Martha Is Dead

"Martha is Dead" has bugged me in quite a lot of ways. I want to start by saying this:

I did not like the game for various reasons and despite having played it for almost 12 hours, I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I actually watched a synopsis on Youtube for the last hour or so of the game. I have played a lot of horror games and/or walking simulators and yet this is the first time ever that I was actually unable to finish one.

I will split this into 3 sections: graphics, gameplay and story/writing
Only the writing part will contain Spoilers which will be marked accordingly.

Graphics :
At first glance the game looks absolutely beautiful. Not only does unreal engine 4 look clean as usual, it also has a lot of impressive visuals and you can at least tell that the devs put some effort in trying to model the entire scenery after the actual 1944 tuscany. I've seen a lot of people from the area stating that it actually looks pretty realistic.
The only problem is that all of this only really works when you don't look at it to thoroughly. While everything in your close vicinity looks somewhere between very good and okayish, sceneries tend to look very poor from a distance. There is a lot of texture pop-ins, lack of antialiasing and some mechanics that just feel clunky as hell (more on that in the gameplay section). There's also some issues with frame loss and my PC is definetly beefy enough. It's pretty much a coding issue.
Despite all of that, the game and it's scenery are in fact very pretty and you can easily immerse into the setting thanks to the graphics.


Gameplay :
I am very aware that this is a walking simulator and that it is supposed to have some point and click mechanics so I know it sounds a bit off when I say:
There was too. much. walking.
There was too. much. point&click.
The walking speed is very slow paced even when running by holding shift and the entire premises are just too effing vast. Walking from one point of interest to another can easily take 2 - 3 minutes which does not sound a lot but feels like an eternity in a little walking simulation game. It gets even worth when the camera mechanic comes in.
You have a camera, you have to take some pictures and everytime you do that you have to actually develop the picture with a little point&click/quick-time event.
Every. damn. time.
It's not an exaggeration when I say that around 40% of this game is walking into the forest, taking a picture, walking back to the house, developing the picture and repeat. It's interesting the first 2 times and after that you just wish for the game to offer you some way to speed it up. There is also the fact that the game has a lot of points of interest in some rooms and it's easy to miss some of them but somehow the game only tells you that you can actually SEE all of these points by pressing and holding the space bar when it is almost finished. I said "why would you tell me this NOW?!" out loud when I got the ingame hint.
There are a few more "mini-games" that involve too much point&click or other things that feel like they're only as complicated as they are to blow up the games duration. For example there is a "little" game where you have to translate things into morse code and send them and then translate the answer back into english and you have to do that around 4 or so times and it takes around 20 minutes and it's NOT EVEN RELEVANT TO THE STORY.
Which leads me to the final and most vital part.

The Story :
I'm gonna try to keep it as vaguely as I can and I will mark some spoilers in particular in the end.

Now I know that psychological horror games often tend to have very twisted stoytlines that are supposed to lead you on and keep you guessing and I generally like that A LOT. Some of my favourite games have no definitive ending and are more or less open to interpretation. "Martha is Dead" has a very confusing storyline and you can tell from the very beginning that it is supposed to lead you on wrong trails and you get a feeling that something about the story feels "off" very early on. That's actually pretty great because at least in the beginning it doesn't feel too on the nose and it starts more as a little feeling in the back of your mind.
But the more you progress in the Story, the more that feeling shifts into an actuall "Where the f... is this going" kind of feeling. The game loses itself in meaningless subplots that are not in any way relevant to the overarching storyline and even the element of horror - which is quite nice in the first 3 hours of the game or so - loses it's magic very suddenly and turns into a very graphic gore that won't make you feel scared at all. It will just make you go "Ewwwwwwww" for a solid minute and then it's just "How the fuck does that make any sense considering what we already know?!".

