What a wild ride.
Goetia is a 2D metroidvania point and click gothic styled puzzle game that's heavily dependent on lore and artifact finding. It has a very unique gameplay feature of sprit possession for problem solving whereby you, Abigail, may be able to pass through a wall in spirit form whereby the objects you possess cannot. This allows for interesting path finding and adds depth to the eerie manor's scale once you have unlocked all of its secrets. It plays out like one very intense 'escape the room', although the room keeps expanding and revealing new crevices each time you think you solve a puzzle.

The story is very interesting and revolves around early 1900's occult practices and spell crafting. The demonology in this game makes the first couple of hours delightfully horrifying as the gloom and the mystery begin to expand. Thematically this game is very unique. It covers thaumaturgy, an old practiced occult belief, in vivid and interesting ways whilst combining the detective work and research surrounding it directly with the puzzles.

Almost all of the story is revealed through found journals and item inspection. This is to be expected with these kinds of games, but arguably the hardest puzzle of this whole game is making sense out of all of the codex entries and how they all relate to each other as a whole especially as the game progresses. The overall experience (and especially the ending(s) to this game) would benefit from more dialogue from Abigail and/or with Malphas and the other demons. You learn of why Abigail is doing such things but then there is just a silence to all of the other questions surrounding the journey there. A second playthrough might be necessary for the story to fully make sense, which to me is a shame as it feels almost needed given how cryptic parts of this game are. I wish there was a more obvious and consistent theme that resounded throughout the whole game outside of "don't practice witchcraft."

This game is remarkably difficult, sometimes in brilliant ways, but most of the time in conniving and illogical ways. I managed to complete roughly 75% of the game before the puzzles became much to varied and bizarre without a hint or two (Looking at you Oakmarsh). When the explorable space is small towards the beginning, the leaps in logic aren't that bad and are relatively straight forward and explorative. But by the end of the game when you have 5 different massive locations to explore, realizing that an interaction or a piece of paper from one place directly influences something (sometimes) no where near it (hammer in the picture for example), the pace begins to chug. This might not be a fair critique as I think the metroidvania expansion is what makes this game so strong as a puzzle game. However, there are key gameplay adjustments that should be added to help players:

-The biggest one is disallowing items from being possessed after they no longer have a use. I carried the golden statue of Mary all the way to the church because of an interaction that mentioned "the church had been ransacked." Sometimes these slight clues are all you are given to solve a puzzle, and funnily enough the final solution to the church ended up being very similar but with a different item. Most puzzle games like this get rid of items after they are used but in this game you never fully know.

-The other big problem is with the "power-ups" you get throughout the game. I found myself picking back up every item I had found after I got the foresight ability as there was no indication of which item would give me foresight. Something as small as a particle effect after that ability unlocks would help out with pacing tremendously (which again to be fair, the screen turns sepia when the item does have intel, but you don't know this unless you pick up the item).

-My last complaint is with how some areas of a room can be inspected, but are un-interactable with until a later time. For example, you have to inspect an item first before you can possess it. This isn't always a problem as most items turn white. However, you won't even be able to possess certain items or interact with other features without finding a page specifically telling you that something might be there. It just makes the game dependent on re-inspection of everything, as some descriptions change depending on what has happened. This last critique may be dismissed because the game allows for you to see all of what you can interact with in a room by holding control on your keyboard. I wish all point and click games had this feature.

On the puzzles specifically:
I loved the church sigil puzzles. The grey picture piano puzzle was one of my favorites because of how subtle it is. The organ puzzle felt somewhat extreme, but that's probably because I "solved it" without realizing there was an extra item to attach. I wished the DOTS puzzle had more to do with the words JADE, LOVE, MOTH, and SNOW instead of what it is. The last sigil piece for the three heads has a great set up, but AWFUL execution. That one is by far one of the most ridiculous to interpret as the pieces don't even fit. A reference to the Abigail sigil should have gone here. The chemistry chart puzzle is way too deceptive as the answer has nothing to do with potassium manganate despite that being initially one of the biggest solutions. This is a perfect example of my previous complaint with items and power-ups. The ouiji board puzzle was rough for me. I knew what to do and I still had no idea which name explicitly was the solution (mainly because there are about 5-7 newish names heavily mentioned there and they all were given different importance. Also "emmligor" never comes into play despite that being found in a clue book). Gabriels picture and three words puzzle were difficult for non-difficult reasons too.

The journal helps out tremendously with the game. It's about the only way you will know when you are done with a section of one of the maps and it's the one feature that I would argue allows you to beat this whole game without a walkthrough. You will be wandering and rereading passages for a damn long time, but it's possible.

All in all, when this game is grooving it's a hell of a good time. It's dark, its grim in an upbeat kind of way, and explores great content in unique ways that make you feel like a ghost detective. When the puzzles stay local, it's a great experience. But when the puzzles rely on heavy backtracking without any indication from Abigail that she can't solve it yet outside of a vague inspection of an object, it chugs and makes for a very difficult experience in sometimes tedious ways. I would love to see a sequel to this game, but I would like them to fix the pacing (or make the direction more obvious with dialogue) with the exploration and story revealing/puzzle solving.

