Animehouse

I had a great chance to participate in the early demo for Muffles’ Life Sentence thanks to an opportunity in their Discord. I found the game randomly through Steam and wasn’t sure what to expect. I was very interested in the visuals just from the Steam page- the strong red, black, and yellow aesthetic kind of reminded me of OFF, but with a darker color palette and more fidelity in the pixel art. Now that I’ve played it, though, it’s even better than I imagined.

I’m not going to spoil any major twists or turns here, because spoiler alert: you should just try the demo out yourself. But let me at least give you the basic premise. You are sent to serve an absolutely insane life sentence in the Maddox Prison System, starting at Drachencrag. In this prison, your face gets modified to fit the crime you committed, and people with petty crimes all look the same, because who cares about them, right? You, however, are the oddest of the bunch. You have no memories or any recollection of what you did. Worst of all, you can’t even speak. You’re completely muffled, at least at the beginning. As you play, you might find there’s an opportunity to… literally switch out your face.

It’s truly an experience that is hard to put into words. I love the characters and the amount of personality they exude. For the most part, every character has their own unique sound when they speak, which gives them a significant amount of personality. The pot I have pictured above, for example, literally sounds like a damped, echoing voice. This adds a huge charm for me in the game.

In general, the characters are just a lot of fun; I don’t even want to show most of them because you should check them out for yourself. All the characters are distinct and humorous, and one of my favorite aspects about them is their individuality.

As funny as it is that all the Pettys were modified to have the same face. It creates an interesting juxtaposition to how messed up everything is to how humorous the game can be, raising the question of how truly bizarre this whole situation is. Human bodies are being mutilated, there’s a prison from which you can’t escape, and you’re in a world that you know nothing about due to your amnesia. Are you guilty, innocent, or something else entirely? It’s a very intriguing experience- problematic yet incredibly fun.

The gameplay itself is quite simple, it’s your RPGMaker experience of walking around and experiencing various events. The combat however is not the typical turn based option as it’s a deck based combat style. It’s very easy to understand and I can see a lot of fun combinations and tactics being put together. I didn’t find the difficulty too hard at the beginning, but if you ignore your deck completely, you might be in for some trouble later on! So build those decks!

I had a lot of fun with the demo, and I just cannot wait for the full game. BossyPino seems like such an earnest developer; he’s been fixing an insane number of bugs and adding improvements. He is incredibly active in his Discord community, which has created a very fun vibe with supportive members. I’ll be leaving links to the game, his Discord, and his Patreon if you want to support him. I’m hoping to be back to review the whole game whenever it’s released, but I’m going to leave it off here for now.

Steam Demo
Discord
Patreon