Spirit Hunter: Death Mark
You have been Marked… A strange rumor is spreading through the shadows of Tokyo's H City: a mysterious disfigurement, like a grotesque birthmark, has been appearing on the bodies of certain individuals. Anyone who receives the Mark will rapidly die of unknown, horrifying causes. Deprived of your memories, you arrive at a mansion rumored to protect the bearers of the Mark. As the doors swing open, the countdown to death has already begun… Key Features • Search and Survive! – To avoid an almost certain gruesome death at the “hands” of angry spirits, you’ll need to search your surroundings for clues to increase your odds of survival. • Ghost Busting – Sometimes the sword is more powerful than the pen. And when words fail it’s time to stand your ground. Remember the price of not holding your own is an untimely death.
Game Discussion
Steam User 9
Just leaving a review to attest that the game seems to finally be working flawlessly on Steam Deck with Proton Ge 10-25
Steam User 3
Easy recommendation if you like Visual Novels, Adventure Games and Horror... though the full price is a little high for what it is.
In Spirit Hunter: Death Mark you awaken in a mansion with no memory of who you are and a strange bite shaped scar on your wrist. As more people arrive at the mansion you learn that this is a Death Mark... a spirits curse that causes gradual memory loss and eventual messy death. You spend the game defeating spirits in order to break your curse.
The theming is absolutely fantastic. It's good graphics, good writing, and mechanics that create an overall feeling of mystery and ghost hunting.
During the investigation scenes, you'll play classic adventure style using your flashlight to discover clues and items while getting some cute jump scares. During the story scenes, you'll get slightly branching stories with your choice of multiple partners in each chapter. Sometimes, different partners even lead to different solutions with puzzles.
The unique system to Spirit Hunter is something called "Soul Points". I really like this system here. Think of it as a "Time to make life or death decisions".
In moments of danger, your soul will drop and you'll choose from 3 multiple choice options to save your life. And unlike Spirit Hunter: NG, it's not always instant death... but a reduction in SP per mistake. The decisions are always ALOT more satisfying when you're allowed to make a wrong decision and still recover.
Most of the choices/puzzles are actually very logical and I really didn't find myself blind guessing as I did in NG. Even in areas where I got stuck, I could look back at the solution and see how it makes perfect logical sense.
Between the safety buffer of Soul Points and the logical paths of puzzles... I didn't find myself reloading frequently. It was able to make progress and simply enjoy myself.
Equally helpful, unlike NG, you are not able to advance the story until you have ALL of the required items. This means that I could always be sure that I had the items I needed to solve a life or death puzzle, or defeat a ghost in combat. I just needed to figure out the right combination. (This was a complaint I had from NG)
That said, the game isn't perfect.
It's definitely too slow with extremely slow text speeds, awkward movement mechanics and long cutscenes during Life/Death scenes. I absolutely wanted to speed things up a bit.
The navigation is downright painful. It uses a dungeon crawl style "Turn or walk forward" mapping system, but the tiles don't have 4 facings. So I'll move onto a tile and have to use the map to determine which direction I'm actually facing and what that means for my next step. Combined with "You moved forward" messages with each step... makes movement a slow and confusing process.
Finally, the games CG often leads into a more lewd style than I feel benefits it. It often feels like the developers didn't trust their own gameplay and writing so they decided to throw in some fan service poses or a random lack of clothing just to be safe.
I'm not opposed to that content, but it made me uncomfortable here because it just didn't fit the rest of the game. There we're a couple places where it made sense and I'm good with it, but most cases it just cheapened the experience.
Overall, I've loved my time with Spirit Hunter: Death Mark. I'd be comfortable recommending this at 40 dollars to the right audience.
Steam User 6
Gorgeous art, fantastic story, I need Mashita carnally
Steam User 1
First off this game is truly a hidden gem that deserves more recognition. The horror is good, characters albeit fleeting are interesting for the short time they appear. Each individual case intrigued me in their mysteries. The way the game mixed visual novel with a point and click adventure was extremely refreshing and kept me engaged. Over all its a great game but I cannot only sing this game's praises without mentioning its flaws. Mainly my complains come from the insane amount of disorientation that some levels can cause. I don't mean "Oh I went the wrong way" kind of disorientation I mean LOST, this is caused by the movement being dependant on which way the player is facing. On it's own it sounds like it shouldn't be an issue but when paired with some tiles that look the exact same from every angle.
