Plagued by unnatural dreams and supported by a small inheritance that I received from an eerie old man who died in the hospital where I used to work as a janitor, I set myself to pulling back the veil that protects our reality from the abnormalities beneath it, searching for answers, direction, and something more, something I couldn't yet put to words. Slowly, I collected a few followers and established a fledgling cult with little to our name besides ambition and a crazy idea, and a mission that would put us on the map. I kept telling my followers to just wait, we'll soon take on that big mission while sending my most trusted believer seeking opportunities in the streets in the hope of alleviating our sudden financial troubles as the inheritance ran out and I was busy working myself into another sickbed. Finally, having no vitality left to fight another bout of illness, I croaked, leaving behind a lost believer and two hangers-on who returned to their regular life with nothing to show for it. As for the believer, I hope they'll forgive me in time or, at the very least, raise me from the dead.

I tried again.

This time I was the inspector who, following a lead, had happened on the trail of the wannabe cultist leader. The leader might have died, but his right hand was alive. But as I got closer and closer to her, the new-found madness in my dreams started to envelop me and just as I was ready to nail her with damning evidence, dread devoured me and I was lost.

I tried again. And again. And again, the cycle furiously repeating into another early death.

You get the point. It's a complicated game to get into with little direction and no hand-holding, the realities of a cult simulation quickly beating the novice into the ground just to start again with the same story from a selection that becomes increasingly limited walking down the familiar streets into another unexpected and seemingly unavoidable death. You might learn something from your every last loss, but there are so many other losses waiting.

Slowly a sense of meaningless creeps in as I tap through the same actions I've done before, stumbling into the same problems I faced before, with too little knowledge to still deal with them. I feel more comfortable with its fiddly interface that is constantly threatening to become just way too much, especially on the small cellphone screen, and there’s still a desire to dive deeper into this weird world that so successfully seems to evoke the feeling of being called by the secret whispers from another side to become the person that you usually take on in some horror game as the mid- or late-game boss, depending on whether it's going to send you against the demon itself in the end or not.

But it’s a game that encourages experimentation and exploration in its intro but punishes you severely for not knowing how to play the game properly. It’s as if to really enjoy it, you must read a guide beforehand; but I’d prefer a game to convince me there’s value to reading a guide for it before I actually do that.

In another playthrough, thinking myself ready, I took on the big mission, but it soon proved to be much more demanding of our resources than I had thought, and as my closest believer succumbed to the wounds suffered, we returned with nothing to show for it, back to our withered home. Our cult was done and I returned to my normal everyday life that could never be the same again, now aware of the precarious balance between our worlds, but impotent to do anything about it. I hope my believer behind the veil will find it in themself to forgive me; I will not be raising them again. My Google Play subscription is through and I’m not renewing it for this game.