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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: GalacticGhosty/Iceberg Interactive Released: October 13, 2026 Requirements: OS: Windows 10 or higher Processor: Minimum, Intel Core i5 Memory: Minimum, 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 640 DirectX: Version 10
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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: GalacticGhosty/Iceberg Interactive Released: October 13, 2026 Requirements: OS: Windows 10 or higher Processor: Minimum, Intel Core i5 Memory: Minimum, 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 640 DirectX: Version 10
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By flotsam Allogloom Galactic Ghosty/Iceberg Interactive Hailing from just across the ditch as we say down here, and largely the efforts of a solo developer (name of Kate, aka Galactic Ghosty), Allogloom delivers a delightfully twisted Grimm style of fairy tale, full of monsters, moths and a deep vein of lore, not to mention some rather good puzzles. It’s the night of Blessed Festivities in the hamlet of Gruesome Grove, a place no one leaves lest the flesh-eating moths they worship consume them. Nora is helping Granny Dot with ceremony preparations but her thoughts are about her missing mother. Such things then get literally overrun by a pack of monsters who abduct everyone in the town, and Nora is set on a path to try and save them all. Nora’s endeavours play out in a visually enticing style, part Tim Burton, part gothic macabre. It is all hand-drawn and is both charming and delightfully icky in equal parts. Ditto the tasks you will have to do; relieving the itch on a flower bedecked turtle is as mainstream as finding someone’s leg or swapping out some bodily organs. The various game worlds are littered with these juxtapositions, and it never ceased to be appealing. Whilst it can be a little visceral, the design ensures it retains its sense of gruesome fairy-tale fun. Not even the grossest of tasks (unclogging the bowels of a particular monster maybe?) could diminish that. It’s a rich tapestry of a tale, and the lore embedded throughout is plentiful. I did think it was a tad convoluted, but I enjoyed uncovering its many elements. Not all of it is essential, but it warrants being revealed. There is no voice, but plenty of conversations and musings to be had. Everything is read, which I never mind, as I can imbue the character with just the right voice. As soon as I set eyes on Nora, wide-eyed and dark curls, I knew exactly how she would sound. And indeed she did. Ambient sound and effects are prevalent and effective, and a suitably moody soundtrack (the only thing not done by GG) swirls underneath events, accompanying not overwhelming them. I often turn soundtracks down, but not this time. Played in the third person, it is completely point-and-click, although there are keyboard commands as well should you want to use them. Clicking will move Nora about, and you explore the scene with the mouse. The default arrow curser will react to hotspots, different icons indicating what can occur. A severed hand will indicate something to take, an eye that you can use to look at whatever it is more closely, and a speech bubble that you can have a chat. With respect to the last, topics of conversation will pop up, and away you go. If you switch on ‘object highlights’ in the options menu, hovering the mouse over an object you can interact with will cause it to glow. However unless I missed something, the curser will react as well so the highlighting is somewhat redundant. Items you gather will be in your inventory backpack, which will appear when you move your mouse to bottom left. Click to open, then click again to choose and try and use an item, either in the game world or on another item. A staff you gather at some point in the game will separately appear in the same corner. Puzzles are predominantly of the find and use the right item type, and on the whole I thought they were well integrated into the nature of the game and made sense within that context. Which means you will do some weird stuff, but such is the nature of things. There are also some out-and-out puzzles, and I thought all the clues were there and explicable, subject to some brainpower. I needed a nudge or two, but I was certainly well pleased with the puzzling challenge. Nora can die, but usually (in my experience) as the result of some deliberate misadventure. You certainly don’t need to worry that death lies around the corner, and I can imagine you could complete the game without ever knowing that death was possible. If you do die however, it will likely result in an achievement, and you will just be resurrected and you can move on. There are eight chapters, and the last two are the most extensive and probably take up half the play time. I thought the game built nicely to the more elaborate nature of these chapters, both in terms of the size and the challenge involved. The game saves periodically and you can also save at will to three slots. One was more than enough. Six to eight hours should see you through. Across the board, Allogroom provided a gruesomely good time. I played on: OS: Windows 11, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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