Ever since being diagnosed with depression and anxiety a while back, I’ve taken great interest in games that use such things as backdrops for their stories. Some have handled it well, others have massively missed what depression is like and seem to just be jumping on the coattails of the subject. From developer Redblack Spade and publisher Ratalaika Games comes Fearmonium.

“Fearmonium is a psychedelic metroidvania where suspense intertwines with humour. Beginning the game as an unpleasant memory, you must progress and become a true phobia by breaking through all boundaries to uncover the most hidden corners of Max’s mind.”

The first thing that I need to cover with Fearmonium is that it was originally released on the PC back in 2021. It has seen a more recent release on all the consoles now though and I’ve been playing the Xbox version for this review. Another thing that I need to cover is that this game is that this game is really fucking hard. As the blurb up there covered, Fearmonium is a metroidvania and if I say that in terms of difficulty, it is up there with the likes of Hollow Knight or Ori And The Blind Forest levels of toughness. It may look cute and all but under that is a really hard game that has no problems in dishing out punishment.

I’m not going to get into story spoilers here because, well… the story is pretty damn great, But the basics are that you play as a clown and an unpleasant memory of Max. Who is Max? Well, he’s the person whose mind you are in and your aim is to grow from an unpleasant memory and to become a full-blown relentless phobia. To do this, you must traverse Max’s mind to uncover and defeat all of his other dominating phobias and fears until you are the main one. Yup, you are pretty much the ‘bad guy’ here and while being guided by Lady Depression (who bathes in Max’s tears), you basically have to fuck this poor fella up.

I need to just quickly go over the visuals before I get into the gameplay. What we have here are (I guess what the kids these days call) Cuphead graphics. Very 1920s/30s stylised images and animation. They look great too and offer a wonderful juxtaposition between cute and bleak, cuddly and tragic. Each part of the map (Max’s mind) is split into its own phobia and each of them offers up a different backdrop that illustrates one of Max’s fears. Visually, Fearmonium is top-tier stuff and is a title that can please as well as unnerve.

As with any modern metroidvania, you start with nothing much than a jump and a basic attack. As you explore the map, find secrets and defeat bosses, you’ll unlock new skills and upgrades that can make things a wee bit easier (but never outright easy) and allow you to access areas of the map that you previously couldn’t. In terms of being a metroidvania, Fearmonium hits all the right notes and hits them well too.

You also get some variation between the usual platforming and enemy slaughtering. There’s some frantic action that involves you going on a rickety old rollercoaster, speeding along on a scooter or even riding a giant raven. These bits break up the game nicely and keep the action levels high while not sticking to the traditional metroidvania tropes.

How long it will take you to reach the end credits will really depend on how much you want to get out of this game. I guess that you could rush through it, battling the difficulty and all. Or you could take your time and explore more to find all of the upgrades and secrets. The latter option is the one I went for because the world of Fearmonium is a really interesting place to be in and well worth taking in every nook and cranny.

If you forced me to find a fault, that would be map screen. While only a minor niggle. Moving around the map is very syrupy and slow. You need to zoom in to really make out any of the details and then, when you leave the map screen and come back to it, it auto zooms back out, so you have to keep zooming back in every single time. It’s just a bit annoying, especially in the latter half of the game when the map is so vast and you’re constantly having to bring it up to double-check that you are going where you need to.

Around £10-£13 is what you will be expected to pay for Fearmonium, depending on your platform of choice and my advice is… buy it. It’s dark, it’s twisted, it’s really bloody hard and it handles depression, anxiety and fear in a unique and interesting way. It’s also pretty damn great to play too. It’s mid-December as I post this review and 2023 will be coming to an end in a few weeks. Honestly, this is one of the best games that I have played this year and a great way to see out 2023.

Fearmonium is hard, very, very hard. It is dark, miserable and moody. It also captures the feeling of depression exceptionally well indeed. I believe that this was the work of (mainly) a single developer, which makes the final product even more impressive. The dev also has a master’s degree in psychology and it really does show too because the story is sublime and far, far deeper than my very brief and spoiler-free synopsis earlier. I’ve played other smaller indie games that don’t have this level of creativity and depth at a higher price point. Get Fearmonium on your ‘to play’ list, it is wonderful. If Tim Burton made video games, he still wouldn’t come up with something as magnifically dark and twisted as Fearmonium.