Evil Nun: The Broken Mask Review (Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

“I have to behave properly. I am Jord, and I am going to be good.”

I shouldn’t have judged Evil Nun: The Broken Mask so harshly. With hindsight, I should have given it the benefit of the doubt and acknowledged such a cliche as unfathomably good nightmare fuel. In any other case, it might not have worked—the mallet-wielding nun, the deceptive summer camp, and the prying eyes of a hundred lost children. Yet, Evil Nun had a lot more to offer that meagre B-movie tropes. It had a heart, and more importantly, it had that special ingredient that makes any good survival horror great. It had replay value — and a lot of it.

Evil Nun lives and dies not only by the book, but also by the genuine “a-ha” moments that occasionally reveal themselves with each piece of the puzzle that you sacrifice your five poxy lives to find. A sinister school; a roaming nun; and dozens of exit points. At first, it all feels like a lot to take in—the endless locked doors, the puzzles that have one component but lack the second, and the rooms that technically should be there but aren’t. Evil Nun has a way of toying with you as its newfound plaything, and it doesn’t let you go until you muster up the courage to explore ever nook and cranny of its so-called “Summer Camp.”

It goes like this: you arrive at an old school in the dead of night, only to be greeted by a red-eyed nun with a god complex and a deadly mallet. Within seconds, you receive a knock to the head, and then, for some reason, awaken to a small and somewhat grotesque room. A note tells you that, should you follow the blue handprints around the building, then you should, in theory, be able to escape. But of course, herein lies the main issue: there isn’t one way to escape. A set of fuses can only get you so far, whereas several replays can take you much, much further.

Evil Nun is very much a game that relies on gradual progression and eye-opening revelations over standard A-to-B corridor exploration. Case in point, once you successfully flee from the school on your first attempt, you receive a short piece of footage that depicts a new area, be it a walkway that leads to another section of the school, or a secret door that was either hidden or bolted shut during the initial playthrough. And honestly, that’s something that sets Evil Nun apart from its blasphemous kin: its natural ability to reel you back in its depths. The credits roll, yet more often than not, you can’t help but feel as if there’s more to unlock.

While most of Evil Nun is predominantly stealth-oriented, the game does harbor a solid variety of peculiar and oftentimes perplexing puzzles. For example, in one scenario you need to locate a pot of paint, with which you must use to stain a pile of laundry, and then ultimately trick one of the nuns to retrieve in order to claim the opportunity to sneakily stow yourself away in a crate. It’s all very Hitman-esque, but it works rather well here.

Of course, I’d be lying if I said that I breezed through Evil Nun: The Broken Mask. The truth is, I lost all five lives in the first several minutes, mainly due to the fact that I was blissfully unaware of the situation and the severity of it. In any case, I’d slip and slide through the motions and throw caution to the wind. After being used as a golf ball on a rooftop, though, it all became a lot clearer. Five chances, no more. If I didn’t hatch a plan and act on it before a fifth detention, then I’d have to start my prayers from scratch. And of course, I wasn’t rarely keen to do that.

Evil Nun: The Broken Mask deserves a lot of credit for its creative bone structure. Unlike your usual corridor creeper that heavily relies upon wall-to-wall jump scares and transparent progression, Evil Nun instead prefers to keep you in the dark, asking questions that rarely have any formal answer, to begin with. Like Hello Neighbor, it scatters the jigsaw pieces across a procedurally generated school building, and it tells you to go out and find them. It then drops a chanting nun into the room and tells you that you need to hide from it.

While I wouldn’t say that Evil Nun is the bone-chilling horror that it makes itself out to be, it does make for an incredibly gripping experience. Visually, it swings for gold and achieves platinum with a stunning environment and a genuinely eerie atmosphere that courageously elevates its fist-in-mouth chase and stealth sequences. Moreover, it presents itself as a solid entry-level horror, with clean and reliable mechanics, swift movement, and a responsive UI that works as and when needed.

Above all, there’s a lot to love about Evil Nun: The Broken Mask, especially if you’re a die-hard fan of stealth-based horrors that combine environmental puzzles with rogue-like tropes. It’s also an incredibly easy game to squeeze out over a lengthy period of time, too, given that it harbors multiple endings, dozens of plot twists, and enough thought-provoking secrets to keep you coming back for a second round of bible study. With all of that said, it clearly makes for a brilliant popcorn flick. It might not be perfect, but it is a lot of fun to work through, which is a lot more than what I can say about most survival horror games that mince gimmicks with B-movie fiction.

Verdict

Evil Nun: The Broken Mask might not divide and conquer biblical prophecies with its satirical spin on religion, though it does, against the backdrop of a surprisingly disturbing setting, make for a fantastic survival horror game that can keep even the most feeble souls on their hands and knees for an hour or two. With a plethora of endings, puzzles, and daring chase sequences to quench your appetite for good old-fashioned knuckle-in-mouth terror, it openly embraces its role as an excellent popcorn flick. And, let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a mallet-wielding nun?