🔹Very beautiful graphics.
🔹Solid Horror story and gameplay with a lot of decent moments.
🔹You can explore the great looking map while playing the game.


🔸Puzzles aren't well made and need a little work.
🔸Lots of backtracking.
🔸Too many door that are locked.
🔸Sadly a rather short story.

The Land of Pain is a Horror/ Gore game developed and published by Alessandro Guzzo. It offers great graphics with the CryEngine, huge maps and a story that you play within the darkness with puzzles to solve.

• Gameplay:
  
  Basic Mechanics:
  The Game is basically a cross between a Horror Game and a Walking Simulator in my opinion and experience. You simply walk within the map and enter a couple of houses to find more clues as to what happened. For example you enter a house and want to explore the upper rooms but you're not able because the staircase broke which makes you walk around the map until you find that staircase ( which you can easily miss ). That i am trying to explain here is that there is way too much backtracking which makes the game feel a little boring after some time. Too add on that, there are way too many Locked doors for which you need keys and mostly you will not find them as they do not exist which in my opinion is a very ''cheap'' way to hide some small problems of the game. There are some good moments that really give you an adrenaline push so do not get instantly annoyed by its flaws. Lastly after every checkpoint you have a journal where you add your experiences which adds a little story content.
  
  Puzzles / Other NPCs:
  The game does have some puzzles where sadly only a very little amount of the are actually great. Mostly they make you run around the map which is the same problem i mentioned previously, other times you do not get enough information and that can lead to never understanding what exactly to do. Now to the NPCs, there are mostly none...alive atleast as you find some of them dead but they're actually quite useful as you find keys and other informations for your journey but other than that there isn't much else.
  
  AI opponents:
  The only opponents really is the evil creature that wants to terminate you. Before it attacks you you will hear a creepy screeching and than it will slowly appear infront of yoou and then simply kill you. You can try to get around it by closing all the light sources on you so you will not really be detectable.
  
  
• Story:
  Now to the story, it is sadly a rather short one but i got to admit that it is a very solid story that keeps you entertained. There is no voiceacting but you get textes instead which isn't really optimal in my opinon but it does the job well enough, you can get clues about the story by finding other objects that are everywhere around the map or by using the journal you write in after every checkpoint. You're basically trying to find what happened after you touched a weird sphere and made you wake up in a cage, throughout the story you find out that it is a demonic monster that kill every human and only leaving its skeleton with weird marking of blood around. Your target is to understand how the portal mentioned in the notes works in order to survive. Very decent story in my opinion.
  
  
• Graphics/ Audio:
  
  Graphics:
  As mentioned multiple times before, i really am a big fan of the visuals this game has. In the Intro it actually looks like a Triple A game, obviously in night and inside of building it gets a little worse but it is still one of the better looking Indie games i have played. The lighting is amazing aswell!
  
  Audio/Soundtrack:
  There really isn't any notable audio, the only one is the realxing song in the intro but other than that there are some generic sounds and scream. There is no Voice acting aswell.
  
  
• Performance :
  
  On Low End Devices:
  Not tested yet.
  On High End Devices:
  Intel Core i7 4790k, 16GB, Nvidia GTX 1070
  I played the game on Maxed Setting on 1080p ( Full HD ) and was mostly playing on +60fps which adds to a solid performance.
  
  Bugs/ Glitches/ Crashes:
  In around 6 hours of gameplay i did not experience any bugs or game breaking glitches or crashes.
  I did get a couple of texture problems but that did not bother much.
  
  
  Multiplayer:
  
  -
  
  
• Price :
  For 9,99Eur. you really get a game that has been professionally done really well.
  
  
• Conclusion :
  The Land of Pain is a really professionally done game only made by one person, great horror moments with a decent plot and crazily good graphics, obviously with a couple of flaws but i think the good outweights the bad.
  
  
  
  Overall Rating: 71/100
  
  
  
  Follow our curator page, OCG-Curations if you like and want to see more reviews like this one!

