Psychopomp
3rd of November, 2025
When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Psychopomp (Greek: guide of souls) – is a type of spirit in mythology that helps a soul of the deceased travel from Earth to the afterlife. [1] It is also a great indie horror video game first released by Fading Club on January 30th 2024 and later re-released as Psychopomp Gold on Steam on October 24th of the same year. The story follows of a regular office lady seemingly losing her mind and constructing a metal helmet that lets her see the world for what it is. Naturally, this means there are catacombs under every government building.
The game was first introduced to us by our friend Manna (hi chief!!) and this year during a sale I finally decided to sink my teeth into it. Certainly a gaming highlight for me! I’ve gathered quite a few thoughts about the game I ruminated on during train rides for job interviews and I would like to share them with you, dear reader.
Firstly, I have to talk about the Karbonic’s visual style. The designs and locations are distinct and varied. You never expect what you might encounter next, yet it all fits perfectly into a coherent world that has its own unique feel. The dithering is a part of the developer’s signature style and works lovely with the lighting and in the game, creating this striking image that you can instantly recognize. ”Yeah, that looks like Psychopomp!”. It isn’t easy to develop such a strong visual identity while leaving space to innovate. I love the character designs. The Protagonist is so perfectly deranged and even a little threatening with her wide piercing eyes and of course the signature helmet that makes her silhouette nice and recognizable. All of the creatures are fascinating too from meat and metal abominations to distinct cultures of Thraits and Evren. And whatever the Prince has going on. Sends shivers down my spine thinking about it.
It might be a little petty to mention, please don’t misunderstand me, this is simply a matter of preference – I’m really happy, personally, that despite using pixelated low(er)-poly graphics the game doesn’t have the early PlayStation polygon wobble. It has become a bit of an overused trope in modern indie titles and sometimes leads to mildly nauseating results. I enjoy static low-fidelity graphics much better and Psychopomp delivers in that regard tenfold.
The Yume Nikki DNA is strong and blooming in this game, which is always a treat to see. Yume Nikki is one of those games that due to its ambiguity and striking imagery can be talked about forever and in my opinion Psychopomp follows in its footsteps beautifully. The visuals and theming of some locations, enemies and allusions to ancient cultures almost feel like direct nods to Dream Diary, the whole of Symbols area especially. While we are on the topic of games Psychopomp reminds me of, bear with me, this might be a little bit of an unusual pull. It has the sensibilities of a KS (Koumei Satou) Half-Life mod, what he calls “The fusion of otaku culture and the avant-garde surreal world”. The mix of player models being done in this cute and cool style, the twisting ancient catacombs, giant multi-level factories and looming structures that make up Psychopomp’s visual identity, in my opinion, fall under such a description. Someday I would like to talk about the work of KS in more detail, but for now, if you would like to know more, please watch this wonderful video on the subject.
The music is great too! Ambient loops, catchy melodies and even songs with lyrics! Greatly atmospheric and fitting to each set piece, really brings the whole game together. I’m not a musically gifted person so I can’t say much of substance, but I like the OST a lot and can’t wait to add it to my audio library.
My favorite location has to be Symbols. The song that plays when you approach the Paragons has been playing in my head from time to time. The tone shifts from that point on as we discover something so much bigger than us and I enjoy that a lot. I found the extra locations that you find randomly to be the scariest parts, especially Human Seedbed and Nature. I ran through nature and didn’t even get a good look at it because of how much it freaked me out. It reminded me of a game my friend made (HI SAM!) and that one still gives me the chills whenever I think about it. I also loved the Epilogue, The Meeting Place, its atmosphere and soundtrack, definitely my favorite.
As far as the gameplay goes, I appreciate the dungeon crawling mechanic thematically, as you are in fact crawling in a dungeon, however, and it pains me to say this, but the survival horror/dungeon crawler elements feel lackluster to everything else. Which isn’t a bad thing! It’s a short game and the underutilized systems don’t overstay their welcome. It does feel like there were just enough enemies and a hint of an inventory management system added to set the game apart from a “walking simulator”. The levels are small and usually looped with sparse enemies that are easily "tanked", which doesn’t promote learning their individual moves. Tanking, abundant healing items and a touch of "cheese-ing" make encounters at most startling. I believe it is a good thing to have enemies in this game, as we do traverse a hostile environment we aren’t meant to see, so it would be less interesting to be allowed to wander completely unimpeded. In a way, the enemies here remind me of Yume Nikki chasers, a way to add tension and a feeling that something dangerous might always be lurking just around the corner. The inventory system, however, feels purely aesthetic, as you never run out of space and have the need to re-arrange your items, unless you hoard all healing items I guess. It would be nice to see this idea be iterated upon in the upcoming sequel, if it is still present for the release. Time will tell.
