MOMO.EXE 2

I went in expecting twenty minutes of cheap scares and came out two hours later having collected souls in a maze, negotiated with a viral internet monster over text message, and stumbled into what the developer calls multiple endings. That is not what the first MOMO.EXE promised, and it is the single best argument for giving this sequel a chance. The setup pulls directly from the Momo urban legend, that unsettling sculpture of a wide-eyed, bird-legged woman whose face circulated on WhatsApp as a kind of digital curse. Solo developer Dymchick1 turns that mythology into a first-person interactive horror story where your character takes orders from a boss, catches a virus on their computer, and then has no choice but to open negotiations with Momo herself over a simulated phone and desktop interface. The conceit works better than it should. Typing back and forth on a fully interactive in-game phone carries a low-grade dread that a lot of higher-budget horror games fumble entirely. The sequel stretches the original fifteen-minute format to something closer to two hours of normal play, with timed tasks, branching choice prompts, a dungeon section where you hunt for code fragments in the dark with a phone flashlight, and over 25 achievements tracking your path through the story. What improved most between entries is scale and structure. The first game was essentially a single room and a corridor. Here you move from a domestic starting space into a larger, deliberately maze-like dungeon area that is designed to disorient. Community players have noted a neat nod to the first game's map hidden inside that dungeon, the kind of small self-aware touch that rewards anyone who played the original. The puzzle difficulty steps up from easy to something the developer honestly labels normal, which is fair. Nothing here will stump a seasoned player for long, but the timed sequences add pressure that the first game lacked. There are also multiple endings to chase, which nudges the replay value slightly above zero, though completionist achievement hunters will get more mileage than anyone else. The rough edges are real. The visual style sits in a cartoony register that fights the horror atmosphere rather than reinforcing it, and the sound design is genuinely uneven. The soundtrack, composed by the ambient horror artist myuu, includes tracks like "Into the Depths" and "Trembling" that land the right dread frequency, but the tonal balance across scenes is inconsistent. Jumpscares are present and functional, loud and abrupt in the classic sense. Nobody should come here expecting considered, atmospheric horror in the vein of something handcrafted over years. This is a micro-budget indie built by one person, running on a short creative idea that the developer stretched further than most people would have thought possible. Who is it for, then. Streamers and people who like to watch streamers, genuinely. The phone-and-computer interface, the timed choices, and the loud scares are made for an audience. Solo players who finished the first game and want to see Dymchick1 actually build on that foundation will find it worth the runtime. Anyone expecting environmental storytelling, considered level design, or horror that earns its tension through atmosphere rather than volume should look elsewhere. Steam user sentiment sits solidly positive across roughly 145 reviews, which is not a fluke for a game in this niche and at this price tier. It knows what it is.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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