The Italian studio LKA, responsible for Martha is Dead , has undoubtedly proved with its debut The Town of Light that it can tell stories that chill your blood on several levels – from the most obvious one, based on genre solutions, to delirious nightmares like out of the best psychological horror, forcing the viewer to reflect, inevitably ending with a moral hangover. Their new game targets very similar areas. Martha is Deadfor it is the thing that the scenario aims at is how a lack of understanding and childhood trauma can affect the fate of an individual. And he carries it out very conscientiously, even if he often works to be recognizable by crossing the boundaries of good taste.
A role-playing sandwich
The story we will face in the LKA game takes us to Italy in 1944, as the war between Nazi Germany and the Allies inevitably reaches its climax. World-scale dramas during this period are constantly confronted with smaller, affecting individual families. It is one such event that Giulia, the daughter of an Italian officer in Nazi service, has to face – one morning her twin sister, Martha, is found dead on the shore of a nearby lake. The circumstances of death seem to clearly indicate that its causes were by no means natural, but the pile of unanswered questions only seems to pile up, and during the turmoil of war it is extremely difficult to find any answers.
Martha is Dead Screenplayit is undoubtedly one of those things which their impact force is almost entirely based on enigma. Thus, according to art, everything we learn in the first few dozen minutes of the game is just the tip of the iceberg to much more complicated – and ambiguous – issues. Developers from the LKA studio love to lead us by the nose, because the spectrum of topics that their production reaches is extremely extensive: we have here, for example, the issue of the influence of war on the perception of reality, local myths conditioning the reception of individual events, and finally strained family relations. So although we are not dealing here with a devoid of any chance of success, an attempt to cram many themes into one story, in the end, everything flows smoothly into one whole here – to the extent that you can even get the impression that we are constantly being led by the hand “from general to detail”. This is undoubtedly a conscious effort of screenwriters who interweave the exposition of the presented world with successive, more detailed plot twists. And they usually do it with full success.
When discussing the story of Martha is Dead , it is also worth mentioning the controversy that pushes the game in popularity rankings, related to the fact that Sony would decide to censor certain content on its consoles. As we delve into a twisted world of Italian production, it must be admitted that at least this time the caution was not exaggerated – LKA fully consciously touches on extremely difficult topics in the presented story, often using ruthless means of expression. It certainly sounds veiled, but you can be sure – mixing pregnancy and body horror themes is only part of what your stomachs will have to endure to get to the bottom of the mystery.
This is also related to the greatest doubt that Martha is Dead gives us during the game – is the process of arduous discovering it really worth the effort put into it? The answer to this question is not as clear-cut as it might seem, and perhaps the best suggestion will be to think about how well you are in the storylines, some aspects of which will remain for our individual interpretation. If this approach does not bother you, there is a good chance that you will completely sink into the production of Italians.
From A to B
Martha is Dead evokes much less emotions in terms of the gameplay itself – although it must be admitted that the creators tried to implement enough additional elements in the walking simulator mentioned at the beginning, which will slightly obscure the fact that we are still dealing with a game that being “walks by itself”. It is true that we will still wander through subsequent locations here, trying to spot elements of the environment that are important to history, but we will also be involved in more or less demanding activities leading us to our goal.
Thus, during the following chapters, we will come across a variety of objectives, sometimes even over several hours of gameplay. Some of them can be devilishly simple, such as reading the latest newspaper or the habit of reaching a specific location in order to push the plot forward, but there are also some that require a bit of thought. The puzzle related to decoding the Morse code stands out to the fore here, which not only nicely fits into the plot presented by the game, but also forces the involvement of gray cells.
An important element of the gameplay also turns out to be Giulia’s most faithful companion, i.e. the camera. Support for the descendant of Camera Obscura is probably a key element of the mechanisms governing the game – during the next hours of unraveling the plot’s intricacies, you will not only take photos of various elements of the environment, but also play with various types of film, sharpness of photos or exposure. Although the first moments of the tutorial implemented in the game may seem a bit chaotic, in practice it turns out that playing the role of a hunter of interesting frames is extremely intuitive here and, more importantly, satisfying if we actually manage to capture a more interesting view (which is can be admired in the intra-city album).
Despite these similar variations, it is difficult to escape from the final conclusion, according to which Martha is Dead is definitely more an interactive film than a production that allows us to freely shape the plot of the plot – we just have the charms of the genre in all its glory.
Beautiful Italy
However, it is so good that it is decorated with a refined audiovisual setting. It is true that it is difficult to say with full responsibility that the LKA game could graphically face the splendor of the open world from, for example, Horizon: Forbidden West , although it presents itself all too well in terms of modest, independent possibilities. What attracts attention here is the successful play with colors, decent shading and sharp textures creating the right atmosphere. Inevitably, the map made available to us during the game, intended to create the illusion of freedom and freedom, is only a smoke screen in front of a whole host of invisible walls, waiting only until we are a few meters from the main path – but what we will see during the course provided by the developers wandering, it looks at least satisfying.
One cannot say a bad word about the soundtrack, which successfully sums up the events on the screen, introducing us alternately into feelings close to the moral drama, signaling the impending terror. The environment seems even better, which may not be paid much attention during the minutes spent in stages filled with daylight, but during Giulia’s night escapades it can raise the level of adrenaline in the blood. Take my word for it – in such situations, every squeak of a floor plank or a roaring dangerously resembling a damn groan of the wind will cause a small heart attack.
A journey into yourself
Based on the above, you could conclude that I quite obviously liked Martha is Dead . And indeed – especially in the fairly limited framework of the genre in which the LKA production operates, you can clearly see the attention to detail and the willingness to combine different ideas into a coherent experience.
The question raised at the beginning of the review remains a controversial issue regarding the double-edged weapon that the plot presented by the game may turn out to be. In this aspect, it is difficult to get an unambiguous opinion – certainly a lot depends on our individual sensitivity and the ability to accept the fact that the sometimes very direct message of production is aimed at something more than just causing a cheap feeling of shock. Both for this reason and the topics it deals with, Martha is Dead is a game that will build its niche primarily among emotionally shaped, mature audiences. In such a case, can we speak of an example of virtual art? Controversial – certainly – but in my opinion, yes.