The storytelling is so tongue and cheek yet bursting with questions and haunting implications. It was incredibly exciting to see a piece of paper stuck to a wall hopeful to get some answers to begin making sense of this wretched world only to be met with a chasm, more secrets hidden from you. The game tips and real life game tips are a great touch.
Next I would like to speculate and talk about my interpretation of the game’s story, so if you would like to avoid spoilers please skip to the next page divider for my final thoughts.
The Queen of Dragonflies is sleeping and smiling.
As I understand it, humanity went extinct along with the majority of our solar system, leaving only Venus and Mercury alone in the void of space. It is unclear if the stars and planets still exist and are simply covered by the Caldmen Four’s trail of darkness or not.
Something appears to have terraformed both Mercury and Venus to be as close to Earth as possible, but with severe flaws. This fake re-purposing of a planet long gone lead to a strange simulacrum of life on Earth to be instated and kept up with clay golem Humans and secrets for an unknown reason (for now). Whoever created this new Earth didn’t really know it and the humanity that used to inhabit it and its culture past a superficial top layer, omitting many things, as can be inferred from people of this world misinterpreting the symbols for Venus and Mercury as having ties to Christianity. There is overall a lot of emphasis on misunderstanding or plain ignorance of symbols, a disconnect of the people from the roots of reality, which is expected of a simulacrum. When the protagonist awakes to her true self and starts yearning for answers, in order to truly become the Queen of Venus and re-gain her powers she needs to understand the concepts long lost or rather hidden from her.
In a way I wonder if both of the fake Earths only exist to keep Venus and Mercury dormant and unaware, while The Family does its bidding, whatever that might be.
Something I found interesting was despite the presence of Venus as a concept and eggs in the game, instead of birth there is hatching. Venus isn’t a mother in a traditional sense; instead she takes the role of an assistant and an officiator of this new creature being brought to life. She herself gets re-born, or, rather hatches. The eggs aren’t connected to anything that we know of, completely separated from the Queen and Mothers we see in game. I personally really appreciate not going for yonic and phallic imagery in the game, taking a separated view of the beginning of life, approaching it from a sort of metaphysical level (which the Vision Ending also focuses on). Same as having Venus’ counterpart be Mercury and not Mars, how many would assume. I saw some people online assume Mercury was Mars simply by force of habit. This really shows that this story isn’t rooted in opposites the way that might come to mind at a glance. I like the ways Mercury and Venus mirror each other and their bond. The nail and the hammer, ying and yang black and white theming associated with them make me very excited to see them reunite. It’s an interesting dichotomy that I would love to see explored more in the sequel as we get to know our second protagonist. I like that Mercury shakes people’s hands.
With the Vison Ending it might even be the case of Venus and Mercury being the same entity split in two after countless loops of Karmic rebirth. Or maybe not and they are continuations of the accumulated Karmic Mass Gods, much like the original Sun and Moon of this world.
At first the game overall might appear bitter at the world. The people are nothing but mindless clumps of clay unaware of the truth, the dreary and suffocating surroundings, overall grim future. But Venus gaining her powers and helping the rebirth of a planet and well as the final message after the Center of the Ending, a thank you to the world show a different picture – a hopeful reclamation. A way to recall the past and take it into the future, to reshape it in a way the powers that hold us back wouldn’t want us to.
Psychopomp is a brilliant example of why I love solo development so much. You get to have a glimpse into someone’s mind, see their uninterrupted vision coming from the source. That just isn’t something you can get from a team. It’s such a special display of creativity and dedication that I really appreciate.
Wonderful game. That is all, you are free now. Thanks for reading.
Toby Fox ♪
as above so below