Last Days of Lazarus Review

Last Days of Lazarus is a short but jam-packed point-and-click mystery/adventure game developed by Darkania Works and GrimTalin (who also published the game) that reminded me not to judge a title by it looking like a half-arsed game made on the Unity engine.

You take the role of Lazarus as he reunites with his sister, Lyudmila, after their mother took her own life, but everything is not as it seems. After a horrific turn of events, Lazarus must uncover the truth surrounding his family and stop the end of the world.

Last Days of Lazarus begins with a cutscene accompanied by a phone call recording, establishing the narrative. After another cutscene, you enter Lazarus’ family apartment where you’ll be able to walk around. Set during the turn of the century in a pseudo-Russia, Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a prevalent theme. It shows up in almost every act of this game presenting a juxtaposition of godliness and faith with the reddish growths and claw-worn creatures that start infesting the apartment – supposedly representing hell.

The gameplay consists of walking around large areas with tangent pathways to go down and clicking on things or picking up items and collectables to fit into locks or power up machines, with some items integral to later levels. The puzzles you do are pretty easy, I only got stuck once on a computer terminal which I just methodically pressed keys until I got the code.

In the convoluted storyline, there’s a B-plot about the military killing monks as well as demolishing religious structures and iconography; represented in the game’s logo. I think – after finishing the game and going back to get all the collectables with a second viewing – that it’s meant to represent the motif of an industrial world taking over long-established beliefs, and how you need to balance science with faith, but Last Days of Lazarus blasts through the story so fast that any meaning of this lesson becomes a blur.

Like most point-and-click games, you’ll end up clicking on everything when you get stuck. While annoying to do at times, I’ve gotten used to it, but in Last Days of Lazarus it goes way too far. Mid-level, the game soft blocks you until you’ve interacted with all obligatory, blue or yellow highlighted prompts hidden away around the map — mostly at the start — that are littered with junk.

For example, in the second act you’ll be moving through a forest clearing covered in destroyed military armaments and burning buildings. Between all these distractions, there’s a man hidden behind foliage that needs to be talked to before you’re able to proceed. As the game doesn’t give out hints or help the player in any way, you can easily get stuck for no reason.

The developers have done everything to make the game look cinematic, even setting the camera in a 16:9 aspect ratio and scoring the game with typical horror/thriller music. For their credit, the snowy blues of night missions and the majority of textures and interiors make up for a lot of the character design and the textures of smaller items having a hazy film over them.

The voice acting is the equivalent to a Fallout companion mod being performed by the modder’s roommate. The characters — who are meant to be Slavic — are voiced with American accents, but it could have been worse if the actors were told to put on accents. The most unpleasant performance is for the man I brought up earlier. 

He’s a recurring character named Vanea that wants to kill his commanding officer and drags you into the hit. Best way to describe his voice is when you were a kid and wanted to sound tough, so you put on a voice that is marginally deeper and gruffer with a nonchalant attitude but it ends up making you sound stupid and insecure. He has that type of voice.

Once you complete the game, you unlock ‘Secret Files’ that are a compilation of character descriptions explaining lore as well as a mystery of who wrote these files, teasing a possible sequel that probably won’t happen. Which is unfortunate as Last Days of Lazarus has some potential of being a series if the developers were to set it during the aftermath following the end of the game.

Overall, as Last Days of Lazarus was made by a small team, it’s a well-developed and artistic game that needed a bit more work or funding to fix certain issues.