To stop this, he uses his abilities as a medium to exercise the evil that lives inside, but after 30 years he is drawn back to the original house to find that the same curse still lives…Devil Inside Us: Roots of Evil is roughly 1.5 hours long, and throughout this time I had mixed feelings about the story, the poltergeist, and the ‘scary’ horror factor.
Let's start with the story. At first, it may seem boring and somewhat generic - in the first 15-20 Minutes of playing, you are tasked with exercising a poltergeist and preventing it from happening again. You explore a house that was built in 1984, searching for rooms with locked doors and clues to find keys. At this point, you begin to experience visions of blood-stained beds, doors, and floors.
Flickering lights also add to the creepy atmosphere, however, instead of causing an increase in heart rate, it feels more like a younger sibling is messing with the lights just to annoy you. You eventually encounter your first creature, which crawls towards you and stands up before you use your exorcist abilities to banish it and finally make it to the basement where it came from.
There, you have another fight with a tall, blacked-out figure, and have visions of the father of the house - before stopping him and vanishing the apparition from the house.
After getting past the intro, you begin to learn more about the protagonist's feelings, specifically the feeling of it ‘not being over’ still lingering in the back of his head. After checking the house several years later, the same urge to investigate the house happens again. You come back to the same building in 2020, and a lot has changed.
The building is now more modern and the whole structure has altered, except for the basement. That said, the central conceit of searching for clues, keys, and figuring out where the evil is coming from remains the same. The narrative progresses through the protagonist's monologues, and false awakenings in a strange location where they fight off evil and search for answers. You also come across items such as old letters that reveal a tragic and dark story that leads to the present.
The gameplay is straightforward, with basic movement and abilities triggered by pressing ‘R2’ or ‘X’, although you'll need to collect items to recharge them. Stamina is also a factor, which I appreciate as it adds a level of difficulty. When running or fighting creatures, I had to be strategic, and use caffeine tablets when my stamina ran low. The only time I found myself running out of stamina was when I rushed to the next point due to nothing happening, or when I didn't need to be particularly cautious. There were other useful items such as a flashlight (which I feel came a little later than needed).
Also, there were med-kits which you were also able to collect as you explored. By the end of the game, I had a few med kits, caffeine tablets and trinkets to restore my ability which I hadn't used, so it doesn't come off overly hard for those who prefer more of a challenge in their game.
As Devil Inside Us: Roots of Evil was released in 2021, its graphics are based on last-gen technology, however, they are still pleasing enough for players to enjoy. The voice actor for the protagonist was well-suited for the role, with an old, gentle voice that conveyed a range of emotions - from an initially serene priest to a more vulnerable, frightened emotional position towards the end of the game. During some conversations towards the end of the game, I did feel like some of the other characters that I interacted with did tend to get worse, it just felt they sounded a bit ‘off’, and more robot-like. Additionally, the nature sounds in the game were clear and immersive, allowing you to hear the rustling of grass as you walked, as well as the creaking of doors, which added to the sense of atmospherics.
Whilst there were moments where the sound design was enough to keep you on the edge of your seat - such as when a creature made a crackling noise while a baby cried - these were few and far between. Overall, the sound design was good enough to make you feel like you were audibly present in the game without being a particular highlight.
This short but somewhat pleasing story does come with a few faults. Considering its
deliberate pacing, it was still slow in building up to the main set-pieces which caused me to feel uninterested at certain points. There was also the areas that felt repetitious, even though the locations had changed. Devil Inside Us: Roots of Evil is a game that could be fun for someone who wants to delve into horror games a little bit more, or perhaps play through a shorter title in a single evening, but there are better examples out there in this genre.
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