Devotion (video game)


Devotion is a first-person psychological horror video game created and developed by Taiwanese game developer Red Candle Games for Steam. It is set in Taiwan in the 1980s, with a majority of the game happening in an apartment complex in Taipei. The game also incorporates elements based on Taiwanese culture and folk religion. The game was released on February 19, 2019, but was removed from Steam shortly afterward on February 26 in the face of a controversy involving unintended art assets.
Devotion's background music was composed by Taiwanese composer Vincent Yang. The soundtrack was released with the game on Steam as a DLC.

Synopsis

Players, for the most part, control the troubled screenwriter Du Feng Yu through a Taipei apartment complex with rooms that represent various years in the lives of the Du family during the 1980s. The family consists of Feng Yu, his wife Gong Li Fang, a retired songstress, and their daughter Du Mei Shin, an aspiring child singer. Feng Yu's screenwriting career has stagnated while Mei Shin begins to show signs of a mysterious illness. As the family's financial situation deteriorates, Li Fang has frequent arguments with Feng Yu about whether she should come out of her retirement to help support the family.
In the midst of the domestic disputes, Mei Shin enters a popular singing contest, seeking to please her parents by becoming a popular singer. However, Mei Shin's performance of her mother's signature song "Lady of the Pier" comes one point shy of advancing to the next round. Mei Shin's condition worsens after the setback, to the point she's unable to sing. Despite a doctor's suggestion that the family seek psychiatric care for Mei Shin's illness, Feng Yu instead begins to follow the teachings of cult leader Mentor Heuh regarding the folk deity Cigu Guanyin, who could supposedly help cure his daughter and her singing career. When Feng Yu becomes increasingly obsessed with Mentor Heuh, Li Fang attempts to convince her husband to snap out of his obsession, but Feng Yu accuses her of being possessed by evil spirits. Realising her husband will not listen to her, Li Fang eventually leaves the family.
Seeing the downward spiral of her family, Mei Shin asks her father to help her fold origami tulips, believing that she will be healed when enough has been folded to fill her room. Instead, as instructed by Mentor Heuh after a séance, Feng Yu performs a dark ritual by submerging his daughter in a bathtub filled with rice wine and banded krait and locking her up in the bathroom for seven days, assumedly causing her death. A post-credits scene shows Feng Yu sitting alone in his apartment watching the noise on TV.

Development

Devotion draws inspiration from atmospheric first-person games like P.T., What Remains of Edith Finch and Layers of Fear. The developers of the game expressed a desire to make an atmospheric game that feels familiar with Taiwanese players, explaining that the culture of Taiwan rarely gets showcased in video games. In its planning stages, Devotion was not visualized to be a first-person 3D game, but subsequent discussions steered the game into that direction to realize producer Doy Chiang's vision. The development team, which consists of 12 people, had to learn the Unity 3D game engine as a result.

Music

The original soundtrack of Devotion seeks to capture the ambiance of the 1980s in Taiwan by incorporating traditional Asian instruments and folk music elements. The album includes a title track written and performed by the Taiwanese indie band and 2017 Golden Melody Awards winner, No Party for Cao Dong, and the original song "Lady of the Pier", which appeared during the game and in the ending.

Reception

A number of critics made favourable comparisons of Devotion with P.T. and Gone Home, all first-person exploration games that subvert the safe and secure feeling of home. David Jagneaux of IGN gave Devotion 8.2 points out of 10, praising it as "a fantastic psychological horror game that’s short, concise, and well-paced from start to finish." Despite the "wonderful environmental storytelling", Jagneaux felt that the actual gameplay is "relatively unimpressive and boring". Richard Wakeling from GameSpot singled out Red Candle Game's attention to detail that "establishes and effectively reinforces Devotion's disconcerting sense of familiarity", but pointed out that the chase sequence late in the game is "regrettable" in what is otherwise a game that resists frustrating trial-and-error stealth sections and monotonous combat in many contemporary horror games. Michelle Brohier from Stuff Malaysia praised the game's references to East Asian culture in lore and horror, but commented that its epilogue didn't deliver much impact after its captivating build up.
In February 2020, Devotion as well as Red Candle's other game Detention were selected for preservation at the Harvard-Yenching Library, the largest collection of East Asian works maintained at an American university.

Art material incident

On February 21, 2019, two days after the game's release, players discovered a fulu talisman decorating a wall in the game contained the words "Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh" in Chinese seal script, referencing a recent Chinese internet meme that compared the Chinese paramount leader and general secretary to the Disney character. Also on the talisman were the transcribed words "ní ma bā qì", which sounds similar to "nǐ mā bā qī" in Mandarin. "你媽" means "your mother "; and "八七" sounds similar to "白痴" in Taiwanese Hokkien. Taken together, this was interpreted by Chinese gamers as an insult to the Chinese leader. As a result, Devotion was heavily review bombed by Chinese gamers on Steam, and the game went from having "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews overall to being "Mostly Negative". Red Candle Games responded by patching out the offending art material, replacing it with a talisman that reads "Happy New Year", explaining that the original talisman was a placeholder that was supposed to be replaced, and apologizing for the oversight. Nevertheless, other aspects of the game were analysed as insults to China, leading to the game being removed from Steam in China on February 23. Publishers Indievent and Winking Skywalker cut ties with Red Candle Games, with Red Candle Games being liable for their losses as a result of the controversy. On February 25, Red Candle removed the game from Steam globally to fix technical issues, as well as to confirm that no other hidden messages remain.
Taiwan's Vice Premier Chen Chi-mai spoke out in defense of the game regarding the "easter egg", saying: "Only in countries with democracy and freedom can creation be free from restrictions." Red Candle's Sina Weibo account remains blocked, and posts containing the hashtag #Devotion, which had hundreds of millions of views before the controversy, were hidden by Chinese censors. The episode has raised concerns about the future of the Steam platform in China, which did not gain official approval to operate there but remains accessible with up to 30 million users from China.
In July 2019, the Chinese government revoked the license of Indievent. The official statement from the government stated that the revoking was due to violating relevant laws. Red Candle Games released an apology later in the month stating that they have no plans to re-release Devotion in the near term in order "to prevent unnecessary misconception", but would reconsider re-releasing the game in the future if "the public would be willing to view this game rationally".
In June 2020, Red Candle announced that it would begin running pre-orders for a physical edition of the game, available only in Taiwan from June 8 to 15.