Evil Nun is a popular smartphone franchise, the first game of this franchise was released in 2018 with the name the nun, and due to legal problems and the similarity of the name of the game with the name of a movie, it was removed from the stores and became available to download again in August with the name Evil Nun: Horror at School.
The next game of this franchise was released in 2020 named Evil Nun 2: Origins for smartphones, which was a prequel to the first game, the next game of this franchise was a spin-off of Evil Nun called Evil Nun Maze: Endless Escape, which was released in 2021 for smartphones. The fourth game called Evil Nun Rush was released for smartphones in 2022, which was actually a version of Evil Nun Maze: Endless Escape with extra content.
These 4 games have been released for free for smartphones, and the first game has been downloaded 50 million times, the second game 10 million, and the third game and the fourth game have been downloaded 1 million times each, these numbers show the success of the game on smartphones.
In December 2023, for the first time, a game from this franchise was released for PC and gaming consoles called Evil Nun: The Broken Mask, which is actually a version of Evil Nun: Horror at School that has been completely rebuilt and is a remake of this popular game. this game was made with unreal engine 5 and not with unity like other games of this franchise.
STORY
The story is very simple and it’s just a general story that you know almost all of it from the beginning of the game and not much is added during the game, you go to a religious summer camp and as soon as you arrive, Sister Madeline imprisons you and you find out that this summer camp is a trick and you have to escape, on the way you find out that other children are also imprisoned in this school and you have to save them with the help of the blue handed child’s guides that are around the map.
Around the school, there are letters from parents or imprisoned children that you can find, and after each time you find the magic cup, a sign will appear showing how the imprisoned children feel about the school and sister Madeline.
The story is very simple and without twists and it takes almost 3 hours to finish, and even though the game is not very expensive and is 20 dollars, it still does not make 3 hours enough and its still considered short.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is smooth and in my experience there were no annoying bugs in it, the game starts from the room that sister Madeline took you to, you have to open the door and you will see a letter that is your first quest log, in this early part of the game you can only move around in a small part of the school and escaping from sister Madeline in that small and labyrinth-like space is very scary and gives the player a sense of fear, this part may take 10 minutes and after that you will get to the new and bigger part of the school, in this part you can easily escape from sister Madeline and the feeling of fear in the game is almost completely gone, the player is busy solving puzzles and sometimes encounters sister Madeline, and loses her after only a few seconds of walking away and continues his/her work again, the gameplay becomes extremely repetitive after half an hour and you are just solving puzzles that are not at all challenging or varied, you just have to find the item you are told and take it to another place, all the puzzles in the game are the same and only the locations and items change, in general the only thing that is varied during the game is the map, and in every chapter you can get to a new part of the map.
You can finish this game in almost 3 hours, and after 30 minutes it becomes very repetitive, and only in the last few minutes you get a new ability to move around.
There is no manual save feature in the game and the game is saved after finishing each chapter, so if you close the game before the end of a chapter, you have to start that chapter again from the beginning.
MAP DESIGN
The best part of the game is its map design, a large school filled with religious books and crosses, darkness and loneliness can be felt in the map and it creates a scary atmosphere, some signs or crosses on the walls can fall on the floor if the player touch them and draws the attention of sister Madeline towards the player, the shortcuts are amazing and will surprise the player.
VISUALS
When we hear that a game is being developed with unreal engine 5, we are sure that it is going to be a good game visually, and Evil Nun: The Broken Mask is no exception, all the textures are high quality and realistic. which convey fear to the player, the facial design for sister Madeline is good although it could have been a bit more detailed, the resolution and performance were fine and stable in my experience.
SOUND DESIGN
The sounds of objects falling and scary effects are acceptable, but the sound of sister Madeline’s footsteps is not clear at all, and it is almost impossible to know her location based on the sound of her footsteps.
Sister Madeline’s voice acting is not very scary and is not very good at creating fear, and of course the number of sentences that Sister Madeline repeats is very few and repeated.
The soundtracks of the game are extremely pleasant and convey the sense of fear well.
CONCLUSION
The story is very simple and without twist, it does not make you curious about it and it is short.
The gameplay is very repetitive and you only solve repetitive puzzles and sometimes you encounter sister Madeline.
The map design is great and its shortcuts will surprise you.
Visually, it is good and has stable resolution and performance.
The sound design is not good and you can’t tell where Sister Madeline is walking by the sound of her footsteps.
