Welcome to the fourth season of The Witching Hour! Every night in October we will publish a review that will be thematically tied to the Halloween holiday in some manner. Some will be horror reviews, some will be about monster movies and some will be about the mystical holiday itself. Just to make things a little more fun, each of these reviews will be published at the stroke of midnight. We will kick things off this season by looking at something that is white, black and red all over. A little known horror game called A Rose in the Twilight.
A puzzle platformer along the lines of titles like Limbo and Inside, A Rose in the Twilight can be quite grisly. The game sports a relatively simple color scheme – all of the visuals are in black, white, gray or red. The contrasting shades of color work together to create a beautifully dreary environment for the protagonist, a young girl named Rose. She awakens in a mysterious castle that is overrun with thorns and there is a mysterious flower – a rose, appropriately enough – attached to her body. Rose befriends a giant golem and the two unlikely companions work together to find a way out of the castle.
As you play the game you will see that much of the world that is colored gray does not function. For example, you may find a giant gear that is unable to turn on its own. The rose attached to your body is capable of absorbing the color red and releasing it to animate mechanical puzzles. The color red can be found in blood stains that can be found throughout the castle. Finding these blood stains will also unlock memories of past events within the castle and power up your rose.
It seems that the unusual rose also makes your character immortal and she will have to die multiple times in gruesome ways in order to proceed through the castle. However, it seems that Rose and the Golem are not alone. There is another girl named Blanc in the castle as well and she has a rose too…
There is a twisted little story within this game but the characters do not speak very much. The story is relayed through little cut scenes and by reading journal entries.
If you want to play A Rose in the Twlight, you will need to play it on PC or a PlayStation Vita. It has not been released on other consoles like the PS4, Xbox One or Switch and that is a shame. The game usually sells for about $20 USD but I have seen it on sale for under $5. For that you get a twisted little game with a creepy tale to be discovered and a 10-hour campaign to boot.