Slightly silly title. Really good game.

First up, the graphics far exceed the low expectations I've learned to harbour for "indie" horror games. This game is frequently gorgeous, from the sheets of drizzling, misty rain through to the shafts of sunlight peering through the trees (during an uncommonly serene opening sequence). Bodies of water are also highly effective, and the monsters in the game memorable and genuinely frightening. Nice.

Secondly, the sound - and atmosphere created through the mix of audio and visuals - is top-notch. Long before you "meet" anything, the creepy noises of things checking you out from not-so-afar will keep you on your toes. This is a scary game long before the ♥♥♥♥ officially hits the fan.

Which brings us to a third noteworthy accolade: the build-up. Rare is the horror game which does such a fabulous job of keeping you in the dark - often literally! - in regard to just when the danger will finally emerge from the shadows to menace you. I won't spoil it for you, other than to say that it's quite a while before you'll truly need that "sprint" button. But you'll be hitting it in panic long before that anyway, thinking that something must surely be about to beset you at any moment.

Now for some more neutral points. The "puzzles" are generally solid, if not always entirely logical. I had no idea, for example, that a plank of wood I was carrying about was capable of bridging a gap a good few metres wide. The whole time I thought I was carrying around a stumpy stick, useful at best for beating off feral dwarves, but was in fact lugging about a well-hewn hunk of tree capable of giving a lumberjack back pain (and was still able to sprint from fast-moving monsters whilst doing so).

The story, while certainly nothing to complain about, also isn't much of anything to write home about, and starts quite a bit more compellingly than it finishes. It's fine, though, and services the gameplay perfectly well; which, when all is said and done, is what most game "stories" are about anyway, aren't they?

Downright negatives? There aren't any really, unless you include the lack of remappable keys and the thoroughly stupid decision to have the player jump AFTER the space button is released. You get used to it, obviously, but it kinda sucks when you have to die a few times to get the hang of such things.

Look, honestly, I play a lot of indie horror games, and this one gets an awful lot of things "right". It's about the right length (around four hours), has about the right balance between linearity and lack thereof (areas seem quite large at first, but you soon whittle them down), is reasonably challenging without being crazy difficult, and has its fair share of chase sequences without them becoming tedious or redundant. And the fact that this was developed by one guy is downright INSANE.

An extraordinary effort, all things considered. Pretty much a must-buy for all genuine horror-lovers, and we shall definitely have to keep an eye out for the name Alessandro Guzzo in the near future...

Verdict: 9/10.

Land of Pain (LoP) is a first-person adventure with beautiful CryEngine graphics. You spend your time walking (and running when necessary!) around the landscape during night and day, exploring buildings and caves for clues and items to allow you to progress. It feels like on open world environment but it's impossible to get lost (unless the game wants you to be lost eg. in the mine tunnels). If you try to backtrack too far or go in the wrong direction you'll be gently herded back by an invisible barrier and a dialog reminding you not to go that way.

Along the way there are journal pages to pick up which briefly describe your findings. You normally only read these once as you discover them, but later in the game they become a helpful reminder of the overall storyline that gradually unfolds as you proceed. Once in a while you get chased by the monster! You can run away and hide if you're lucky, but being caught is no big deal, you just die and respawn at your last checkpoint which is always nearby.

I played with a controller and the features are very simple. Left-stick to move, right-stick to look around, X to interact, Y to toggle lantern, A to jump and RB to run. You can use the menu button to look at the journal pages you've picked up but it's never necessary. They are short snippets that you read as you pick them up. There isn't even an inventory - you may occasionally pick up a key or a crowbar or whatever, and it's displayed at the bottom of the screen only for the short period before you inevitably use it soon after to unlock the way to the next area. All very straightforward. The walking/running speed of the character and the camera turning are all set up perfectly, it feels smooth and natural as a game of this type should be.