What a wild ride. Goetia is a 2D metroidvania point and click gothic styled puzzle game that's heavily dependent on lore and artifact finding. It has a very unique gameplay feature of sprit possession for problem solving whereby you, Abigail, may be able to pass through a wall in spirit form whereby the objects you possess cannot. This allows for interesting path finding and adds depth to the eerie manor's scale once you have unlocked all of its secrets. It plays out like one very intense 'escape the room', although the room keeps expanding and revealing new crevices each time you think you solve a puzzle. The story is very interesting and revolves around early 1900's occult practices and spell crafting. The demonology in this game makes the first couple of hours delightfully horrifying as the gloom and the mystery begin to expand. Thematically this game is very unique. It covers thaumaturgy, an old practiced occult belief, in vivid and interesting ways whilst combining the detective work and research surrounding it directly with the puzzles. Almost all of the story is revealed through found journals and item inspection. This is to be expected with these kinds of games, but arguably the hardest puzzle of this whole game is making sense out of all of the codex entries and how they all relate to each other as a whole especially as the game progresses. The overall experience (and especially the ending(s) to this game) would benefit from more dialogue from Abigail and/or with Malphas and the other demons. You learn of why Abigail is doing such things but then there is just a silence to all of the other questions surrounding the journey there. A second playthrough might be necessary for the story to fully make sense, which to me is a shame as it feels almost needed given how cryptic parts of this game are. I wish there was a more obvious and consistent theme that resounded throughout the whole game outside of "don't practice witchcraft." This game is remarkably difficult, sometimes in brilliant ways, but most of the time in conniving and illogical ways. I managed to complete roughly 75% of the game before the puzzles became much to varied and bizarre without a hint or two (Looking at you Oakmarsh). When the explorable space is small towards the beginning, the leaps in logic aren't that bad and are relatively straight forward and explorative. But by the end of the game when you have 5 different massive locations to explore, realizing that an interaction or a piece of paper from one place directly influences something (sometimes) no where near it (hammer in the picture for example), the pace begins to chug. This might not be a fair critique as I think the metroidvania expansion is what makes this game so strong as a puzzle game. However, there are key gameplay adjustments that should be added to help players: -The biggest one is disallowing items from being possessed after they no longer have a use. I carried the golden statue of Mary all the way to the church because of an interaction that mentioned "the church had been ransacked." Sometimes these slight clues are all you are given to solve a puzzle, and funnily enough the final solution to the church ended up being very similar but with a different item. Most puzzle games like this get rid of items after they are used but in this game you never fully know. -The other big problem is with the "power-ups" you get throughout the game. I found myself picking back up every item I had found after I got the foresight ability as there was no indication of which item would give me foresight. Something as small as a particle effect after that ability unlocks would help out with pacing tremendously (which again to be fair, the screen turns sepia when the item does have intel, but you don't know this unless you pick up the item). -My last complaint is with how some areas of a room can be inspected, but are un-interactable with until a later time. For example, you have to inspect an item first before you can possess it. This isn't always a problem as most items turn white. However, you won't even be able to possess certain items or interact with other features without finding a page specifically telling you that something might be there. It just makes the game dependent on re-inspection of everything, as some descriptions change depending on what has happened. This last critique may be dismissed because the game allows for you to see all of what you can interact with in a room by holding control on your keyboard. I wish all point and click games had this feature. On the puzzles specifically: [spoiler] I loved the church sigil puzzles. The grey picture piano puzzle was one of my favorites because of how subtle it is. The organ puzzle felt somewhat extreme, but that's probably because I "solved it" without realizing there was an extra item to attach. I wished the DOTS puzzle had more to do with the words JADE, LOVE, MOTH, and SNOW instead of what it is. The last sigil piece for the three heads has a great set up, but AWFUL execution. That one is by far one of the most ridiculous to interpret as the pieces don't even fit. A reference to the Abigail sigil should have gone here. The chemistry chart puzzle is way too deceptive as the answer has nothing to do with potassium manganate despite that being initially one of the biggest solutions. This is a perfect example of my previous complaint with items and power-ups. The ouiji board puzzle was rough for me. I knew what to do and I still had no idea which name explicitly was the solution (mainly because there are about 5-7 newish names heavily mentioned there and they all were given different importance. Also "emmligor" never comes into play despite that being found in a clue book). Gabriels picture and three words puzzle were difficult for non-difficult reasons too. [/spoiler] The journal helps out tremendously with the game. It's about the only way you will know when you are done with a section of one of the maps and it's the one feature that I would argue allows you to beat this whole game without a walkthrough. You will be wandering and rereading passages for a damn long time, but it's possible. All in all, when this game is grooving it's a hell of a good time. It's dark, its grim in an upbeat kind of way, and explores great content in unique ways that make you feel like a ghost detective. When the puzzles stay local, it's a great experience. But when the puzzles rely on heavy backtracking without any indication from Abigail that she can't solve it yet outside of a vague inspection of an object, it chugs and makes for a very difficult experience in sometimes tedious ways. I would love to see a sequel to this game, but I would like them to fix the pacing (or make the direction more obvious with dialogue) with the exploration and story revealing/puzzle solving.