Warning, Spoilers ahead!:

1.) The ending is NOT ambiguous at all unless you really want it to be. It is hinted from the very beginning that either Martha or Giulia did not exist. It's not up for interpretation at all whether that was where the writers wanted to go or not. It's incredibly on the nose and the idea is so overused already that everyone who frequently consumes this genre will have at least guessed it jokingly after the first scene where "Giulia" explicitly states that her "memory of that time is foggy". It is heavily implied that it is of some relevance to the game that we see the entire story through the eyes of "Giulia". Of course some people will say "But what about the Photographs? The one where Giulia killed Martha or the one with the Fetus? Or what about the different people (Nanny, Mom, Dad, etc.) talking about the 2 sisters as different people? Well, you can decide for yourself whether that's lazy writing or not but I think it is because the very obvious explanation is that we see, hear and experience the entire story as a fading memory of "Giulia/Martha" who is desperatly trying to alter the events so that her mind does not implode on the sheer weight of her own madness. No one else has ever seen the Photographs. No one else has listened to the dialogues. It's only ever how Giulia/Martha tries to remember it. It is supposed to show how she herself beliefs this altered version of events. That's it. There is nothing more to it.The whole "open for interpreation" thing imo is just a relatively easy way to not untie all the knots the story left behind. This game severly lacks a second character that finds the pictures and sees that there is nothing on them or remembers the same dialogues and shows that there was never any meantioning of a second sister. They could have solved their own mess pretty easily. A story of that magnitude should never have an "open ending". It's just not good writing.

The whole WWII setting had no impact on the game at all. You can argue that the onset for Giulia coming back as Marthas alter ego might have been Lapo r*ping her and using her to get to her father but honestly, any other traumatic event would have had the same effect. It never was about the war. It's completely irrelevant. Which also makes around 60% of what you do in the game irrelevant. The entire "helping the partisans" quest? Wtf was that? Why did I even do that? I found a hidden bunker under my own house and it was completely irrelevant?! The game took around 9 hours to "solve" and it could've been done in 2 hours. A majority of the game is just plain irrelevant to itself. That's incredibly disappointing. You constantly get the feeling of "free choice" and it actually does not exist at all. The game will always end in the same way.

Over all it is with a heavy heart that I can not recommend this game at all. It feels like a waste of time in retrospective. The idea was great, the setting was just as good as any, the scenery was overall beautiful and after around 1/3 the game loses itself in its own writing.

This game is beautiful. It's heartbreaking, gorgeous, will have you crying, and will have you smiling. It's gut wrenching and twisted but beautiful. The story is painfully brutal and sad, but it gives you the time to really enjoy it. As someone who cannot handle jumpscares, this game was amazing in that the horror aspect was in the atmosphere. The multiple story lines offer a unique experience and it paces itself nicely. Overall I cannot recommend this game enough.

So I got to a point in the story when you get to play two characters in a single scene: a mother and her little daughter. In this scene the mother grab her daughter's dog, throws it in a pot, cook it and then try to feed it to her little girl while the girl keep crying calling for her father. A game is suppose to be entertaining but this is sick, disgusting. I already wasted my money, I hope you don't make the same mistake.

Amazing game still don't know what was a real and what was not.

Hallo,
mein Name ist Hulk Hogan und ich habe das spiel "Martah ist tot" insgesamt ganze 0,6h gespielt und ich habe noch nie so ein "tolles" game gehabt. Es war ein kurzes aber unvergnügliches Erlebnis.
ja... naja... vielleicht nächstes mal:(
Euer
Hulk Hogan
(Ich bin eine Diesel-Lok, bei Fragen, nicht Fragen)

Personally I like this game, even though there are multiple story lines occurring at the same time they are all interesting and pull you in.

Martha is Dead is a psychological horror game that delves into the dark and twisted tale of a young woman named Giulia, who assumes the identity of her deceased twin sister, Martha, after discovering her body. Set against the backdrop of World War II in the Italian countryside, the game masterfully blends historical context with a deeply unsettling narrative.

The game excels in creating an eerie atmosphere, with its meticulously crafted environments and haunting sound design. The use of a vintage camera as a gameplay mechanic adds a unique layer of immersion, allowing players to uncover hidden messages and experience the chilling ambiance through Giulia's eyes.

However, the game is not without its flaws. Some players have noted that the story can be perplexing at times, and the gameplay may feel restrictive due to its linear nature. Additionally, the disturbing themes and graphic content may not be suitable for all audiences.

Overall, Martha is Dead is a well-crafted game that offers a gripping and unsettling experience for fans of psychological horror. Its strong narrative, atmospheric design, and unique gameplay mechanics make it a memorable, albeit disturbing, journey.

A tremendously powerful and very disturbing game/experience which masterfully deals
with sensitive and highly important subject matter.

Highly Recommended!!!

