BAN: The Prologue of GUCHA GUCHA on PC

For decades, I have had a particular fascination with Japanese horror. The nation has this distinctive capability to cut deep into our innermost fears, producing content that is jarring, visceral, and downright unsettling.

So it should come as no surprise that the moment the press release for BAN: The Prologue of GUCHA GUCHA came across my desk, I leapt at the chance to delve into its blood-stained depths. Approximately two and a half hours later, I am now ready to write my review. If that seems like a stunningly brief period of time, I can assure you, there’s a valid reason. But we’ll get to that.

BAN takes place in the Japanese town of Utagacho, where you play the role of a girl whose dog went missing when you were attacked by some kind of monster. Last you saw of your beloved pooch, she was somewhere up in the mountains, so that will be your first place to investigate.

Immediately, it will become apparent that this game is poorly optimised. It suffers from intense lag unless you reduce the resolution and drawing quality, and text for the cutscenes inexplicably disappears off the screen on occasion. While the latter is bizarre without being too much of an issue, the former is hard to quantify, because this game is undeniably ugly.

BAN has the inescapable presence of an unpolished product made by a solo indie developer. The main character model is a lifeless husk beset with stiff animation, and the environment is really quite drab. Your vision will constantly be obscured by low poly trees with inconsistent collision detection, as you trudge your way through a small forested area.

I want to pay particular attention to this lack of polish, because I feel downright deceived by the trailers. The quick cuts indicate something much more visual appealing, in no small part due to the wise decision to focus more on its cutscenes than its actual gameplay.

The striking art direction found in these cutscenes as well as its key art — which comes courtesy of the body horror grandmaster, Suehiro Maruo — is all but absent in the actual game, and even if it was there, the clunky mechanics would dampen any aesthetic gratification.

BAN boasts unresponsive controls and temperamental controller integration in equal measure. Sometimes the buttons will operate as specified, but often they won’t. There is an alleged crouching ability that I couldn’t get to work, but what does work instead is a dedicated button to call out to your dog. She’s not just going to jump forth at your command, however, rendering that button about as useful as the option to call out for Mario in Luigi’s Mansion.

It’s not entirely clear how to progress until you’ve exhausted every option. Some items with an interaction icon will be unresponsive until later on, when you’ve triggered a certain point in the narrative. Then, eventually, you come across an enemy. And let’s make it clear, it is the only enemy type you will encounter in the first part of the game.

Once a spirit takes chase, your only recourse is to run, but where to, exactly? The game isn’t above exposition, and yet in these critical moments it will see fit to leave you in the dark. Even if you do have an idea of where to go, the camera rotation moves at a sluggish pace, so you’re likely to crash into something (except for the trees, which as we’ve established, you can typically run right through).

When you’re being pursued, you can hold a sprint button that depletes the character’s stamina bar. This is all well and good, except that once you let go of said button, your stamina is instantly refilled, allowing you to spam the sprinting function with impunity.

Once you’ve proceeded far enough, the gameplay shifts to a sudden flashback where you take control of a young boy at a funeral. When a katana-wielding assailant begins causing mayhem, you take your infant sibling in your arms and flee for your life.

And here, things go from bad to worse. Up to this point, BAN was dull and clunky. Now, BAN progresses into frustrating and upsetting, while still remaining dull and clunky. Forced to search for a key in a series of rooms that bleed into one another while carrying a squealing baby in tow, this section will truly test your patience. If the ghost monster was the game’s only enemy, this rambling murderer could be considered the only boss.

You can either choose to protect the baby or abandon it to save yourself, each yielding different cutscenes, before at long last acquiring the key and leaving this godawful house of horrors. Afterwards, you return to the present day, walk outside and find yourself reunited with your dog.

That’s it. That’s the game. That’s why I wrote this review after less than three hours of commencing it, because I played it to completion. As Egon Spengler once said of his lawyer’s opening statement, BAN could be best described as short but pointless.

The mind boggles when trying to discern what they were hoping to accomplish here. I’ve played cheap indie games previously, but this one struggles to even run properly, let alone offer any kind of enjoyment. Everything just feels kind of janky and unfinished, and this is especially true of the soundtrack. It begins with a grating digital track that resembles the primitive audio technology of a Tiger Electronics handheld from the early 90s before transitioning to complete silence. Even then, it’s not much of an improvement, because the ambient sounds of nature loop every three seconds or so.

There are elements of intrigue dotted in there, including a mysterious little girl with supernatural traits and a silly mini-game that periodically interrupts your exploration. Here, you’re tasked with navigating a short maze while avoiding projectiles in order to feed your Kaibutch (basically a knock-off Tamagotchi). It’s highly illogical, but at least it has a sense of purpose to it. I want more of these two things, exclusively.

The title would suggest that BAN is some kind of prologue, but it really feels more like a demo, complete with unresolved story beats and incomplete translations — there’s one cutscene in particular with no subtitles, and at certain points, the game over screen’s instructions will be presented entirely in Japanese. Unfortunately, it’s just par for the course with this package.

The only way I could have justified BAN’s existence would be if it was free to play, and even then, it would be a hard sell. If you’re after some Japanese horror, I’d recommend trying out WORLD OF HORROR instead. I am so incredibly disappointed.

Final Verdict

BAN: The Prologue of GUCHA GUCHA

REVIEW COPY PROVIDED BY PUBLISHER

Release Date: 24 October 2024

Platform: PC

Developer: IchimatsuSuzuka

Publisher: Kodansha

I’m honestly not sure how BAN: The Prologue of GUCHA GUCHA was green-lit for release. It was seemingly published with little to no quality control whatsoever, and even the things that function properly just aren’t any fun to begin with.

Its slight runtime and undercooked narrative are bizarre, but somehow you’ll still be relieved when the credits start to roll. There is nothing to be recommended here, unless you are intrigued by its atmosphere — in which case, once you’ve watched the trailer, you’ve already seen the only material that was worthwhile.

Avoid this like a frightened little boy fleeing from a rampaging swordsman with only one weakness (spoiler: the paper-thin doors separating each room).