Steam User 10
Death, Dollies and Tattoos!
I heard this was award winning and tbh it was really interesting playing it. You have a handful of characters who keep you interested, the main character is mysterious. The story is pretty good too.
Story: Good
As a previous horror gamer I enjoy a good horror story, and this story is a curious and a plot twisting one. You follow the protagonist to a mansion where you have a mark on your arm and temporary memory loss leading to those marks, with instructions from a very lovely looking doll and guidance from a handful of vibrant characters, Death mark really leaves a nice imprint on to the soul. There are total of 5 main chapters, with the sixth one being the DLC one. You have a lot of choices to explore which would alter your fate and the fate of others. You follow a certain spirit in each chapter, and along with a partner that you can choose for help, you either can get good or bad ending depending on how you fight the spirit in the end. The story can be scary, a bit of gore here and there but not super spooky of course. As a theravada buddhist I really enjoyed the sanskrit words and buddhist references used in this Japanese game. I wonder if the Kannon soldier is named after the Pali Canon? It's a must to get the good ending to continue the game to the chapter 6 btw.
Characters: Epic!
The characters are a handful, with their own silly, quirky and sometimes mysterious personalities. The mark do not spare the kids either, my favorites is the Detective, Suzu and Tsukasa. You in the bones feel the helplessness of the choices that you take and on your partners. The spirits themselves are crafted based on interesting fictional? urban legends, twisted with their own trauma and pain. From the antagonists the "Hanayome" is something that I have witnessed in a Thai drama, in a collection of horror stories.
Gameplay: Buggy?
Yes sometimes the game would freeze at the point where you need to fight the final spirit so make a nice save there, also PLEASE make a save as soon as you get the opportunity so when you start the 6th chapter, there is no selection from the menu. The game cannot be saved all the time, so you need to time manage. There is collecting items and using them, sometimes you need to examine the object twice so the main protagonist will start getting what to actually do. I found it annoying that the game would restart itself without my permission and keep on going until i get to the save point. The final fight with spirits are interesting, you can do combo attacks using the items you find. There is also the live or die segments which are timed and you must find the right answer quickly as possible until your soul power goes out. You can die with careless decisions in this game so beware.
Achievements: straightforward
Achievements are not that hard to get, you just get good and normal endings for each spirit and then you are done.
Art: Interesting
This VN is semi voiced, the art is good. The spirit character sprites seem very unique. The kannon soldier specially caught my eye along with the buddhist chanting that followed it.
Overall
A very interesting Japanese ghost hunting VN with elements of Buddhism, gore, trauma and suspense. What will you choose to do? completely annihilate the spirits or save them?
Steam User 0
Fantastic game the saving isn't always at the best time but you can always just skip the text to get back to were you were. I was immediately sucked in and didn't want to play anything else until I finished it
Steam User 0
this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing. i loved it so much. all of the characters are so interesting and i just like all of them. artwork is insane, as much as i think they got progressively less common and less detailed. that pissed me off a little bit cause i just love the artstyle. great story, INSANE design for the spirits… the spider from chapter 6? like WHAAAATTT that was so sick. the soldier from chapter 5 too, so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing. the gameplay is also dope, i reeeally like the investigations and the puzzles.
i wish i could just save the game whenever and that there was a way to play the chapters individually so we could get all the endings without having to play the game all over again… also, the dialogue is so slow…that wasn’t very nice.
the only thing i genuinely NEED to criticize: why the ♥♥♥♥ are you sexualizing children? multiple times even? that moe ceiling illustration was NOT it, dude. “oh she’s not a kid, she’s 16” no, she’s still a minor, YOU ARE A CREEP. sexualizing hiro and miss zoo and etc is one thing…i think it’s unnecessary but ok…but not a teenager, it’s not okay.
anywaaysss…despite that, the game is super cool. i will 100% be playing the rest of the franchise,