The Lost Child (2017)

The Lost Child, PS Vita/PS4/Nintendo Switch (2017)

    The Lost Child was released to the world on August 24th, 2017. "Something wicked lurks behind the facade of the modern world. Hayato Ibuki, occult journalist, is on the case!" reads a series of captions in the trailer for the English release. "This looks cool, I got Shinigami Tensei wibes from this" reads a comment on that same video. Absolutely. 

    A budget dungeon-crawler developed according to the specifications of the PlayStation Vita and released as the window of viability for games of this lineage had closed, The Lost Child follows on the genealogy of such works that have steadily emerged since the Japanese 'occult boom' some six decades prior, and signifies an especially diluted form of the urban-occult fantasy exemplified by the Megami Tensei series. Actually playing this game is like being whipped in the face with banality, but there is a strange specificity of context, with little to no documentation in English, that demands closer examination.