This isn’t for lack of trying: there’s a lot of ambition in evidence here, and the developers appear to have made a conscious effort to do things they haven’t before. In just about every other respect, though, Creepy Tale 2 falls flat. The game makes a strong case for the notion that the first one could have gotten by just fine without such liberal imitation of another artist. The human characters, too, appear distinct and well realized. The new art style mostly succeeds on its own merits: the monsters sport inventive, disturbing designs-a human-limbed spider and a blind, snuffling swamp beast are especially memorable-and the menacing woodland landscapes put one in mind of a twisted fairytale. Mortensen’s influence is still apparent in places, but “influence” is all it is, and on the whole the character and location designs are original and unique. To the developers’ credit, they seem to have listened to criticism around the previous game’s artwork. If Creepy Brothers Studio (formerly Deqaf) could find a more distinctive voice while building on the groundwork laid in their debut, the end result might really be something special. I was cautiously optimistic, then, when Creepy Tale 2 was unveiled with graphics that bore only a mild resemblance to its predecessor’s. When I reviewed the game I came away hoping the developers would cultivate a style more their own in future projects and use it to showcase their many strengths.
Its puzzles were creative and challenging, its story was simple but well told, and it was rich with appropriately spooky atmosphere troublingly, though, the visual style from which it derived so much of its identity veered dangerously close to out-and-out plagiarism of the artist John Kenn Mortensen. The first Creepy Tale was a complicated beast.
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