True Fear: Forsaken Souls Part 2

Eh. Alright well... While this isn't bad... This isn't like the first one.
It's also rather not well optimized (I forgot to check if the first game was running at 800 - 1.6k FPS) and the Mini-Games in this one are more to drive you annoyed/insane versus for you to have fun/challenge.
I would say it's appropriate for the setting, but... I don't know why they derived from the 1st game's formula.
It was creepy. Unsettling. You WANTED to know wth is going on and lalalal, the rest.
This one however... I have no idea what's going on and some mini-games fried my brain.
Creepy? Sure, it started out that way and then I was like... Go away!!! I am trying to annoy myself with this damn puzzle and mayhaps reach the ending!!
Then I FINALLY do, all the while my PC is reminding me that I shouldn't play this game for too long or risk frying it at some point, and I don't get it.
Any of it.
Like I said... It's not bad... And it's a Trilogy...
I've played far, far worse games and I did have *some* fun with it. So that does have to count for something. EH.

An excellent followup to the first True Fear and better in almost every way. The puzzle difficulty hits the nail on the head most of the time and the atmosphere is very strong for this type of game. As in the first game, True Fear 2 has a ton of unnecessary shock moments and "jumpscares" that get funnier the further you get into the game, but are never really scary; personally I think they almost detract from the nice atmosphere these games have. Just like the first game, the soundtrack is great and there is a really solid art direction.
If I had one criticism, it's that True Fear 2 is a lot more open than the first game, which makes finding what to do next a bit annoying at times if you have a dozen or more screens available to you, especially on Expert difficulty where Hints are disabled. Luckily there is an excellent walkthrough available in the Guides section that I used 2 or 3 times, but I probably could have figured it out myself in time too. Regardless, this is a great HOG and I look forward to playing the last game in the trilogy as well!

Best in the series IMO. More cohesive, unique, and interesting than Part 1, but narrative kinda feels wasted by the 3rd entry.
Great architecture, great imagery, very interesting puzzles and narrative exploration. No more hidden object cutaways, which makes sense for the world, but I think loses a little something for me personally. The puzzles are good, usually interesting and well reasoned.
The limited real-time 3D elements lose a little of that hand-painted charm for me, but they're limited to specific sections and integrate well enough.

True Fear: Forsaken Souls Part 2, developed by Goblinz Enterprises Ltd and published by The Digital Lounge, is a rare example of a sequel that manages to deepen its world and strengthen its emotional and psychological grip without losing sight of what made its predecessor memorable. Continuing the journey of Holly Stonehouse, the game picks up the threads of mystery left dangling in the first part and carries the player into the ominous ruins of the Dark Falls Asylum, a place that serves as both a literal setting and a metaphor for the character’s fractured psyche. The asylum is a maze of memories, secrets, and haunting echoes, and as Holly delves deeper into its labyrinthine corridors, the line between reality and hallucination becomes increasingly blurred. The developers have refined nearly every aspect of their storytelling and design, resulting in an experience that feels larger, darker, and more personal than before.
From the first moment, the game establishes an atmosphere of oppressive dread. Every environment, from the decaying wards and abandoned laboratories to the forgotten offices filled with yellowed files and broken furniture, is meticulously rendered to evoke a sense of loss and unease. Goblinz’s signature art style, blending realism with a painterly texture, captures the sickly beauty of decay. The lighting design does much of the heavy lifting, using flickering bulbs, dim lamps, and shafts of cold moonlight to heighten tension in even the most mundane spaces. The soundscape further reinforces the unease—soft whispers, distant thuds, the creak of doors opening on their own—constantly reminding the player that something unseen is always nearby. Unlike jump-scare-heavy horror games, True Fear relies on atmosphere and psychological tension to unsettle, and it succeeds by making the player feel watched even when nothing moves. The minimalist music, composed of ambient tones and sorrowful piano motifs, underscores the sense of isolation that defines Holly’s journey.
At its core, True Fear: Forsaken Souls Part 2 is an adventure game interwoven with puzzle-solving, exploration, and hidden-object elements. It leans more heavily on logic-based and environmental puzzles than the first part, moving the series closer to a traditional adventure format. Players are encouraged to piece together clues, repair mechanisms, and solve intricate contraptions that tie directly into the asylum’s story. The design of these puzzles reflects the developers’ attention to balance: they are neither trivial nor unfair, challenging enough to engage without breaking the pacing of the narrative. A fast-travel map helps streamline movement between the asylum’s many rooms and buildings, minimizing backtracking while keeping exploration central to the experience. Collectibles, notes, and figurines scattered throughout the game flesh out the backstory and encourage meticulous observation. Everything feels placed with intention, rewarding curiosity with bits of lore or cryptic revelations that slowly unravel the mystery surrounding Holly’s family.
The narrative continues to be the driving force behind the game’s appeal. Holly’s search for the truth about her mother and her sister is steeped in psychological complexity, gradually transforming what begins as a quest for answers into an exploration of grief, guilt, and identity. Through journals, photographs, and hallucinations, players piece together the fragmented history of the Stonehouse family, discovering connections between the asylum’s dark past and Holly’s own traumatic experiences. The writing is straightforward but effective, relying on subtle hints and symbolic imagery rather than explicit exposition. The story unfolds with a deliberate pace, alternating between discovery and dread, ensuring that each revelation feels earned. The result is a tale that is as much about confronting inner demons as it is about surviving external horrors. By the time the credits roll, the player has been left with enough lingering questions and emotional tension to look forward eagerly to the promised final installment.
In terms of performance and design, Part 2 is a noticeable improvement over its predecessor, though not without imperfections. The user interface is cleaner and more responsive, inventory management is smoother, and puzzles integrate more naturally into the environment. However, some minor bugs and typographical errors persist, occasionally breaking immersion for observant players. The occasional audio mismatch or visual glitch can momentarily pull the player out of the experience, but these issues are small in comparison to the overall polish of the game. The hidden-object scenes, though fewer in number, are crafted with care, emphasizing mood over clutter, and they blend seamlessly into the larger narrative rather than feeling like isolated mini-games. The pacing remains deliberate, and players looking for fast action or heavy jump scares may find the experience too restrained, but for those who appreciate slow-burn psychological horror, the tempo feels perfectly calibrated.
What truly sets True Fear: Forsaken Souls Part 2 apart is its emotional resonance. Beneath the eerie environments and ghostly encounters lies a story about a woman unraveling not just a supernatural mystery, but her own identity. The game’s title is apt: it’s not merely about fear of what lurks in the dark, but the fear of what one might discover within oneself. Holly’s journey mirrors the experience of the player, oscillating between clarity and confusion, courage and dread. Each clue found and each puzzle solved brings both progress and pain, peeling back layers of denial to reveal uncomfortable truths. The voice acting and subtle animations capture this fragility, giving Holly depth beyond that of a typical horror protagonist. Her vulnerability, combined with her determination, makes her story compelling and human amid the supernatural chaos.
True Fear: Forsaken Souls Part 2 stands as a benchmark in modern psychological horror adventures. It doesn’t rely on gore or cheap scares but instead constructs a world where horror seeps in through implication, memory, and atmosphere. It invites players to think, to observe, and to feel unease on a deeper level than mere shock. Despite a few technical blemishes, it delivers a cohesive and emotionally charged experience that expands upon its foundation with confidence. Goblinz Enterprises demonstrates here a mastery of pacing, world-building, and narrative cohesion that few indie studios achieve. For fans of narrative-driven horror, True Fear: Forsaken Souls Part 2 is both a haunting continuation and a promise of darker revelations yet to come—a slow descent into fear that lingers long after the screen goes dark.
Rating: 9/10

