I did it again. I put all my hope into an upcoming indie horror game all for said game to dash my hopes against the rocks like a ship lost at sea. I am a moth to the flame when it comes to horror titles: drawn to the dread and the fear only to get burned. I come to you, my followers, with scorched skin to bear. Not only are my hands blackened, but my mind is completely bewildered at how much of a mess Martha is Dead truly is. From the unsatisfying narrative to the scattershot approach to gameplay, Martha is Dead becomes an almost car crash of horror game design. So dawn your surgical mask and scalpel, as we perform an autopsy on yet another flatlined horror title.
Our tale begins in Italy in 1944; our heroine, Giulia is the twin daughter of an important Italian General in the Axis army. While working on her photography skills, she discovers her sister, Martha, face down in the lake near her family’s estate. Unable to save her, she takes Martha’s necklace to assume her sister’s identity hoping to this would help her discover her sister’s killer… somehow. My first reaction was confusion about how impersonating Martha was going to help Giulia solve her sister’s murder, but the concept seemed intriguing enough to pique my curiosity, so I pressed on.
From there you are given a laundry list of tasks that will help you uncover the mystery of your sister’s murder. You are given a camera and free reign over your family’s estate. Initially, I assumed the primary gameplay loop would be taking photos of ghosts in a Fatal Frame style. However, the game will only ask you to take a handful of pictures throughout the story. This is part of Martha is Dead’s bold strategy to introduce gameplay styles and throw them away hours within the game. A strategy that I as a critic, don’t recommend. You don’t ask a marathon runner to compete in the shot put event; just as a game like Guitar Hero doesn’t switch to an RTS mid-campaign. Yes, Martha is Dead doesn’t have a dramatic shift in gameplay, but it doesn’t improve to introduce photography gameplay to rarely take advantage of it.
Early on Martha is Dead has dream sequences where Giulia is running down a dark path in a forest. Forks in the path will appear and you must run down the path to form the correct sentence. Martha is Dead uses these sequences three times before tossing them aside like a child bored with its old toy. I was certainly glad to be rid of them as they felt like a cheap way to railroad the audience into understanding Giulia’s feelings, but I found myself chuckling at how quickly these sequences were abandoned.
It was more common for the game to ask me to fetch random keys or items throughout the estate like a distraught MMO player, or worse, Martha is Dead asked me to engage with a finicky morse code puzzle. A puzzle that will restart each word if the game deems your bleeps and dashes were too long or not long enough. So many cries of anguish were heard due to the game thinking the light tap of my mouse button was too long and I was incorrectly entering a dash. Saying I merely wanted to snap my keyboard in half is an understatement. I wanted to smash the keyboard of whoever designed this puzzle. All in all, I question why Martha Is Dead needed to have all these mundane fetch quests or infuriating minigames when the developers could have built the game around taking and developing photos.
My loyal followers, I would normally excuse a mismatch of gameplay and questionable narrative direction, if the game’s atmosphere chilled me to the core. Silent Hill 4 is often a game I think about when talking about atmosphere. It is a game I grew to love in spite of its quirky faults. Combat in Silent Hill 4 was never groundbreaking nor the reason I returned to the game. It was the weird moments that would spark my curiosity and have an uneasy air to it. Why is there a room with a giant Eileen’s head? What’s with the two-headed child monster? Unfortunately, Martha is Dead never really left me sitting in my cardboard box pondering the dread I felt from anything I experienced.
Now, I am not implying there is no horror within Martha is Dead. There is the mandatory jump scares that all indie titles must have. There are some gruesome body horror moments that made me uncomfortable for a second. However, these moments are mere flashes in a pan. Most of your time is spent wandering the brightly lit Italian estate. Yes, you don’t want to bombard the player with continuous jump scares, but I was frequently begging the game to do something to catch me off guard. Again, look at Silent Hill 4, the first level is within a well-lit subway. Everything appears normal until you interact with Cynthia and she seems to be in a different world from us. An uncomfortable ease seeps in like a thick fog. That sense of dread never came to me while playing Martha is Dead, which for a horror game is a massive red flag.
To make matters worse, it becomes increasingly unclear which quest will progress the story forward. About a couple of hours in, I was given a quest to follow a crow. Eagerly I followed hoping to discover something eerie at the end of the trail. Alas, no desecrated corpse or haunting ghost was waiting to ambush me. Instead, Martha is Dead thrust me into a cutscene and then locked me out of the family’s house, cutting me off from specific side quests and being able to develop photos. I was completely baffled by how I was supposed to know following the crow would progress the story in this way. Fortunately, the game did let me back into the house like a disobedient dog who had learned its lesson. However, knowing my punishment didn’t fit the crime of my curiosity, I pressed forward with a sinking feeling of contempt settling in.
My loyal followers, as many of you know, I do my best to avoid spoilers. I firmly believe knowing certain plot points warps the way we see media. The shocking twist of Vader being Luke’s father might not be as impressive after seeing the scene parodied so many times. However, certain stories demand diving deeper to fully grasp the big picture. SO HEED MY WARNING!!! If you do not want spoilers for Martha is Dead, or the 2010 thriller Shutter Island, I can only tell you to turn back the way you came.