There's no pointer on the screen, which I like a lot because there's nothing to distract from the immersion in the environment. When you look at something, for example a door, the word 'door' appears and you press X to try it. No nonsense! You never need to use one item on another item, work out how to use something or generally use much brainpower, you just have to explore the area and press X when a word appears and then a (usually obvious) clue appears at the bottom, dropping a heavy, unsubtle hint about what to do next. If you've picked up a crowbar and then discover the thing that it needs to be used on, the event will happen automatically without any further intervention from you. No need to work out how to implement it or anything.

Death is a regular occurrence. You'll fall off cliffs, miss your footing on plank crossings and, of course, get caught by the monster! The autosaves will put you right back at a nearby checkpoint to try again, so no harm done.


I have a GTX 1050Ti and with in-game graphics cranked up to the max there is no frame dropping or lag of any kind and my PC fans blow at a steady rate. The only point I need to mention is that (at time of writing) the game occasionally crashes without warning. It doesn't happen often enough to become annoying and the autosaves allow you to recover immediately without any adverse effects so don't let this put you off.


A lot of the game is fairly plain sailing but after a while you find yourself stuck in a certain area wondering where to go. Once you have some experience you come to learn that yes indeed, you will have to try to get past that monster, there is no other way! It can get frustrating, but then when you finally succeed you look back and realise that it's "easy when you know how"!

Many games in this genre tend to cram in tons of puzzles and tricky details and whatnot (see next section). LoP doesn't have any of that. It focuses on having you explore the environment to find the 'unlock' item, and then finding the way ahead - sometimes having to run from the monster. There's nothing complex about it but some challenge is definitely there at times.


I know it's a bit naughty to talk about a different game, but I think in this case the contrast will help to explain what Land Of Pain is like, so I'm going to indulge myself just this once. Here's my Conarium review[saveorquit.com].

The first main difference is that Conarium is set mostly underground so it's always either dark or with room lighting, and you can never stray very far from the limited area where you need to be. LoP is outdoors, so you have the day/night cycles, weather and more of a feeling of opennness. The active area is still not very large but you can wander off the path into the undergrowth and poke around in the bushes which gives more of a sense of freedom, even if it's an illusion.

Conarium has clues, items and journal entries crammed into every nook and cranny, there is absolutely tons of it, you have to rummage through endless drawers and hidey holes and then you get to the end of the game only to discover that you've barely found half of it. LoP is the opposite. You have only a very small number of items/clues to find and then you move on. Your progress feels much more fluid without any distractions, and you feel like you can just enjoy the scenery without the constant pressure to inspect every pixel on the screen with a microscope.

LoP graphics are very pretty indeed, I have no complaints, but when you get close up to rocks and walls the textures lose some detail even with graphics settings at maximum. I think the UE4 engine of Conarium has the edge - the lighting effects especially give it a real wow factor - but I'm being picky here, LoP graphics are also wonderful.

LoP definitely takes the prize for gore and horror, with blood everywhere, a monster occasionally chasing you, and screaming bodies being hurled out of bushes like ragdolls. The journal pages you collect are very succinct, they serve only to further clarify the storyline that you're already following. Conarium has a lot of reading material which I stopped reading after a while because it was all mysterious and didn't make much sense to me. Fine if you're into that kind of thing, but personally if I wanted to read that much I'd pick up a book.

Conarium is a very, shall we say, sterile environment. You rarely see any live humans, animals or monsters. LoP feels like a more lively affair. There's the monster, but also things like scurrying frogs and rats, and the occasional scream from some unlucky victim nearby all helps to make it feel more alive. This, along with the focus on exploration rather than solving cerebral logic puzzles and using inventory items, urges you to try to push ahead and find the way instead of lingering and trying to solve everything like you would in Conarium.

I feel privileged to have played both games. The concept is similar but they are very different to play. If you like collecting items and solving puzzles then Conarium is for you, it's densely packed with all that stuff – reflected in the price tag which is almost double that of LoP. If you prefer a more 'pure' uncluttered horror experience focusing on exploration and jump scares then LoP is the one to choose. It just depends on your personal taste.