A direct sequel to the first Forsaken Souls, wherein you guide the protagonist — a woman seeking answers to a curse afflicting her immediate family — on her quest to uncover what happened at the now-abandoned mental hospital that once housed her sister. A twin (triplet?) sister of whom she was previously unaware, because this game’s plot operates under soap opera rules.

If you played the first game, in most respects it’s quite similar, just bigger. It’s a point-and-click adventure in the style of games where you move from room to room, each of which is depicted from a static first-person vantage point. You find objects in each room, building up your inventory; and you use your inventory to manipulate other objects to solve environmental puzzles. Standard fare, nothing too inventive from a gameplay perspective.

The inventory/environment puzzles are … fine, if highly contrived, with a bit of moon logic here and there. Unfortunately, the game requires an intense amount of pixel-hunting. Perhaps because it’s holding onto the first game’s hidden object bona fides, there is no way to highlight interactable elements on the screen. You have to find things manually. That’s fine as far as it goes, and pretty common in point-and-clicks. But it felt particularly annoying here to me, as what is and is not interactable can be a bit subtle.

Two aspects of the design come to the rescue. For one thing: if you’re not playing on hard difficulty then interactable elements will sometimes sparkle. It’s subtle, though, and a bit inconsistent. For another: this game provides a map showing how each screen links together, and whenever there’s something you can do on a given screen, the map will show that screen with a red exclamation mark. You can then teleport directly to that location. This significantly narrows down the search space.

However, this doesn’t eliminate the pixel-hunting; I’d frequently find myself clicking everywhere on a screen trying to locate the interactable element I was missing. Further, and more importantly, the map’s beneficence led to a gameplay loop where I wasn’t really engaging with the puzzle design — I was just using the map to go to the right room and figuring things out via trial and error. For this reason there weren’t a lot of the “aha!” moments that make point-and-click game fun.

You could play without the map, but I suspect it would be a frustrating experience because of the game’s pixel-hunting combined with the large number of rooms.

Finally … this may be a “me” problem, but I found that the game overused minigame-style puzzles, in the vein of making a picture via sliding tiles around. Some of these were tolerable, but there were a lot of puzzles in which you need to get a set of objects into some configuration, but you’re only allowed (say) three levers or buttons that change the entire configuration in unpredictable ways, and you need to work out the exact sequence of lever pulls or button presses that finally result in the correct configuration. It feels like doing a Rubik’s Cube. Maybe this is an indictment of my visio-spatial reasoning skills, but I found these games intensely frustrating. I just wasn’t having a fun time, and there were a ton of them.

You can skip them, though, at least on medium difficulty. I found myself doing this more and more often as the game progressed. I just couldn’t be bothered.

Final verdict? The game's OK, not perfect, but playable, and it has a fun low-budget horror movie vibe. The game can be frustrating, but that frustration is smoothed over via a generous cheat/skip system if you're willing to use it. There are worse ways to spend six or seven hours.

A fun creepy but contrived point and click horror game. No real complaints, not a masterpiece but quite enjoyable.

7/10

Not my favorite in the series, but loved the expanded plot from the first game! Definitely improved upon itself, and left you wanting to know more!