Exorcist Review

Getting Some Exorcise

Simulation title Exorcist puts the player in the role of a Catholic priest on exorcist duty. One would hope that Exorcist features the exciting stuff similar what happens in the film The Exorcist. Things like the possessed crawling up the wall and attacking the player while speaking ill of the player’s mother. If only that stuff did happen. One piece of advice for this game is to maintain low expectations.

The developer of Exorcist is a real puzzle. The Google Play Store lists the developer as SignSine. However, there appear to be two companies using that exact name. One is a Ukrainian studio based in Kyiv. That SignSine focuses on VR games, with their magnum opus being a survival adventure game called Proze. They seem to be quite competent, having even won awards. However, The SignSine that made Exorcist seems like a different developer altogether. They also lack a website and finding any information about them is difficult.

Playtesting? What’s That?

The first thing one may notice about Exorcist is the art style. It’s aesthetically a very basic and low-effort game. In a way, the game’s aesthetic resembles the earlier work of Scott Cawthon (creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s). Cawthon’s early games aren’t very good and have the same basic character models with blank eyes. Of course, while his character models were quite ugly, Cawthon’s quite good at designing monsters. Moreover, Cawthon at least put far more effort into his games than the developer of Exorcist.

The gameplay is just about non-existent. It consists of moving icons to the right place while the game does all of the interesting stuff. For example, the first level features the priest tying the patient down while some man paints a crucifix on the wall. For some reason, the painted crucifix seems to drive out the demon just fine, making the priest useless. The best part is that Exorcist doesn’t even work correctly. The game flat-out softlocks after the first level, so finishing the game isn’t even possible. Did the developer even bother with playtesting?

This Feels Suspicious

Looking through the developer’s library on the Google Play Store reveals a pattern. All of “SignSine’s” games are unfinished messes that barely count as games. The comment sections often note how the games softlock or simply don’t work. Apparently, Exorcist had two working levels before the developer patched it and made it worse. Still, the fact that the games also often have meager descriptions makes the developer seem mysterious. One would think that this developer is a scammer, but it doesn’t seem that way.

Low-effort games like this one typically have lots of ads as a means of making easy money. The one good thing Exorcist does is not have any ads. For some reason, the developer had the courtesy not to try profiting from this garbage. Perhaps it’s one of many school projects, or maybe a way of building a résumé. Who knows? The whole thing still feels fishy, though. It’s disappointing that the game fails so hard to meet the expectations set by its intriguing premise.