This is an excellent adventure horror game that dispenses with all the small details of inventory items and puzzle solving, and instead focuses on exploration and running away from a scary monster in a very immersive environment. It's a lot of fun and it really does give you a heart-attack-inducing fright when the monster catches you, even if you're expecting it! It costs less than I expected too, so I highly recommend it.

More reviews at SaveOrQuit.com

The Land of Pain is a great game that stands out well in a storefront flooded with cheap horror games. The game nails the execution, even if the gameplay and setting will be familiar. The protagonist quickly finds himself in a land where something has gone terribly wrong, and your motivation is to figure out what has happened and escape. Gameplay should be familiar: you explore and solve basic puzzle to progress, all the while conscious that you are defenseless and that some..thing...may wish you harm.

Levels are quite large, allowing for a good deal of exploration, but never so large that you have no direction. The level design is probably the most unique feature. There's plenty of other horror games out there, but most take place in the same kinds of hallways, and those that try larger environments rarely pull it off.

The atmosphere is outstanding: dark, foreboding, and enhanced by amazing sound. The sound may be the standout feature: it ratchets up the tension appropriately, other times staying subdued to build a sense of dread. In a few cases it sent shivers down my spine.

There were many moments that genuinely scared me. The designer expertly combines the tension of the visuals and sound with moments of surprise.

One moment, a little more than halfway through the game, must be mentioned. It takes place in a swamp and features incredibly frustrating trial and error gameplay that felt unfair to get through; I had to edit the game files to proceed. Had I not done that, this moment was so bad I would not have recommended the game.

It stands out, too, because the rest of the game is not frustrating. Puzzles are logical and there is no pixel hunting, while autosaves get you back in the action quickly.

Overall, this is a great game available for a reasonable price. I look forward to the developer's next title.

Great indie horror. The Land of Pain does an amazing job at building tension through sound, the story is intruiging, graphics are beautiful and notes are well written and interesting.

The 'puzzles' mentioned in the synopsis are more logical fetch-quests which involve a bit of backtracking, but nothing extrenuous that had me feeling bored. There are many varied environments to keep the game from feeling reptitive and the chase scenes are spread out perfectly. Normally a let down of similar style indie horrors is the save system, however this game always seemed to autosave before any dangerous moments, which means players don't have to worry about losing too much progress if they die.

Definitely recommended for indie horror fans!

If you like this review, please follow my curator page for more:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34936724-Cookie-Reviews/

That being said, it’s not exactly re-writing the book on horror.
I wanted to avoid using the word “Lovecraftian” in my review, but once I discovered the tentacle-headed statues, it became hard to avoid.
This is practically a straight adaptation of one of Lovecraft’s stories.
You’ve got cultists, sacrifices, strange artifacts, shrines, and ruins. The whole Cthulhu kit.

You don`t will see scary moments. Its psychological horror. Sounds, locations, etc

8.10

Great environments and atmosphere but, alas, a "monster" is introduced that randomly pops up that requires trail-and-error pathing to escape or die immediately. It becomes too tedious to want to continue, despite a generous checkpoint system.

I can't believe I'm saying this but I would have preferred this to be 100% walking simulator.

This game lacks any sort of design concept. Most of the time you walk aimlessly through the woods, looking for randomly placed items. I don't think this game was tested by anyone other than then dev before releasing it. A good example of this is when you find the house with the lamp on inside on the second floor and there is a broken ladder where the character says something like "the ladder is broken. I need to find another way up." I looked around that area for a good long while and didn't find anything that would allow me to climb up, so I decided to forget it and keep going. I hit a trigger that made me turn around because the character said something like "I'm not done looking in this area yet". So I continued to waste time looking for a ladder that didn't exist. Got fed up and tried much luck going down the trail again. This time it let me go past where it had initially turned me around and sent me back to the cabin. I walked a long ways down the trail to, my surprise, find a ladder. There's nothing that would have hinted that I should go far away from my current location to look for a ladder to use. It's a game of randomness and guessing. That doesn't make for engaging gameplay. I understand the dev is probably only a dev and not a designer, but at least have people test the game and give some feedback.

