[DEMO] Wonhon: A Vengeful Spirit

I am a huge fan of East Asian horror in pretty much any form. Movies, TV shows, books, and also games. So encountering the demo for a Korean-inspired horror game, Wonhon: A Vengeful Spirit, I was definitely intrigued enough to check out the game and see for myself if it scratched the right itch.

Developed by Busan Sanai Games and published by Super, Wonhon: a Vengeful Spirit is less a horror game and more of a paranormal stealth game. Which, while not quite what I expected, is still a pretty cool concept. The game is set nearly a century ago, in 1920s Korea (which is prior to it being split into North and South Korea, so calling it just “Korea” is historically accurate, if anyone’s curious), and you play as an unnamed dead girl who is meant to go on to the afterlife, but instead makes a deal that allows her to remain with the living, able to possess people and control them. She uses this power to get revenge on the soldiers who killed her, and also to allow other ghosts to get revenge on their military persecutors.

Time to get sneaky!

The demo’s very first mission involves having to take out a pair of soldiers. Now, there may be multiple ways to do this, I don’t know, but I chose the obvious way: possess and kill. Despite being dead, the main character still has a physical form and so needs to be stealthy and avoid detection, sneaking up behind the soldier before possessing him, making him shoot his companion, and then shoot himself.

Yes, you just read that right. The first mission involves a ghostly-influenced murder-suicide.

Now, from what you heard from the ghost who gave you the mission, they deserved it. It’s not like you just killed a couple of innocents here.

Naturally, the missions get progressively harder, requiring the use and mastery of different ghostly powers as you go. You’re not just limited to your physical form, and you can become incorporeal and assume a ghost form, at which point you look like a classic gwisin, long black hair and all. Which is honestly pretty damn cool, and I love the look. It would have been easy to just have a translucent figure of the girl’s mortal form, but no, Wonhon went full folklore and brought in a cool element, a simple thing that adds to the atmosphere and flavour of the setting.

Somewhat wonky controls

Not going to lie, I had a little bit of trouble with the game’s controls. My computer should have been able to run everything just fine, according to the specs, but everything felt very slow and clunky for me. The main character’s default movement was very slow, and while there was an option to run, an option to toggle auto-run would have been very much appreciated, because yeesh, that default walking speed!

The thing is, I’m not sure if that’s a problem with the game itself, or if my computer just wasn’t capable of running it properly despite meeting the minimum requirements. It was playable, sure, but not super enjoyable when I felt like I was moving through molasses and had a delay on my actions. And in a stealth game, a delay on actions can be the difference between success and failure.

In fairness to Wonhon, though, failing a mission simply meant being able to try again immediately; it wasn’t like I had to return to the ghostyard and speak to anyone to jump back into the mission, or anything like that. It was just a simple, “Yup, gonna try this again now.” The ease of restarting after failure is a huge benefit here, and makes it so that players can experiment and explore a little bit without much frustration if a plan doesn’t quite work out. I very much like that aspect!

I did also notice that actions while possessing someone were a bit… hit-or-miss. Sometimes I was able to make the person walk, but only a little way before they sort of kicked me out of their body and I had to wait a little and repossess them. Other times I couldn’t move them at all without being expelled. Sometimes I could move out of a soldier’s line-of-sight really easily, and other times movement was even slower than normal. So it’s not a game without its bugs, and looking through some other user reviews, I don’t seem to be the only one to experience this.

If those issues were rectified, this game would be an absolute treat to play, as the setting and concept are compelling and full of folklore and atmosphere that I very much want to dive back into and spend hours with. As it was, despite a fair bit of the game being available to play as a demo, I couldn’t get very far myself, due to inconsistent controls and clunky movement.

Wonhon: a Vengeful Spirit looks like it has so much promise, and I’m glad I stumbled across it on Steam. This is a game that I think ought to be getting more attention than it currently is, and despite the problems I had while playing the demo, I’m interested in following it post-release, to see if things improve over time and with additional user feedback. The graphics are pretty (if a little small; this is not the game to play if you have vision issues and can’t deal with small text or character models), the darkness of the atmosphere very much fits the game’s themes, and while it firmly establishes itself as a work of fiction, it also highlights a period of Korean history that a lot of Westerners don’t know about, and so might prove as a jumping-off point for greater awareness of the era. For all the control issues I had, I was still impressed by what I saw, and I think it’s worth checking out the demo if you’re a fan of stealth games and Korean folklore.

Especially if you have a more powerful computer than mine!