Fearmonium Review: Everybody Likes Clowns, Right?

If you thought I was done with 2023 Metroidvanias after my last review, you’d be wrong. Featuring a visually interesting art style and unique premise, I quickly found myself playing Fearmonium. It’s a game that all takes place in the mind of a boy named Max. He’s in a bad place, living with a cruel stepfather and constantly dealing with self-doubts and literal flesh-and-blood bullies. This might be where you suspect you’re helping Max in a sort of Inside Out situation, but that’s where you’d be wrong. Instead, you play a minor phobia – Coulrophobia, AKA fear of clowns. Instead of trying to build Max up, you’re working with Lady Depression to shatter his defenses one by one, gain strength, and become the dominant phobia in his psyche. And thus begins our true descent into madness in Fearmonium.

As a longtime writer, I admit it perplexed me to play a game where the main character you control lacks a proper name. I understand from the developer, RedblackSpade, that there’s a reason for this, but you have to wait until the very end of the experience to discover what that reason is. That said, it makes a sort of sense that since you’re in a child’s head, he’s the named character, while your little phobia is a microorganism living in his mind. You don’t get much characterization for your clown phobia as a result, but that’s fine, since the gameplay itself is quite enjoyable. At least, it is when it works as intended.

It’s All In His Head

Like most Metroidvanias, the world of Fearmonium is split into different areas full of dangerous foes, sneaky traps, and platforming hurdles that block your progress until you have the tools to surmount them. Since the game all takes place in Max’s mind, the world map reflects his thoughts and fears. As you get farther, Max goes on his own journey in the real world, told in moving comic book panels. When the real world impacts Max, new realms are brought to life. For example, when he’s stressed and reverts to sleeping with a teddy bear, you find yourself in a realm full of wicked toys, colorful blocks, and aggressive paper airplanes. Later in the game, Max’s dread of school manifests into long hallways full of lockers and plentiful brutal bullies and mean girls that harass you. It’s a neat idea that’s executed pretty well, giving an illusion of a constantly evolving mindscape, even though the game itself is a linear affair.

Though you play a fear of clowns, you’re not the only one in Max’s head. Your little clown girl encounters several other examples of coulrophobia in the game, and eventually, they’ll join forces with her. They provide special attacks that vary wildly, from one clown that flies horizontally back and forth to another that leaps out to attack foes behind you. If that wasn’t enough, you’re armed with a mallet that can eventually shatter debris in your path, and plentiful sub-weapons. Many of these are some form of bottle rocket. At first, you just have ones that fire straight ahead, but you’ll find homing rockets, triple rockets, and more, not to mention especially weird weapons like an ice cream truck and explosive presents. The catch to all of these wonderful attacks is you have to keep your stamina meter in mind, and there’s also a cool down after using most attacks to prevent you from spamming them.

At first, I really wasn’t a fan of the stamina meter, but by finding what appear to be corpses in hard-to-reach areas, you’ll acquire permanent upgrades. Some will increase your base health, others will make you stronger, and some will even decrease the cooldown time. You can even pay one sneaky clown to strengthen your connection to other clowns, which lets you use them even faster. If that wasn’t enough, you can use the game’s currency, balloons, to buy more bottle rockets from Lady Depression (she serves as a save point and can teleport to any other save point you’ve found), along with healing items like Adrenaline and the super handy Nightmare, which resurrects you once after death. There are a ton of items to collect in the game, including some with passive effects you can equip, but they can only help you so much. What’s more helpful are new abilities you’ll get, usually from winning boss battles. These can help you slide, double jump, dash, and more.

Now I Have a Fear of Dolls…

It wouldn’t be a successful Metroidvania without epic boss battles, and I can say that the bosses in Fearmonium are a lot of fun. Many of them are phobias trying to reign supreme in Max’s psyche, such as the first boss, Pediophobia, the fear of dolls. I didn’t think dolls sounded all that scary until a sinister man with gloved hands kept summoning horrifying dolls, which crawled toward me and attacked me with fiddle music. Some bosses are mental defenses trying to protect Max, such as Regression. This is represented by Max’s teddy bear, which attacks you by ripping off its own head to attack you remotely, and hurling all manner of toys your way. One of the more demanding bosses was Diffidence, AKA a lack of self-confidence. This is represented by a masked entity that attacks you viciously while a little hypnotized avatar of Max tries to kill you by shooting projectiles and burping explosions. Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed the variety and creativity on display in the boss battles, though they do have a tendency to overwhelm you with attacks. It will often take patience and pattern recognition to get through them in one piece.

When it comes to the artwork present in the game, I’m somewhat torn. On the one hand, the artwork in the levels is compelling and somewhat reminiscent of Cuphead. There’s everything from angry decks of cards to carousel horses to toy soldiers and more. All that stuff is great. What was far less impressive were the comic book panels. Not only was the artwork here much rougher than in the levels, but there was a lot of verbose dialogue that irked me. It almost felt like I was getting condescended to, but without providing an emotional hook to help the reader connect to Max’s suffering. In fairness, I should mention that Fearmonium was pretty much all made by one man, RedblackSpade. Which definitely makes it easier to overlook things like that. Musically, the game is melancholy, which is pretty fitting for such a dark premise.

On the Wings of Madness

There’s a lot I enjoyed about Fearmonium, from the expansive world to the creepy themes present to the varied and diabolical foes in your path. I even enjoyed the sultry and cruel Lady Depression, comfortable in her bathtub of despair. Or take the chained ravens that, once freed, open up new pathways through Max’s mind. With all that in mind, I have to unfortunately touch on the things in the game that kept it from a higher score, which was something I vacillated about quite a bit.

While Fearmonium is a lot of fun, there are some quirks I didn’t like. The platforming is often slippery, with your phobia unexpectedly bouncing upward when touching horizontal surfaces. I’ve also dashed in mid-air only to find my clown phobia suddenly dashing down a slope. Then take the combat controls, which work admirably but aren’t nearly as tight or responsive as I might have hoped. I’ve even had enemies get trapped in stage geometry more than once. I also really wasn’t a fan of the awkward mini-games with finicky controls you’ll need to play at several points in the game, rushing through currents of water, jumping into an old video game, and puffing up with air like a balloon.

Time For Street Pizza

The worst issue I encountered was a consistent glitch that utterly halted my progress a little more than halfway through the game. There’s a schoolyard dungeon, and whenever I tried to take the only door forward through the teacher’s lounge, I get an error screen, and the game immediately quits to the Switch home screen. I’ve tried several times to get through the annoying glitch, but without success. The only silver lining is that the developer is aware of the issue and has already sent a patch to Nintendo for approval. It’s just unfortunate since I was really starting to enjoy the game before I ran into it.

Don’t Give Up On This Phobia

I really wasn’t sure how I would judge Fearmonium in the end. The game found all sorts of ways to challenge me, both good and bad. The combat wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked, and the comic panels are rough, yet the game premise is unique, and the world is fascinating. Ultimately, I truly feel there’s a solid and worthwhile experience here. Once the aforementioned glitch is patched, I can fully recommend it to fans of the genre.

Final Verdict: 3.5/5

Available on: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Series X|S; Publisher: Ratalaika Games; Developer: RedblackSpade; Players: 1; Released: December 8, 2023; ESRB: T for Teen – Blood, Violence, Suggestive Themes, Language; MSRP: $12.99

Editor’s note: The publisher provided a review copy to Hey Poor Player.