One-Eyed Likho Review – Artistic and visually striking, but it could've been much more

One of the things I love about indie games is their ability to surprise me. Every time I feel like I’ve seen everything, along comes a new project with an interesting concept, a unique visual style, or basically anything else that’s capable of making me go “wow, that’s impressive”. I find myself in a similar situation with One-Eye Likho, the latest title from Black Book developer Morteshka: it’s an interactive deep-dive into the realm of Slavic myths and legends that invites players on a journey I can only describe as mesmerizing and otherworldly. That said, while it admittedly paints a very pretty picture, if you’re hoping for more than just a lovely painting to admire… well, you might feel a touch let down. Let me explain.

A dark fairy tale

So, what is One-Eyed Likho, exactly? It’s introduced as a first-person horror adventure, and I more or less agree with that description – set in 19th century Russia, the story follows the adventures of a smith and a tailor as they delve deeper and deeper into dreamlike landscapes while being hunted by the titular Likho, a one-eyed creature of Slavic legend. Simply put, the vast majority of your time is spent exploring fantastical locations presented in artistic black-and-white, all the while using an infinite supply of matches to illuminate your surroundings and burn flammable objects that get in your way. During the journey, the game presents you with some light puzzles, but these never really pose much of a challenge, and felt like they were designed with a more casual audience in mind, as their solutions are both obvious and spelled out very clearly for the player.

Now, this is all perfectly fine, as not every game needs to be punishing and overly complex, but it’s also the key point I’m trying to make here. One-Eyed Likho very much feels like a mostly casual-oriented game where the mechanics never try to get in the way of the rest of the experience: sure, there is some extremely mild puzzle-solving and one or two stealth sections, but the focus always remains on the Slavic lore and the stunningly beautiful ways the game presents them to the player – and to a lesser extent, the storytelling, albeit I personally didn’t find this aspect of the game to be as fleshed out as I would’ve liked. There is some light banter between the smith and the tailor, but I never ended up feeling particularly attached to them or their otherworldly quest, which ultimately left me more confused than anything. That said, those hoping to learn more about Slavic myths and stories will have a handful of optional collectables to pick up, including curious items and various folk tales that help enrich the setting. This is where the game’s optional puzzles come into play: to collect all the folk tales in the game, you have to pick them up from chests protected with combination locks, with the combination itself usually requiring a bit of extra thinking to crack.

Horror, but to what extent?

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, but the game also manages to be moderately scary at times. I don’t know what it is about creepy old crones that have such an impact on me (I can probably, at least partially, blame the 1990 movie The Witches for this one), but I found most encounters with the Likho to be sufficiently unsettling. The way the game builds her up as the big bad of the story is decently effective, and there are a handful of pretty enjoyable scares, but the game doesn’t lean into the horror aspect too heavily, nor does it try to go out of its way to terrify the player. As implied above, the campaign does feature a couple of stealth/chase sequences where you need to either get away or hide from the Likho while she’s actively hunting you, but these only take up maybe 10% of the overall experience if I’m being generous, so they’re more like the exception, not the norm. Their presence, however, is appreciated.

What to expect, what not to expect

So, throughout this review, I’ve been trying to pinpoint who this game is and isn’t for. If you’re looking for a relatively brief experience of about 4 to 5 hours that lives and breathes Slavic folklore, with the focus being primarily on the visuals and the overall presentation, One-Eyed Likho is a short and sweet trip into a monochrome world of haunting beauty. The simplistic puzzles and brief stealth segments fit neatly into the game’s casual-centric DNA as the story builds up its dark, fever dream-like atmosphere; however, for those looking for a stronger narrative and more meat to sink their teeth into on the gameplay front, One-Eyed Likho could very well fall short. It’s artistic, atmospheric, and deals with a fascinating subject matter, but its innovations are largely limited to the aesthetics, while the rest of the experience is sort of just… okay. Which is a shame, because I feel like the setting alone held some juicy potential that sadly wasn’t fully mined.