3rd Eye

You've seen them star in shoot 'em ups and fighting games, but now the women of the ever-expanding Touhou Project have become scream queens in the horror game 3rd Eye. It's a dialog-heavy adventure game that follows a young girl as she uses her third eye to make friends and come to grips with some really serious sister issues. But be careful what you search for, because this scary story is filled with death, despair and important story options that haven't been translated to English yet.

Koishi is lost. She's am empty vessel that feels nothing and no longer understands the difference between life and death. She's been locked inside of a mental institution and forgotten about, forced to use her third eye to see the true horrors of the world. Little does she know, but Koishi is about to go on a brief but eventful journey through a series of nightmarish scenarios that are inspired by her past trauma. She's going to need a lot more than a third eye if she hopes to survive the night.

At its core, this is a simplified point and click adventure game. Koishi will get caught up in six different stages, all of which you can readily explore in hopes of finding useful items and using them to solve puzzles. This mostly boils down to picking up toys, ladders, cassette tapes, watering cans and other odds and ends to give to the various characters, which will usually result in getting a new item that you'll use to expand the story. Do this enough times and you'll wake up in a new, equally frightening scenario.

The gimmick here is that Koishi can use her third eye to see what the world is really like. This will usually change the background and reveal hidden items, as well as show us the frightening truth behind all of our so-called friends. This is also the only way to talk to certain characters, such as a series of animal friends that are trapped in a mansion. But you can't rely too much on the third eye, because it will slowly dry out and eventually go blind. Koishi needs to find bottles of special eye drops that will reverse the bloodshot eyes and allow us to keep solving puzzles and investigating the nightmarish levels.

While all of this could have easily become repetitive, the developers do a good job of mixing things up in each new stage. There's a lengthy section of the game where you can't even use the third eye, forcing us to use our intuition to escape the soul-stealing forest. This is nothing like the snow-covered stage where we try to make friends or the animal-filled mansion of horrors. Each level feels wholly unique, even when we're largely doing the same thing over and over again. Best of all, the six locations don't overstay their welcome. You'll have no problem beating the game in a single two hour sitting.

Part of the reason the pacing feels so swift is because 3rd Eye isn't especially difficult. The puzzles are incredibly straight-forward and can be easily completed through simple trial and error. The different stages are usually pretty small, so there's never a point where you'll get lost hunting for items or characters to talk to. Whenever Koishi gets stuck, it's usually because she's not using her third eye to see the solution. I wish the puzzles were a little bit more involved.

Click For the Full Picture Archive

I'm also disappointed by the localization. So much of this game is about talking to other characters and seeing what they have to say, and a lot of the dialog is boring and clunky. There are quite a few conversations that are littered with annoying spelling and punctuation errors, and a lot of the dialog was obtuse to an aggravating degree. And then there are the parts the developer didn't get around to localizing. The final two choices you get to make in the game are entirely in Japanese, so I had no idea what I was choosing. The rest of the game is in English, but these two crucial decisions are in a foreign language. What's up with that?

On a more positive note, I like the look of the game. I dig the hand-drawn look of most of the levels and there are some genuinely effective moments towards the end. The disturbing and incredibly stylish cinemas are easily the best parts of 3rd Eye, and I like that the game is filled with them. Even if you end up not going on the adventure, the cut scenes are worth looking up and experiencing for yourself. They are that good.

3rd Eye is a short but effective ghost story that has something to say about trauma. Unfortunately, a lot of what it has to say is delivered through clunky, poorly localized dialog and puzzles that are too straight-forward. The six stages can be easily completed in just over two hours, leaving you with a compelling horror game that is all talk and no scares. Trust me, you won't need a third eye to figure out what's troubling Koishi.