A Honking Good Time: The Seven Living Sins
As I started my journey playing a few retro horror games this week, Fatal Frame being one I never finished and swore I would go back to so, I finally pulled the trigger and started that one and Shadow Hearts which I’ve never played but heard amazing things. Plus, it’s supposedly a heavily Lovecraftian-inspired RPG which sounds fun as heck. But as I was playing those games, I needed such levity, not necessarily from the scares but just from overly serious stories. So thankfully, while I was going through itch, I came across The Seven Living Sins.
With the help of Satan, these Wildly animated (think Christopher Llyod when he is turning back into a toon during Who Framed Roger Rabbit) women discover they each, in fact, hold one of the deadly sins. Their goal is to channel these into defeating this two-hundred-foot angelic creature known as “ The Virtue,” whose only goal is to consume sinners.
Before I go any further, you should check out the teaser on the itch.io page. It’s so well produced it had me itching, no pun intended to jump in and play it. Seven Living Sins is a visual novel, so it’s got the visual novel style layout in its text box with the backlog, skip, and auto functions. Except there is one notable standout here, and everything is fully voice acted, and to voice act this style of over-the-top toons and have it come out so well is incredible. Each character has this insane mentality to them, but they are still unique in their own way. The amount of detail given to the performance and personality of each character is astounding.
It does start with a nice content warning, flashing lights, vulgar language, and disturbing content. Just a fair warning to anyone who checks it out. Also, the comedy in Seven Living Sins might not land for everyone, it did for me, but I know that over the top, lean into the madness and rage comedy that isn’t for everyone. If you didn’t like Tiny Tina from Borderlands 2, you’re missing out, and the comedy here isn’t for you.
The story arc we go through in The Seven Living Sins is a fun one. While it is a visual novel and voiced, unless your skipping things, it’ll run you just under forty minutes. It is a short fun as hell experience getting to see these women/ toons coming to terms and defeating The Virtue. Not only that, but we do get a nice little epilogue of life going on afterward. The storytelling here is great, and it is backed by some amazing voice acting, not even to mention this killer soundtrack that’s almost circus theme meets, well, batshit crazy. It all comes together to really push the characters and story to another level.
The art style here is reminiscent of old-school animation. Besides the Christopher Lloyd toon similarities, there is also this Cuphead feeling to it, albeit more static images. It’s really good. In the teaser shown above, the art style is mainly what pulled me in. It’s dark, creepy, and weirdly goofy. While there is nothing really capital H horror in here, there are undertones of terror and demonic beings here. I can’t overstate how fantastic this short visual novel is. It is a complete package.
You should really give The Seven Living Sins your time. It deserves it and, in my personal opinion, earns it. It is another fantastic example of indie developers making these indie experiences/ games that really dig deep into their passions and bring joy to others. Follow developer Baphomet The Clown on Twitter and check out The Seven Living Sins on itch.io. After playing through it, I can’t wait to see what’s coming next.
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