{"id":69848,"date":"2025-09-01T20:59:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T10:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/?p=69848"},"modified":"2025-09-01T20:59:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T10:59:32","slug":"review-submansion-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/2025\/09\/review-submansion-pc.html","title":{"rendered":"Review: Submansion (PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, a humble Ukranian developer released Light de Deux, a sweet little romance visual novel about ballet dancers that I absolutely loved. The dance theme got to me, of course, but it was also well-written, well-drawn, and the characters inspired me so much I arranged with the developer to have them guest in my own game (which is getting so close to the release date now, I promise!). Now that the developer is back with Submansion, and as it turns out, it\u2019s not just the dance theme that hooked me. There is something about how this guy goes about his work that I really like.<\/p>\n

Submansion is a surrealistic experience where you play as a character called \u201cSnitcher\u201d who has entered a house in order to steal a great treasure. To do that, he first needs a key, which brings him into contact with the perpetually whining and morose Keykeeper. That Keykeeper has lost the keys (accounting for at least one reason why she\u2019s perpetually crying), and so you need to help her find them\u2026 so you can then steal the aforementioned \u201cinvaluable item.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keykeeper isn\u2019t the only character you\u2019ll interact with. You\u2019ll also need to have a chat with a painting, a broken cuckoo clock, and even stranger characters deeper into the story, all of which add to the grand mystery that is the mansion and what the hell you\u2019re doing in it. There are some big revelations along the way, as well as decisions that can impact on the direction of the story (distinguishing it from the entirely linear and kinetic Light de Deux). There are even minigames in this one, so it\u2019s a substantially more ambitious project as a video game than the developer\u2019s previous work.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

One thing people need to be aware of, however, is that this is localised into English with far less professionalism than Light de Deux (which was flawless). With Submansion, you\u2019re going to come across all kinds of strange turns of phrase, as well as frequent grammatical issues that you\u2019d expect from someone who knows how to translate Ukrainian words into English, but is overly literal about it and thus struggles to maintain a coherent flow of language. The script needed a heavy edit for the use of language, structure and style for it to read as well as I\u2019m sure it does in its native Ukrainian. As we saw with Light de Deux, the developer is a talented and interesting writer.<\/p>\n

Normally, I\u2019d be extremely critical of a visual novel for such unrefined translation, but here\u2019s the wild thing about Submansion: Because the underlying narrative, characters and aesthetics are so surrealistic, this localisation, in a very strange way, actually works to the game\u2019s benefit. You can still, quite easily, understand what\u2019s going on in the plot, and having stilted, weird, Mad Hatterish language coming out of a portrait\u2026 feels appropriate. While I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the case here, it\u2019s also not impossible to imagine that a developer might have done it deliberately.<\/p>\n

As mentioned above, Submansion does have puzzles and little minigames, and these are mandatory for progress. It is\u2026 not always a good idea for a developer of a visual novel to do this, as players within this genre tend to get very annoyed when something blocks progress. I personally found it all manageable, albeit not the game\u2019s strength, but I have seen a review on Steam that criticised this as well. Good on the developer for pushing themselves with each project, though, so hopefully the next project handles this side of things a little better.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Aesthetically, the game is lovely, with the characters all having a dark whimsy to them, and the environments being nice and detailed. The music is also lovely and fits with the visual aesthetics nicely.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always great to see a developer grow in confidence, embrace new ideas, and find new ways to embrace their creativity. Submansion is a lot of things \u2013 quirky, surreal, whimsical and dark. It\u2019s also the kind of game that could only come from a single developer exploring their personal creativity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, a humble Ukranian developer released Light de Deux, a sweet little romance visual novel about ballet dancers that I absolutely loved. The dance theme got to me, of course, but it was also well-written, well-drawn, and the characters inspired me so much I arranged with the developer to have them guest in my own game (which is getting so close to the release date now, I promise!). Now that the developer is back with Submansion, and as it turns out, it\u2019s not just the dance theme that hooked me. There is something about how this guy goes about<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17,75],"tags":[12769,12841,12842,12764,12805],"coauthors":[12758],"class_list":["post-69848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pc","category-reviews","category-visual-novel","tag-indie","tag-pc","tag-pc-review","tag-reviews","tag-visual-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69852,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69848\/revisions\/69852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69848"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}