My own games have involved multiple protagonists and points of view, so it’s great to see another work in that style. “Basilica de Sangre” is a fun, puzzle-based game in which you play a demon trying to break its mother out of a convent by possessing its residents.

Gameplay: The game involves solving puzzles to steadily open up more of the convent and find the items necessary to save your mother, but they mostly rely on the central mechanic of the game: the demon’s ability to possess other characters. Despite the number of them and the size of the game, the various characters have distinct abilities and interactions with each other. Several of the puzzles involve relationships among the characters, not just finding the nun to possess who’s good in a fight or has the keys you need to continue onward. 9/10.

Mechanics: The game uses the Quest system, which is parser-based but has an auto-mapping feature and a GUI for common commands. Aside from a few minor annoyances (e.g., the game waffles on the spelling of “Madgelena” or “Magdalena,” and “exit” is not recognized as a synonym for “out”), the game played smoothly throughout. The demon’s possession mechanic is easy to use, and I enjoyed using it creatively to solve the fair and logical puzzles throughout the game. 9/10.

Presentation: There are some genuinely funny parts in the game, such as the scene of speaking to the Sexton as a demon at the beginning. For the most part, though, the tone is a Zork-like one of mild amusement, without being wacky or farcical, to focus attention on the puzzles. Changing the fonts depending on whom the demon is currently possessing is a nice touch, particularly for the blind character. Descriptions change a bit depending on whom the demon is currently possessing (again, particularly strongly for the blind character) but not radically so. (It would be unreasonable to expect otherwise for a game this size and with this many different characters; the combinatorial explosion is massive.) There were some significant typos in the text (e.g., “We giong to make a break…”), but overall the text was solid. 8/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You want to play a puzzle-based game with a more creative set of puzzles than the usual inventory and set-piece ones.

Score: 9