.
If you're looking for a quality horror visual novel, this one comes recommended, especially at such a relatively cheap price.

This game is a trip. I was on the edge of my seat from beginning to end, never really knowing what would come next. It's definitely worth the price.

This has to be one of the scariest horror visual novels that I have played.
Seeing from the screenshots on the page, I thought this doesn't look scary at all but I was so wrong. The creature in this game is so weird and scary that it never failed to keep me scared throughtout the game. With its animation and its looks, I can't seem to sit well on my chair whenever that thing popped up.
Whoever who likes to play visual novels especially horror, you should get this game. Trust me, it's very scary and it doesn't help when the music makes you scared more