The Haunted Hoard: Belladonna (PC)

“It’s alive!” goes the classic quote as electricity pumps into a body composed of stitched together dead flesh, a being that defies nature rising from its slab to live anew. In Belladonna though, when the “creature” comes to life, she does not groan or rage and she does not even have her creator nearby to relish the moment. Alone in the lab, she approaches the situation with curiosity and a darling naivety, this essentially undead woman giving nicknames to the gargoyle decor and easily empathizing with the stories she reads as she searches for answers on who she is.

 

Belladonna begins right after its heroine is reanimated, and with its leading lady being a fully voiced character with surprisingly youthful energy, a rather light tone accompanies exploring a lab where an iron maiden and a brain in a jar sit out in the open. Immediately the protagonist begins to question why she can speak and identify things so easily yet can’t recall who she is or how she came to be, her bandage covered form with an unnatural bend and odd clockwork sticking out of it standing in contrast to the calm and friendly tone of her voice. On her own though she is left to ponder her existence, but the notes of her creator and others are littered around the lab and connected household, most of the story’s most important elements found within these pages. While one of the earliest ones found seemingly gives you a heaping helping of answers, even the protagonist is rightfully wary of committing some of its information as fact and when you find words written by other people, you get new perspectives to create a more layered picture of the situation at hand. At times the twists can be seen coming well in advance but this presentation style does also make for some subversions that can surprise a bit better, and with the notes not being particularly long but often well structured in how they dole out new info, they do make for a brisk and lightly enticing narrative to follow until what you read starts to intersect more directly with what you do.

Belladonna is a remarkably short game even if you take your time though, so it’s little surprise the narrative moves forward with notes that balance concise information delivery with just enough personality that they feel like reasonable reflections on a situation instead of vehicles for exposition. You still can get some details of a writer’s personality or thoughts beyond the actual details they need to share to help construct an actual plot, but helping them along is the protagonist’s observations around the household. Sometimes lightly amused by something she finds and at other times sent in a brief spiral of self-reflection as her nature conflicts with a natural order she understands exists, she’s able to be a sympathetic lead without being too simple or too juvenile. Being on her own and able to explore at her own pace no doubt influences it some, there only being her own curiosity to guide her rather than some pressing concern forcing her to act quickly, but that doesn’t mean the game lacks serious moments that start to look at its more macabre elements in regards to reanimating the dead. It does tend to lean a little on existential horror than trying to terrify you with actual sights and sounds and its musical stings can be a little misplaced since they will sometimes play before you’ve even had time to consider a space or read a note, but there is at least a decent plot at the heart of this point and click adventure that might not even take you an hour to complete.

 

While Belladonna wraps up its core plot concerns in the span of that hour and possible change, the ending does feel rather abrupt. The game could have definitely continued on from the point it leaves off and continued to explore the subjects it was delving into, especially since the late game begins to opine on the nature of an undead life a bit more but doesn’t have the time to philosophize about it much. A still image of a presumed time in the future caps off that rather sudden cutoff point, technically sparing you an outright cliffhanger but also raising some unusual questions with what it depicts. The quick wrap-up was probably wise in the long run, developer Neckbolt going on to develop Yono and the Celestial Elephants where Niklas Hallin really stretches his writing legs in creating compelling cultures in a fantasy world. However, it does leave Belladonna’s plot feeling like it wasn’t given the room to grow into something more complex or substantial, it perhaps best described as a video game short story since it tidily handles its central ideas but doesn’t go deeper into them. Considering the plot is the main appeal of this game ultimately though, its unwillingness to go further with its ideas could diminish some of the game’s appeal to prospective players.

The point and click puzzle solving in Belladonna is a lightly present factor and you’ll often find yourself unable to progress through a door or past an obstacle until you’ve figured out the right items to use to proceed, but it’s not putting too many barriers in your path that require a good degree of thought. For the most part if you have picked up all the provided items in the environment, you will likely have the right idea on how to use them on the puzzle before you. The game perhaps too freely gives you all the component pieces to the puzzles that involve a touch more activity, so while you may have to use a few items in conjunction to proceed around a barrier to progress at times, it’s not like you had to think much to concoct your solution. There are never any odd leaps in logic though and the items that do linger in your inventory will all too easily be lined up with their associated puzzle once you’ve found its proper use case.

 

Belladonna is very much just about putting your cursor on everything you can interact with at times, it sometimes having its heroine describe it for a bit more of a look into her personality or situation and other times she picks it up for a fairly obvious use later down the line. It doesn’t really feel like it’s trying to obstruct you, the puzzles more a reason to head to a space or in a case or two raise some questions about your character’s behavior. At best it should be described as lightly interactive, the activities you participate in not compelling but they are more a means of making the story a bit more than wandering around picking up notes to learn about the small set of characters wrapped up in this tale of reanimation, love, and loss.

THE VERDICT: Belladonna is a somewhat interesting short story with an endearing lead and enough little twists and touches to its narrative told mostly through notes. It handles its tiny plot well enough and progresses through it at a good pace so that you are able to mostly latch onto it as the reason to walk forward through a suitably eerie estate, but it does sting a little when the story wraps up suddenly and with an unusual image to go out on. The interactive elements are barely even barriers to progress unless you didn’t spot the right items to pick up and it feels a little generous to call the impediments you face puzzles, but for a brief tale on the nature of death and rebirth, it fills an hour well enough.

 

And so, I give Belladonna for PC…

An OKAY rating. The protagonist and the writing style present in the notes really help carry Belladonna beyond being the sum of its little weaknesses, the game able to still hold your interest up to its unfortunately sudden end. Both the player and the game’s heroine are reading these short documents of a past they are now experiencing the ramifications of, your character almost along for the ride and even having little comments as she’s starting to get into learning more about the scientist and those caught up in his experiments. Her small observations while exploring, be they introspective looks at her odd form of life or comments meant to amuse herself, give her a more compelling character than a blank slate approach would have afforded. Still, her tale is too short to dive into the depths of her character, even a few moments showing she is having more complex thoughts about the state of affairs brushed aside as the tale wraps up before they can form into interesting conflicts. With the story being the main reason to experience Belladonna it is a shame it ends up clipped before it could become something more robust or meaningful, but it’s not without its appeal and the brief moments where you need to get a few items in order to move forward won’t impede your efforts to experience it. Perhaps if those puzzles had been more involved though than maybe the lean narrative wouldn’t feel so bare since it would have engaging gameplay to accompany it, but Belladonna decides not to shoot for the stars in any capacity and thus it’s a hard game to recommend for anything but a fairly low sale price.

 

Belladonna’s plot could have been the first act in a greater tale of introspection on life and undeath, but despite an aside or two hinting at this room for growth, it doesn’t seem like developer Neckbolt is too interested on ruminating on such things outside those brief self-contained moments. I do reiterate that moving onto Yono and the Celestial Elephants probably granted us a more unique game that got to have thought put into its most compelling moments because Belladonna’s story was shelved for it, but naturally a hypothetical world where both games had time for their tales to explore their interesting ideas would have been the better one. As it is, at least Belladonna can do a bit with its writing so that once it wraps up all too soon you still walk away feeling you had enough of a tale to say it wasn’t a bad way to spend an hour playing a narrative game.