My cat and I are at it again. We are sitting in the dark office lit only by the light of the monitor. A face pops on the screen. I legitimately jump, scared to keep moving forward. My cat remains stoic in the face of horror.
I have to keep going. With my courageous furry friend by my side, we continue through the house at the center of developer Jeff Winner’s DeathOmen.
Unfortunately for us, DeathOmen is a brief, uninspired horror game. It stirs up some legitimate scares, but ultimately lingers in the shadow of much stronger horror games that inspired it.
A Penny for Your Thoughts; A Dollar for Your Eyes
DeathOmen puts players in control of a nameless character who can’t leave the house. The life of the protagonist revolves around watching surveillance footage where each click earns them one dollar. This money is then used to buy pills, food, and a flashlight.
These items are ordered through a simple DoorDash-esque interface, accessed from the house’s master bedroom. A doorbell goes off, and the player rushes downstairs to find a doggie bag with the ordered items. Not eating when prompted that the protagonist is hungry, or not taking pills when necessary, leads to death. One could almost call these warnings… an omen.
I would call this cycle a gameplay loop (surveillance grants money; the player purchases necessary items, then staves off death while awaiting those items). Unfortunately, these mechanics aren’t repeated enough to quite call it that.
Of course, strange things happen. Ghostly beings appear in the surveillance footage or jump out during inopportune moments, leading to a jump scare that embarrassed me and brought shame to my cat. But these moments, although unnerving, never felt unique.
When One Door Opens… Another One Stays Open
I’m used to gameplay loops dependent on doors opening and closing—the great environmental storytelling structure of post-PT horror games. Hallways present donut-like loops to be navigated. Little changes to the environment mark changes in the story and, by extension, the player’s progress within it.
DeathOmen presents one metaphorical hallway—a house with a few doors—where doors open to new rooms with, unfortunately, predictable outcomes. The developer plays with some sound and lighting cues, but the environmental storytelling is not that of PT, SadSquare Studio’s Visage, or even Bloober Team’s Layers of Fear.
During my hour of playtime (yes, the game is that short), I never ran into an issue with what I should do next. Puzzles are simple. For instance: Yes, the basement is dark and requires the player to buy the flashlight they saw on Not Doordash earlier.
Little notes throughout the house provide nuggets of information about a life that once was or perhaps currently is. They give glimpses of a story that never loops back or gives much space to meditate on how the pieces fit together.
DeathOmen supplements its barebones gameplay loop with an ominous, abstract story of loss, grief, and autonomy. It simultaneously felt too long and too short, with an ending that felt abrupt and unearned.
Final Thoughts
I wanted to like DeathOmen. Jeff Winner’s previous games include Horror Story: Hallowseed and Slender: Reborn, other brief games with interesting spins on horror tropes. Winner’s DeathOmen feels like the kind of game that we like to honor, share, and discuss at The Punished Backlog.
The game’s Steam page provides an interesting pitch: “a short psychological horror game that challenges players to maintain their sanity over the nights in a mysterious house that hides mystery and fear.” In reality, however, Death Omen feels more like a tech demo. What I found didn’t align with the initial promise, nor did it give me “sanity effects” (something provided in Silicon Knight’s now 23 year-old Eternal Darkness).
In the end, DeathOmen is a brief, technically competent walking simulator with a couple of cheap jumpscares. That said, I look forward to playing the game’s upcoming update, which Winner promises “will bring new jumpscares, additional content to deepen the story, and—most importantly—a significant improvement to the game’s ending.” My cat and I will wait patiently, and with hope.
Score: 4.0/10
DeathOmen, developed by Jeff Winner and published by CreativeForge Games, is available now on PC (Steam). MSRP: $6.99.
Disclaimer: A review code was provided by the publisher.
Clint is a writer and educator based out of Columbus, OH. You can often find him writing about Middle English poetry, medieval games, or video games. He just finished a PhD in English at the Ohio State University. You can find his academic and public work at clintmorrisonjr.com.