Hi! the game is AMAZING but it has so many bugs towards the end. i would love some help with that!

chill game and many nice motives to photograph

end pretty cool. meh, tho

totally in love with this game!!!! amazing story and very cool gameplay :D

Truly masterpiece!
One of my favourite game! It tastes like dry wine with onion bread
The game have so big emotional impact that I rememder it even after 2 years of my first walkthrough
I don`t understand the plot for sure, but it settled in my heart and in my mind
For devs: please add Ukrainian language for your further games

A very unique and interesting video game, with many interactive and conflicting tasks that make the game intruiging untill the very end. Also covers a lot of very interesting topics in a very interesting time period AND overlaps with another earlier game of theirs.
It had some personal problems with glitching that sorted themselves out after a few reboots but otherwise pretty stunning visually.
It is a game that runs at a slower pace though and it does have some rather unpleasant content (gore mainly), but if these things are no issue for you, It cannot be recommended enough - A full playthrough without lenghty breaks is recommended for maximum immersion.

I wanted to play this game because the subject matter looked dark and interesting. Indeed it was. The story moves along fairly slowly at first but really ramps up at the end leaving you trying to make sense of everything that happened (or didn't happen). It's well worth a playthrough.

This was a cool game, tip for people looking to play this game if you're looking to 100% complete it in one take you have to do everything properly in an order that wont progress the story line enough to lock you out of certain quests and photo opportunities. Really trippy message at the end that I think is really valuable for players to check out.

NOTE: Be advised this game involves A LOT of self harm, mutilation, and graphic images so if you're bothered by that stuff easily don't play it. The game also warns you of this on start up.

If I were mean, I would say that the true horror in this game lies in the performance. Or rather in the lack of performance.

I really appreciate what the developers tried to do with the narrative, but seriously, the game runs like a slideshow at times. And the visual quality is not even that great. And if you turn down everything to Low, which at least gives you something above 30fps at all times, the game then looks worse than Half-Life (the first one, the one from 1998).
This would not be a such a problem in itself, but due to the large area which you have to cover, exploration (which the game incentivizes) becomes almost unbearable. Sure, you can use the bike, but it's almost uncontrollable on low fps. And it tends to get stuck at times with no option to disembark, forcing you to reload the last checkpoint.
My guess is that the team had never previously worked with the Unreal engine, because it is certainly possible to design performant maps which feature both detailed interior spaces and large open spaces, both at the same time.

Again, I see what the devs tried to achieve here, and I can respect the idea itself. The technical implementation however is a major catastrophe. I had to force myself through the game, because I wanted to see the ending. And I usually see things through, even with games that don't manage to completely hook me. But this one made this pretty hard. The gameplay elements don't help here much either. The manual developing of photos is interesting at first, but it quickly becomes repetitive. That can be said about most of the interactive bits (dialing the phone, using the telegraph, etc.). Maybe the point here was to make things tedious by design? If so, then this goal was certainly achieved.

Played this on Linux using GE-Proton9-13 on a AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and a AMD RX 6700 XT GPU with 1080p resolution.

This is an excellent game , it deals with mental health and all the body horror you can imagine . But be warn you its not a game for the faint hearths or those who suffer with mental problems , may be it will be stressful for those who already suffer . The story is amazing and the setting . It feels like this really happened and we are witnessing it . No spoilers but this game has some crazy disturbing scenes . The gameplay is fine but sufferes from so many technical issues . Some times the textures dont load properly no matter what setting you are on ,some places becomes too dark to see in that case you have to close the game and reopen hoping it works this time . The game runs poorly but its playable , frame drops , stutters are all common to this game . Please lastly i have to say this Who the fuck made the cycle mechanic ........... Its a trash mechanic i rather prefer to walk than to cycle .

Love this genre, and have played several games along this same vein. This is one of my least favorites, I don't recommend buying at full price, worth a play-through if you can get it on sale for ten bucks though, I wouldn't spend any more than that.

The story is all over the place and it feels like there were too many ideas and very little editing. What started as a promising ghost story quickly devolved into a mess of different genres with no clear direction. Game play was unnecessary at best, and tedious at worst. I don't mind a walking-sim with very little interaction, but don't make me click and drag my mouse twenty different times for no reason.

Tone was another issue, there were only a few genuine horror moments in what is labeled as a horror game. Honestly the voice acting was so distracting at times, and its silliness diffuses any tension there would have been. There are definitely some great ideas, just poor execution. Truly how do you make puppets funny and not scary?

Ultimately this game feels like a teenage wattpad "psychological horror". Everything feels very shallow with little to no substance.

