Vlad Circus: Curse of Asmodeus is the prequel and sequel to Indiesruption’s 2023 psychological survival horror game, Vlad Circus: Descend Into Madness. The first game followed Oliver Mills, who once performed as a clown called Lazy Ollie at Vlad Circus before it burned to the ground in 1921. Eight years later, Ollie is invited by the owner of the circus, Vlad Petrescu, to his manor, along with the rest of the retired performers, to take a picture to prepare for the show’s renewal. Descend Into Madness revealed in its intro that it was Vlad’s brother, Josef, who was found guilty of burning down the circus, killing dozens of people, and was executed by electric chair. In Curse of Asmodeus, we follow his story and find out exactly what happened in 1921… and after.
Now playing as Josef, we wake up in a mysterious hospital beneath a church after being executed by electric chair. Left disfigured, unable to speak, and unable to remember how he got there, Josef searches the building for answers. Similar to Descend Into Madness, Curse of Asmodeus uses escape room-style inventory puzzles as a primary game mechanic. We must use the items that we find around the area to slowly unlock each door and unveil who has done this to us and why.
While Descend Into Madness captivated me with its Agatha Christie-style mansion setting and eccentric characters to get to know, it felt like Curse of Asmodeus very much lacked this in its empty hospital setting. Even though we do meet some recurring characters in Josef’s flashbacks on the events leading up to the fire, it’s nowhere near on the scale as Descend Into Madness where we learned about the back stories of each circus member as Ollie caught up with what they had been doing over the past eight years. I grew really invested in both the story and these characters, and this was easily my favorite thing about Descend Into Madness. This is something that Curse of Asmodeus very much misses and, in turn, doesn’t have much to offer as a result.
While we follow Josef’s story and uncover what really happened that night, it didn’t feel as impactful as the personal stories told in Descend Into Madness, though my interest was carried by my intrigue into how Josef supposedly goes from asking Vlad for work at the circus to then burning it down. The story takes on a different theme, focusing on demonic cults rather than mental illness, and as a result Curse of Asmodeus lacks another thing that Descend Into Madness featured in terms of the player character’s madness.
In Descend Into Madness, Ollie was actually descending into madness, so the gameplay involved facing off against hallucinations and managing his stress levels. In comparison, Curse of Asmodeus has… rats, oh and also pieces of broken glass that Josef can cut his feet on if he’s not careful – nasty stuff! It just feels utterly weak in comparison as the survival horror elements have been almost entirely removed. There’s no weapons, inventory management, combat, and stamina, and the only form of health management comes in the form of taking the odd painkiller when the rat bites, broken glass cuts and gas poisoning occasionally get too much. What Curse of Asmodeus has kept in are the pointless and frustrating quick time event minigames which, once again, feel unnecessarily crammed in for the sake of including more gameplay as they’re mostly used for really simple actions, such as unscrewing a valve on a radiator.
The puzzle elements feel similar to Descend Into Madness, though the hospital setting lacks the same sense of satisfaction in slowly learning map and unlocking previously locked doors, as it’s mostly just one straight line. The town of San Reno in Josef’s flashbacks is more interesting, but is a lot smaller in comparison. While I was stalled a few times by the game’s puzzles, I was never stuck enough that wandering around and retrying all of my options didn’t uncover something that I had missed before, and all of the solutions felt logical too. Sometimes I needed to progress by returning to a certain room to witness a new event, or uncovering a mirror that I had missed which Josef uses to enter his flashbacks.
Similar to Descend Into Madness, Curse of Asmodeus uses a mostly pixelated artstyle. While the hospital isn’t as visually appealing as Vlad’s old manor house, the flashback scenes show off the more visually stunning town of San Reno. Unfortunately, just like most aspects of Curse of Asmodeus, it’s a step back from Descend Into Madness in terms of visuals as it reduces the amount of detailed illustrations used to paint a gorier picture that the pixelated graphics cannot. There were several instances where this effect would have given certain scenes much more impact, and overall Curse of Asmodeus was lacking in the sound and visual department as the sound effects weren’t nearly as atmospheric either and the soundtrack isn’t noteworthy enough to mention.
Vlad Circus: Curse of Asmodeus does what every bad sequel does: it unnecessarily adds to what was a great story in order to give pointless explanations to characters we didn’t care about. Rather than improving on its predecessor’s game mechanics, it instead strips them back, ultimately offering an unneeded, lesser experience.
Jess reviewed Vlad Circus: Curse of Asmodeus on PC with a provided review copy.
