Beware the cult
Incantation is a first-person psychological horror game developed by Softstar Entertainment, the same studio behind The Xuan Yuan Sword series and the Legend of Sword and Fairy. As a fan of the studio, to varying degrees, I was interested in checking this out, especially as it is based on a popular found-footage horror film of the same name.
You play as Jia Jun Lee as she searches for her daughter, who has been missing for six years. She finally discovers some clues to her whereabouts, and this guides her to Chen Village. However, as she is about to arrive at her destination, she barely survives a car crash and wakes up to find that something about this village, and its inhabitants, isn’t quite what it seems.
Incantation is, simply put, a walking simulator horror experience. You’ll collect documents to learn more about the lore, solve puzzles, and avoid confrontations as you have no way to truly defend yourself. The atmosphere is fairly impressive with a few solid scares, but a limit on your interaction with the world does lessen the appeal, especially as you can’t really hide or run away from threats once they find you. Granted, I think I was attacked like four or five times throughout the roughly three-hour length.
As you walk around the village, you’ll start to encounter members of a cult. This is a sinister group that worships a deity known as the Mother Buddha. Now, what is really interesting is that this is inspired by real Taiwanese stories, and it does make for good entertainment. While most of your encounters are with the various townsfolk, you do have an encounter with this deity, and they are downright terrifying. In fact, the chase sequence near the end is one of the best moments in the game.
The general gameplay is this: you’ll explore, find keys, open doors, collect documents, discover more about your daughter, and find items to use as you interact with puzzles. Most puzzles are built around stopping a loop as you place offerings and totems to stop the evil that is preventing you from progressing to the next area. If you are attacked, you’ll shove them down and move on. So yeah, there isn’t much here to satisfy those who are coming to this from the bigger and more expanded survival horror games. While there is an actual boss encounter, you simply have to move out of the way and let them kill themselves; it isn’t impressive, and the lack of a dash button does make the fight harder than it needed to be.
Now, as Jia is exploring this village to find clues to her daughter's whereabouts, you meet Mia, a young girl around her daughter’s age, who quickly gets attached to you and aids you in finding the truth. I do wish the game threw you off the scent of who Mia is a bit better, as her involvement with Jia was just too damn predictable, even if the ending made almost no sense at first.
Nonetheless, Mia guides you to various places, strangely disappears at times, and is crucial to the overall plot. Mia is smartly used when she almost appears to be this spectre, showing up and fading away when the story needs her. If anything, the relationship and dialogue between the two are the game’s best qualities, as the scares, gameplay, and general story don’t really engage you.
While you’ll certainly get to the bottom of the where her daughter is, and what is going on in this village, the plot can be somewhat hard to follow, especially the game’s ending, with an additional one that takes place after the credits that clears up some parts of the story, but did leave me scratching my head until I started to piece things together. It’s not a great story, and the movie is certainly better at conveying its themes, but it is a story that is heightened by the documents and notes you find around Chen Village.
The game does feature some puzzles, but the better puzzles are actually after the main game is completed, and you venture back into this world through the eyes of Mia. Most puzzles, such as Jia's, are rotating puzzle boxes and breaking the aforementioned loops, but Mia’s puzzles have you moving mirrors around to reflect light or rotating statues around to mimic a painting on the wall. None of them are particularly hard, but the last rotating puzzle I solved by accident.
While the game does try to introduce characters to give Jia someone to talk to, Mia’s Aunt is about the only character here that has something to do with the story, apart from the cop, whom you’ll meet up with a few times throughout the story. Still, there isn’t much here apart from Jia and Mia, and that may be an issue for those wanting a bit more from the story.
Overall, Incantation is a fine attempt at capturing some of the horror elements of the film, but the lacking elements of gameplay make this too much of a walking sim and less of a horror game. There are a few scares or creepy moments, but the pacing of the story and long stretches of absolutely nothing do impact what this game is trying to do. Incantation is far from being boring, but could have benefited from more involvement and interaction with its world and its cast to get you lost in its intriguing world. Check the movie out instead.
Developer - Softstar Entertainment.
Publisher - Eastasiasoft.
Released - April 8th, 2026
Available On - PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC (2024).
Rated - (M) - Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch.
Review Access - A review code for Incantation was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.