Aside from that, the game look pretty. the atmosphere is kind of creepy at first, but the beauty is quickly drown out by frustration of a lack of design. This is more of a walking simulator than it is a horror game.

This is a frustrating game. First off, it's mostly a walking sim, but with a really aggravating monster that kills. I've played a ton of similar titles that are better...e.g. Conarium, Through the Woods, Kholat, et.al. I enjoyed those similar titles much more (even though some of them were also flawed).

So here's what I like and what I hate (no spoilers). I enjoy a good Lovecraftian story, and this story is passable. It is told solely through pages that you find and your own automated journal entries. The fact that this is largely a walking simulator isn't a big drawback to me. Conarium is as well, and I found that to be very satisfying. There are some legit scary moments in this game...and at least one jump scare that really had my heart rate go up.

Now as to the bad. There are some light puzzle elements in the game--e.g. you come across a key, you unlock a door, you get a whatever, you read a journal entry that tells you what you need to do with that whatever, you do it... Although I'm not opposed to this task-oriented gameplay, Land of Pain has large landscapes and sometimes you have to run all over to either find the thing or use the thing. And there are plenty of locked doors everywhere. It's just kind of crap "game design" that pads out the playtime but adds little to the experience.

My biggest issue with the game is a monster that pops up quite a lot. And it does so fairly randomly. Once it pops up, 9 times out of 10 it kills you. Sometimes its presence seems to indicate you're not supposed to go a certain way--other times it just randomly pops up and kills you while you're just walking around. There is no rhyme or reason to it. There really is no useful strategy to avoid it or escape it. I spent over 30 minutes having to replay one section because it just kept killing me (despite countless strategies). It seems to be largely based on RNG and is just maddening. In one area it repeatedly killed me every time I respawned?!?

The game was released in late 2017 and I played it in 2020. Honestly, I don't feel the graphics have held up well. They use Cryengine and it isn't horrible, but when you compare it to Kholat (which is from 2015) or even Conarium (from 2017) Land of Pain just look meh. Next, the game has some weird unpatched glitches--not too many, but the glitches coupled with the unbalanced gameplay with the aforementioned monster are illustrative of sloppy development. There was one area where I fell through the world (clipped) and had to reload my last save. That glitch was located in a room where gameplay occurs. There was another area where I acquired an asset, used it, had the monster kill me, and upon countless respawns had the (used) item back in my inventory when it should have been removed after use.

All in all, recommending this game is really tough. It's a walking simulator with an enraging monster that kills you randomly, it has an unexceptional Lovecraftian plot that is servicable, It has unpatched glitches 3 years after release. Honestly, if you're interested I'd recommend watching a playthrough on YouTube, saving your money, and buying something like Cyanide's Call of Cthulhu to get your Lovecraft fix.

Basically a walking simulator that doesn't tell you where you have to walk to. You could also call it "locked door simulator", because everything that happens in this game is finding a house with a locked door, so you'll just keep walking until you randomly find a key or another key item in the middle of the forest, and you backtrack. It's somehow supposed to be an adventurer, but riddles are basically non-existent.
Definitely not a game you play for its amazing gameplay.

The plot itself doesn't really make a lot of sense, but in contrast to most people here I have to say that the background story and the atmosphere felt very lovecraftian to me.
The game has its moments, it often feels extremly creepy and gives you the feeling that something is creeping up on you, and despite its weirdness and tediousness it was interesting enough for me to play it through. Which isn't actually that common for me, even for a 2 hours game.

I suffered from heavy framerate drops in the beginning of the game, but they disappeared after the introductional hike.

If you like Lovecraft, if you like short casual indie horror game with a good atmosphere and if you can live with gameplay that annoys you half of the time, you can give it a shot, but not for the full price.