Chris Nightmare is a 2D stealth title in which demons roam the land, and our only recourse as a helpless nun is to hide. We’ll come across various other sisters in faith throughout our attempt to escape this recently invaded zone, but there is nothing we can do to help them. Our goal throughout each of the three levels is to find a set amount of keys in order to unlock the route toward presumed safety. Each of those stages are fully open-world, meaning you may accidentally stumble into the exit before finding any of the required keys. They get progressively more complex as you continue. It is the type of experience where you’ll have to enjoy the act of exploration as much as stealth.
This is an entirely mouse-driven game. You left-click where you want to move your character, while holding the right button causes her to run. The only interactable things you’ll find throughout are the statues you can hide behind and the aforementioned keys you’ll pick up. It is a dead-simple game with a very casual difficulty. Enemies here are more akin to inconveniences than actual threats. They move at the speed of an asthmatic turtle and never give chase even if they see you. You have to purposely bump into these uninterested foes until they finally decide to harm your character.
Being a 2D game, if a monster is blocking your path, you can’t simply go around it. You’ll have to find a statue to hide behind and wait for it to slowly lumber its way past. Its position resets every time you exit or enter a room. With the surprise of it being there gone, future encounters merely become getting close enough for it to spawn and waiting until you can get past it again. The stages are short enough to not become too repetitive, more so if you have a good sense of direction. It is the bare minimum of what can be considered a stealth game. I wouldn’t go into this expecting the anime version of Splinter Cell or Thief. The gameplay serves as more of a backdrop to the exploration and playing on the theme of being in a situation far beyond your capabilities.
Scattered throughout the levels are other nuns being sexually abused by the demon horde. It serves as set-dressing. We can neither interact with nor save them. You can just stand there gawking if you wish, as the involved demons are far too fixated on satisfying their desires to notice you. The first fellow human you come across is in a cow costume and has her exaggeratedly enormous breasts milked. Much of the lewd content follows this same approach into the more niche kinks. Egg-laying, pregnancy, inflation from massively oversized penises, and more. While there is some vanilla stuff, it is primarily relegated to your own character if you run into a foe. The sexual acts fit the dark tone well, and their animations are pretty solid. It also doubles as a landmark of sorts to help your sense of direction.
A large portion of the H content is from in-game animations. They look great, and the six CG defeat scenarios are just icing on the cake. Regardless, I wouldn’t go actively trying to get yourself killed for them. After beating the campaign, they will all unlock and be freely viewable in the Gallery Mode. I’d wager it would take at most an hour to conquer this title. The final third stage is a bit of a challenge, but I wasn’t exactly considering getting out the graph paper to make a map. With how low to nonexistent the threat that enemies pose, a player of any skill will eventually be able to get through it. This title even helpfully displays the exact location you are in, making the lack of a map less of a hurdle for those with a poor sense of direction.
The placement of the enemies is well thought out. I never encountered a scenario where I had nowhere to hide or escape. If you entered from a doorway or angle that would have caused that, the enemy simply won’t spawn where it otherwise would. With how often you go through one-way doors and the like, that would have been a problem had the developer not skillfully avoided this. I’m a sucker for key-hunting and organic exploration. Despite the bare-bones stealth gameplay and lack of depth, I thoroughly enjoyed this experience. The three stages are all unique visually and continually introduce new monsters. While they may not be threatening gameplay-wise, their designs are excellent.
Chris Nightmare creates a good sense of atmosphere. The visuals, music, and helplessness compound into a dreary mood. As for the story, I can not confirm whether it’s good or not. This title is solely in Japanese. There isn’t much text, most being found after completing a mission, but I’m in the dark about its quality. During my time playing, I barely even remembered it wasn’t in English due to the intuitive design of the game. A more pressing concern for prospecting buyers is the lack of a fullscreen option. You’ll need to get a program like Lossless Scaling to simulate it and have the game use your entire screen, rather than being in a small window. It is less of an issue on lower resolution monitors, yet if you are on 4K, having some way to forcefully fullscreen it is a must due to being mouse controlled.
This isn’t the type of title with replay value. There is little reason to return after your hour-long romp through this demon-infested world. Its strength was the exploration, and with that out of the way, the stealth gameplay certainly isn’t what will draw me back. The few amount of stages ends up helping it thanks to being dense in content. You’ll likely find something new on entering an unexplored room, whether it be a background NPC having sex, a new monster, or another key if you’re lucky. As cliché as this may sound, it was about the journey rather than the moment-to-moment experience. Chris Nightmare is a title that people either looking for its type of H content or into key-hunting will enjoy. If you fit into either one of those camps, this is worth a look.
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