Warning: The following review and its subject contain numerous references to graphic violence and torture. Reader discretion is advised.

As Bruce Dickinson of the legendary British heavy metal band Iron Maiden once famously sang it, “I’m waiting in my cold cell when the bell begins to chime / Reflecting on my past life, and it doesn’t have much time / ‘Cause at five o’clock, they take me to the gallows pole / The sands of time for me are running low.” I think this particular excerpt from their song “Hallowed Be Thy Name” is quite fitting for the game I’ll be reviewing today.

The title in question is known as The Executioner, developed and published by Lesser Evil Games. If that title rings any bells for you, I suspect that may be because I publicized my anticipation for the game’s release before it reached Steam nearly two years ago. I did so in an article from May of 2019 shortly after Lesser Evil Games initially announced the game’s planned release date. Things didn’t quite turn out as the studio planned, however, as they were ultimately forced to delay The Executioner’s launch for another couple of months after that article’s publication.

I’ve had my eye on The Executioner for quite some time. I even made a small financial contribution to its original Kickstarter campaign a few years ago because I was so intrigued by its concept. So, why has it taken me this long to get around to reviewing The Executioner? Several reasons, honestly. However, chief among those reasons is the fact that I’ve never been quite sure how best to discuss the game and its subject matter appropriately for Phenixx Gaming’s audience.

That is to say, I didn’t include that “graphic violence” warning before this article began for no reason. The Executioner doesn’t just include references to things like torture, public executions, and gratuitous violence. I would argue this title almost revels in such topics considering how prevalent they are in its core gameplay mechanics. I understand that’s the central motif for which Lesser Evil Games were likely aiming during this title’s development, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I’ll do my best to explain exactly why I feel that way throughout this review.

The Executioner begins with your character being told that his father (the current Royal Executioner) is being accused of treason and is about to stand trial for those charges. “The king has only given me enough time to say goodbye,” your father solemnly informs you. “You’re on your own now.” Upon arriving at the royal palace, you and your father’s assistant attempt to eavesdrop on the trial since the guards won’t allow you inside.

Your father’s assistant then suddenly asks if you want to take up your father’s mantle as the Royal Executioner. Your answer to this question is rather pivotal, as it’s just the first of a plethora of choices the game will require you to make. The game emphasizes that no choice you make will be strictly considered wrong, “but each carries consequences.”

I don’t think I need to include a spoiler warning for the next event because it basically happens at the beginning of the game. However, you are eventually forced to either allow your elderly, feeble assistant to carry out your father’s execution or do it yourself in order to spare him a considerable amount of agony. That’s just the first of several aspects that causes me significant discomfort when it comes to this title.

Something special about the executioner you control is that he has what he refers to as a “gift.” This “gift” appears to be a form of synesthesia that causes your character to develop a bitter taste in his mouth when he senses that someone is lying. This is evident in the portions of the story that aren’t voiced via the use of dark purple text. This particular color serves to indicate that something has activated your synesthesia. More often than not in my experience, this functions as a clue that could prove useful sooner or later.

No one else in the game world seems to understand this unique ability of yours or how it functions. Despite this, considering the fact that you’re often in charge of extracting confessions from the condemned before executing them, it certainly comes in handy within the context of your line of work. If nothing else, it seems to ensure that if someone attempts to give a false confession just to get you to stop torturing them, you’ll see (or rather taste, I suppose) right through their ruse.

For your benefit and mine, I’m not going to go into any particularly gruesome details regarding the processes whereby you go about extracting confessions from the condemned. However, the game does provide a rather in-depth tutorial on what I’ve begrudgingly taken to calling “the art of effective torture.” Honestly, I’m shuddering just having typed that out, but I’m afraid this is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.

Suffice it to say that you can “entice” your prisoner to tell you what you want to know via either physical or psychological interrogation methods. You would do well to avoid being overly brutal with them, lest they either die or go insane before you can acquire anything resembling a coherent statement of guilt from them. In case you’re wondering, yes, the game most certainly does make it a point to show you exactly how brutal your methods can be if you rely on mostly physical means of extracting a confession.

Thankfully, you don’t have to actually control the titular executioner as he goes about interrogating those brought before him. His work is all accomplished through descriptive text and imagery, which serve well enough to send unpleasant chills down my spine fairly often. All you have to do is choose which methods you think would work best on your current “interlocutor,” if you’ll allow me to stretch the word “euphemism” to its logical extreme.

I think it’s about time I acknowledged the central aspect of The Executioner, and one of the surprisingly few things I think the game actually does well. Over the course of your tenure as Royal Executioner, you have one major choice to consider that I view as more important than any other decision the game asks you to make. This choice must constantly be re-evaluated based on circumstance and your personal feelings about the deeds you’ve committed in your new post.

That is to say, you must determine whether or not you want to give in to your more sadistic tendencies as an executioner who is held accountable for virtually nothing they do so long as those signed confession statements keep coming. In other words, since there’s basically nothing and no one stopping you from being as brutal as you like, provided you don’t inadvertently terminate any prisoner brought to you before they’ve given you what you’re after, will you decide to resist those impulses? Alternatively, will you elect to give in to your darker side and (as the game describes it) “feed the beast?”

There’s one more minor thing I want to discuss before I conclude this review. This may be more than a bit unfair on my part, but I ask that you hear me out and decide that for yourself. I understand that Lesser Evil Games is a small indie studio based in Russia. I recognize that The Executioner constitutes their first game and their first chance to make a name for themselves. However, I think it would have done the development team quite a bit of good to have the game run by a proofreader or two before it was launched.

When I attempted to return to the game as a refresher before writing this article, most of it wasn’t translated from Russian to English. I’m not sure if this was the result of a bug, but either way, it ensured that I had very little idea what I was meant to do next at any given time.

In the footage I recorded of The Executioner back in October of 2019, this suspected bug wasn’t present. However, I still encountered quite a few errors in translation and spelling that caused me to stumble a bit at times. I know I’m quite the stickler about this sort of thing though, so it’s entirely possible that I’m just being unnecessarily harsh.

I don’t believe I’ve ever said this before on Phenixx Gaming about any title I’ve covered, but as things stand right now, I genuinely dislike The Executioner. I always try to see the upside of games I review, but I’m afraid there’s not much of a positive side to this title as far as I’m concerned. It may serve its purpose well as a Point-and-Click Horror title if that sounds up your alley, but I am clearly most certainly not a part of this title’s target audience. That’s quite the shame to me considering how long I’ve monitored this game’s development and how excited I was when it was released.

A PC review key for The Executioner was provided by Lesser Evil Games for this review.

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The Executioner

$9.99

4.5

Score

4.5/10

Pros

• May Serve Its Purpose as a Point-and-Click Horror Title

Cons

• Gruesome Depictions of Uncomfortable Concepts
• Translation and Spelling Errors Run Rampant