After successfully convincing her family she was Martha, Giulia sets out to find a ghost known as the Lady of the Lake: a spirit from her childhood stories who drowns girls she believes to be prettier than her. Seemed reasonable to suspect an angry spirit is behind her sister’s murder with all the nightmares and Fatal Frame camera mechanics. As I wandered around looking for these trinkets to summon the Lady of the Lake, I followed the crow that I mentioned earlier. That cutscene involves Giulia going to Martha’s funeral. On some whim, Giulia decides to play the piano in front of everyone. Her mother panicked because Martha was unable to play the piano because she was deaf. She soon realizes that her daughter at the piano isn’t Martha, but Giulia.
Overcome with rage, she banishes Giulia from her home, cutting us off from side missions and photo development. I believe this scene was supposed to inspire feelings of guilt and sorrow, but I honestly was more bewildered by the whole thing. If you took your sister’s identity why would you reveal yourself after only a few days? If you believe someone murdered your sister, you have no chance of catching them in the act when they think they murdered the wrong sister. All you have done is play with the heart string of your family members. I don’t blame the mother for throwing you out. One may theorize that Giulia revealed herself because she was consumed by survivor’s guilt and if that was the case, Martha is Dead needed to showcase more of this. You had one nightmare of cutting off your sister’s face Giulia, you wouldn’t last an hour in Silent Hill.
After a fetch quest to gather items to summon the Lady in the Lake, she relieves that she has nothing to do with the death of Martha. Like a snap from Thanos, the phantom presence permanenting the game vanishes. After our encounter with the Lady of the Lake, we never have eerie dreams where you run down a path in the woods. We never caught spirits wandering through the forest. My hope of a Fatal Frame-like game shatters like glass.
Fortunately, the Lady of the Lake does progress the plot by giving Giulia a key that unlocks Martha’s keepsake box. Within the box, is a letter to Giulia outlining Martha was pregnant with her boyfriend’s child. To confirm that Martha’s letter was true, Giulia ventures to her grave. There, in gruesome detail, we help Giulia cut open her sister and pull out the fetus of her dead sister. Personally, I can handle gore in horror games, but this, much like the dream where Giulia cuts off Martha’s face, just feels needless. The tension doesn’t escalate. Chills aren’t racing down my spine. It just feels like watching a child play with the guts of a dead animal on the side of the road. Certainly, something like that could add to the tension in a movie like Pet Cemetry, but a movie like that is already dripping in atmosphere that Martha is Dead is lacking.
Assuming her mother would be furious that Martha is pregnant, Giulia assumes her mother is the one to have killed Martha. She returns to the house, gets her father’s gun, and shoots her mother. She does blackout during the shooting but holding steadfast to her theory, she dismembers up and buries her mother. Upon digging further into her pictures, Giulia realizes she killed her sister. Wrapped in the guilt, she contemplates shooting herself but is interrupted by American soldiers who capture her and her father. They brutally beat the two of them before shooting her father in the head. A young soldier is tasked with finishing off Giulia, but he takes pity on her and shoots the ground instead.
After breaking free, Giulia goes to her childhood room to play with her puppets one last time. From there Giulia reveals that Martha was never actually real. Giulia developed the spilt personality of Martha after being abused by her mother as a child. The mother frequently beat Giulia with a cane and forced her to eat the family dog. The Martha personality developed in the hope that their mother would love Martha and stop abusing Giulia. With her family gone, Giulia goes to the church in town where she was eventually taken to an asylum; thus ending the game.
The final reveal left me feeling bewildered and cheated. Yes, some plot points hint at Giulia and Martha being the same person, but there are so many red herrings that make the ending feel out of left field. Why have the Lady of the Lake? Why have the American army kill her father? I couldn’t help but think of Shutter Island as I contemplated this ending. When it is revealed that Teddy is a patient on the island and not a detective, your mind begins to piece together all the clues the movie left to form a clear picture. I don’t get the same coherent picture from all the clues Martha is Dead tries to leave behind, leaving me dissatisfied with the disconnected ending.
So why have I spent some much time dissecting this title that I would charitably say I didn’t enjoy? If it is not obvious, I love horror. Nothing will ever quite compare to hearing your heart beat against your chest as you try to stay perfectly still hoping the monster doesn’t notice you. I want there to be more dark stories that have me questioning my sanity. In order for that to happen, we need more developers walking the knife’s edge of horror game development. I am not tearing down Martha is Dead to discourage its developers LKA Games; I am hoping they can look at my grievances and avoid these mistakes on their next attempt. I genuinely believe Martha is Dead needed to stick to a couple of core ideas in order to become a spine-tingling horror game. If you wanted to focus on the split personalities, then maybe get rid of the Lady of the Lake and replace it with tense scenes with the mother or haunt her with images of the dog. It certainly is more productive than patting yourself on the back for all these high scores from outlets who can only comment on the game’s visuals, but that’s a discussion for another day.
As the medical examiner, I should probably announce what killed the title. Martha is Dead is clearly weighed down by too many ideas and wasn’t given any chance to breathe. Almost as if the weight caused the title to drown in the lake. Hopefully, LKA Games will give their next title a chance to breathe.
