Case File: 006 ⚠️Revisited and updated for archive records⚠️
Note: "The higher ups asked me to review this case and expand upon the reasoning behind my decision to remove it from the main archive, as such I have spent the last week gathering notes and photographs to add to this file. Please contact ||||||||| with any questions."- Head Archivist \\ErrOR fiLE COrruptiED\\ s.e.e_cASE\\\||/||\#-
Classification: Obsessive
Media Entry: (Video game) Chilling Devotion, PC only, 1-2 hours playtime. (Currently in development)
:Boyfriend To Death 2: Fresh Blood released on March 18th 2017.
:Chilling Devotion released its first day on April 1st 2025.
The first file I went through was that of one Lawrence Oleander, whose case I will be going over in an official capacity in the future. What I found was disappointing but not surprising.
The first thing I made note of is the similarities in their appearances, both of them are taller Caucasian men with long blond hair, blue eyes, and a slouch. While this in and of itself is not damming evidence, it is the start of a large pile of small details that, when put together, I believe paint a fairly damning picture.
The second thing, and what I take the most issue with, is the similarities in the two mens personalities. Both are shy, awkward and self isolating, they both hint at being raised in some sort of cult, both love plants and nature, both stammer when speaking, refuse to make eye contact, and seem to have some dark entity pulling the strings in their lives from behind the scenes.
While I wouldn't normally take issue with people drawing from other works for inspiration, it starts to become an issue when your own work is nothing but a patchwork of the works of others.
:Where Winter Crows Go released on November 14th 2023.
Wwcg also features a male lead who is haunted by some form of, presumably, evil/malevolent entity of some type of spiritual/satanic origin. However wwcg is a very different story from btd2, unfortunately the same cannot be said for wwcg and Chilling Devotion.
Both wwcg and chilling Devotion feature a lead character that has been overworked at their job and has decided to book a one week getaway to a remote location in the mountains, both characters are from the city, both are caught in a snow storm and are unable to leave due to their car no longer working, both come across a small cabin tucked away in the mountains and are taken in by the resident of said cabin due to the weather conditions being "too dangerous to leave."
In both these games once your character agrees to stay they start experiencing nightmares where the entity haunting the male lead attempts to contact them, and they both feature strange and ominous clues hidden around the house for you to find that the male leads attempt to hide and/or brush off.
Again, it's fine to take inspiration but you have to do something new with it, otherwise it's just plagiarism.
Which brings me to my next point.
This game is absolutely drowning in em dashes, empty rule of three sentences, and "it's not this, it's this" statements, which make your experience playing it feel hollow and empty.
I really enjoyed my first twenty or so minutes in Chilling Devotion, I loved the art, characters, story, and even the writing at first, but it quickly became impossible to ignore the heavy inspiration it took from other games that I enjoy, and the reliance on ai, either for script writing or editing.
Let's take this scene for example:
"At first it's easy." This is a very short and unnecessarily punchy statement to start off a puzzle solving segment, something which shows up again and again as you play.
"Border pieces first." Most people don't like to have two instances of the same word close together like this, however this could be taken as a simple grammar mistake if it had occurred on its own.
"Then the cabin emerges— crooked chimney, claw marks on the door." Very dramatic word choices, even for a horror game. We've also got an em dash in there and some classic ai over editing with the "claw marks on the door" statement, which makes the whole sentence feel clunky and disjointed.
Now here's one I've noticed that I haven't seen many people talking about yet, it's where ai tries to make something feel wrong by either describing it as being too much of whatever it is, or being deliberate, for example:
"The flower was too cold— too perfect."
"His fingers linger, too warm."
"There are wolf tracks. Deep, deliberate."
"The pieces are worn, the image on the box faded— a snow laden forest, the trees too familiar, the shadows between them too deep."
These are all quotes I have pulled directly from the game, and after having played it around three times now, once for my research then twice more to gather these screenshots, I feel very confident in saying that with all these points considered there is a very high likelihood that Chilling Devotion is made using some level of ai assistance, as well as taking heavy inspiration from other, better, games that came before it.
Personally I have to recommend against this one, if you would like to experience a similar story, overly familiar male lead and some beautiful art please play Where Winter Crows Go instead. If you like Jim's shy personally, dark connection to nature, and character design, and you don't mind a much darker and more challenging gaming experience play Boyfriend To Death 2: Fresh Blood. You can only get that one from the devs personal website now though and it requires a little fenagling to get it running, though she is working on a remake of the Lawrence route from that game right now which should be releasing some time next year.
Remember to game responsibly, and always stand by your morals.
-Head Archivist ///ErrOR.file\nOTFOUND\\\
