Indie Triple-A
8Doors: Arum’s Afterlife Adventure
REVIEW
Time for some soul searchin’ (and not in the introspective way that’ll make me work on myself)…
Have you ever wondered what happens when we die? Where do we go? What does it look like? Are we there alone…? Well, wonder no longer because I just got back from a visit to Purgatory in 8Doors: Arum’s Afterlife Adventure, where I learned that the afterlife is a lot like regular life – Businesses are understaffed. Prices are rising. Infrastructure is crumbling and government officials are corrupt. The sewer system is poorly planned. Construction projects are large-scale and never-ending. Working conditions are perilous at best and the library is so underfunded, it can’t keep the lights on…
8Doors: Arum’s Afterlife Adventure is a 2D, linear metroidvania set in a macabre world featuring death, betrayal, and a cute lil’ frog that sits on your head! (Sometimes, you sit on his head too.) You play as Arum, a young girl who’s the lone survivor of a mysterious event that killed everyone in her town, including her dad. She travels into Purgatory (or “The Purgatory” as the game’s goofy translation often calls it) in search of her father’s soul. There, she explores eight interconnected areas, battles over a dozen bosses, and uncovers a deadly plot poised to devastate the worlds of both the living & the dead – a plot that, as the protagonist, it’s Arum’s destiny to upend.
It’s fitting that the game is set in the afterlife because crowdfunding efforts died several times. After getting the Steam Greenlight back in 2016, three failed Kickstarter campaigns kept Rootless Studio, the small team behind the project, from releasing it until April 2021. Rootless Studio is based in Seoul, South Korea, and as such, 8Doors is rooted in Korean folklore. The game is most influenced by the myth of Princess Bari. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Literature, her story is “a vivid expression of the desire to overcome male-centered worldviews & human mortality, and the limitations of this desire.” Now, none of those themes are present in 8Doors unless you count playing as a female protagonist as “overcoming male-centered worldviews,” but even though Arum and Bari’s adventures are very different, the game’s cultural influence can still be felt elsewhere, like in the visuals. The graphics are highly stylized, hand-drawn, and adhere to a strict set of parameters. All of 8Doors’ assets were created using only three colors: black, white, and red. I’m not sure why the developers decided to make their graphics on Nightmare Mode, but the restricted palette elicits careful, purposeful use of each color to often striking results.
Red is often reserved for the damage-inducing: Arum’s weapons, enemy attacks, burbling poison water, plants that want to eat you, and Jungho the map salesman’s backpack. (He won’t hurt Arum’s health, but he will hurt her wallet.) Shades of black & white work together to create detailed landscapes and beautiful scrolling backgrounds, though about half of the game’s eight zones share a similar rocky aesthetic. But the more unique areas are memorable, like Misty Forest: gray/green and overgrown, it was one of my favorite places in Purgatory. My other favorite places were anywhere that didn’t trigger the game’s terrible screen tear. It’s like a slasher movie villain: unpredictable, unkillable, and inescapable. There’re no Vsync options! There’s also no way to identify some usable platforms because they don’t stand out from the backgrounds. Still, I was drawn enough to the art style (pun partially intended) that I mostly didn’t mind.
The soundtrack isn’t as memorable as the graphics, but it’s a complimentary companion to them and takes inspiration from the same cultural influences. Mysterious and percussive tracks accompany exploration. Boss battle themes are tense & urgent, and grand, regal melodies play in Purgatory’s most important places. After a while though, the soundtrack starts to blend together like the graphics. I enjoy each individual song, but some are almost interchangeable by the end of a long play session. Still, there’s plenty to praise about the music’s ability to establish moods and themes. That’s especially important because other elements that should do those things, like storytelling and writing, are 8Doors’ downfall.
I played through multiple times to see all three endings, and I’m still struggling to articulate the game’s main themes other than a run-of-the-mill message about courage, love, and teamwork overpowering evil. Also, fire safety – Purgatory has more extinguishers than dead people. (And yet, no one could prevent a massive fire that occurs early in the game…) Your goals are clear: find Arum’s father and figure out what’s amiss in the afterlife. The ideas presented along the way are more aimless. In part, the confusion is the fault of a poor English translation that misgenders characters during key cutscenes, misuses pronouns in ways that change sentences’ intentions, and spells some names two or three different ways.