Hope Deferred Steam Charts & Stats

Wish you the best, dev.

Piss and boner statue

Hope Deferred is a psychological horror game made on FromSoftware's Sword of Moonlight engine, which, in laymen's terms, means it was created on one of the most archaic and ancient pieces of software one can still make games on. Now, there are some tools in place to help make it a more user-friendly experience for modern audiences, such as mouselook and modern keyboard bindings, but you need to go into this with the proper expectations and know the limits of the engine itself. Go into this knowing there will be bugs, know that there might be some jank, and know that it is all the better for it. I thought to myself several times while playing Hope Deferred, "Man, if SoM had had the same grassroots boom that RPGMaker did, this would be one of the all time greats that people talked about". My favorite thing about playing fangames or RPGMaker horror games or a game like Hope Deferred is that you get these really beautiful glimpses into the creator of the game, and what they're inspired by. Importantly, I love games like this because I know that I'm not getting what I want, I'm getting exactly what the creator wants me to get. Just as much a work of art as it is a playable video game, an outlet for one individual to express themselves and their Being. With this idea in mind, it's a no-brainer why the person who created this game chose to create this story in Sword of Moonlight. Using Sword of Moonlight for your game is cool as hell, of course, but on top of that, the friction it provides to the player is intended, and to some extent, needed. This game wouldn't work if you didn't struggle at least a little bit. Hope Deferred is a game about Sin, about Guilt, about Religion, and Loss. There's a connection this game makes of Religion, Sin, and how your upbringing, depression, anxiety, etc. can make you believe you're a bad person, going to hell. In my mind at least, the idea that the universe of the game wants me to suffer, and that I deserve to suffer, only amplifies these connections for me. Aside from the gameplay itself, which is exactly what you would expect from a SoM game, Hope Deferred absolutely nails it's aesthetic goals time and time again, every frame of this game is gorgeous, and every level fully drenched in it's own unique color adds a lot to the style. Clunky platforming aside, the setpieces in this game were really beautiful and some of the spots in this game blew me away. There is a lot more to this game than what I saw on my single playthrough, and I'm sure there is at least 3 endings, but there's probably more. A lot of secrets I only saw glimpses of. Once you know what you're doing, it's not too long to push through most of the areas of the game, and I look forward to seeing everything else this game has to offer.