3/10 buy on sale.

The story is really well done and I really enjoyed it.

This game starts off so great and runs amazing. For some reason the more you play the more confusing this game becomes and becomes so much more laggy...how is a game like this making my game lag? with high specs a game like this shouldn't do this...oh and theres quite a few bugs, the story can be quite sickening...

4/10
100% achievements unlocked

Garbage game with boring unskippable annoying dialogue and unengaging story.

Cruel, but breathtaking story

Not my cup of tea. The English voice acting isn't the best.

Game has film photography as that emanates my hobby in film photography, but there are a handful of disturbing moments where I can see why some parts are censored on PlayStation. One part genuinely made my insides squirm.

Other than that, game is solid. 10/10

Yes, yes, yes, yes!
This one is really fu***d up in all the right ways.

Martha is Dead tells a powerful story, revolving around mental health, and the journey is just incredible. Without going into spoilers, just the ending itself left my jaw on the floor, and I needed a good minute to collect my thoughts and come to a conclusion of what I have just watched. It was good, very good!

As if the subject matter is not heavy and dark enough as is, it is beautifully underlined with the music, which I can hardly call it that given how the instruments are quite literally being slaughtered here, effectively rising the anxiety of the one playing the game, especially combined with the imagery on screen. This paints the perfect picture of a deteriorating psyche.

I also really liked the scenery here - you're playing as a daughter of an important German officer, set in 1944 Italy. It felt like a breath of fresh air seeing a WWII game from this perspective. Forget the Allies vs Axis thing, forget the Good guys versus the Bad guys, you're just an innocent child. The war is just a background for the story, really - you can hear all about it through the radio or conversations etc but it does not really concern you as a child, you're just here, enjoying the joys of life as much as possible, and struggling, mainly with yourself.

I can't really say much more about the game, it's worth a lot more to just experience it yourself. It's powerful, it's good, it's fu***d up.

the story is great and has some disturbing moments, but is not horrifying like a horror typically is. a lot of reading and voice overs. but it is worth it for the story.

The most gruesome and bizarre game I've played this year, and in a very long time as well.

Worth playing through yourself, be warned it can be very unsettling to play.

What a fked up depressing story this was. Don't play if you're so depressed, seek help first.
Loved the narrative gameplay, visuals were great.
Recommended

It's so poorly optimised that I wanna cry :(

The game itself has a potential to be a good game though, and probably plot-wise it deserves all it's awards.

But it's hard to play an IMMERSIVE game when you face constant lags, glitches, pop ups, FPS drops etc.
It was kind of frustrating and honestly I hate that I had to write this review, but for me it's hard to forgive optimisation issues and bugs in such hyper-realistic graphics, cause it ruins the whole point of the art style in my opinion.

A true psychological horror experience. Deep and just blew me away. Was also the first game I streamed on Twitch. Simply amazing.

awesome

its so addicting even my kid loves it 10/10

Martha Is Dead is an absolutely remarkable psychological thriller. Story in this game is pure gold. There is at least 3 very disturbing scenes (Beginning of the game at the lake, Family crypt and ending), that are shown at explicit detail, if you have played the game you know what i am talking about.. I recommend everyone to play this game, awesome product. Only - that i give is FPS issues that appear often. FPS drops and the game stutters happen often and lasts couple of minutes... BUT overall this game is worth playing and is very positive experience.

For new players.. GLHF, for trying to survive this disturbing and uncomfortable story.

cool!

‘Martha is Dead’ is a game created by LKA Studios (authors of the excellent ‘Town of Light’) and was released in February 2022. It tells the story of Giulia K., a young girl who is trying to find out who killed her twin sister Martha. The game is 7/8 hours long and the plot is truly intriguing from the start as we quickly realize that something’s wrong here. Really, really wrong.

The game is a walking simulator in a semi-open world: we’re playing as Giulia (in FPP view) and we’re spending most of the time at exploring and looking for objects that are crucial to the story. We can also gather additional informations about some events or characters by reading notes and newspapers and sometimes we have to take photos of certain things to advance the plot. Gameplay-wise it’s just a typical walking-sim, so if you have played games like ‘Firewatch’ or ‘The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’ you know what to expect. There are also few QTE in the game, but they are very simple and almost impossible to fail, so they are not annoying.
The in-game world is quite large (list of locations includes the house, the forest, the lake and several other interesting and sometimes also quite surprising places), but navigating through it is easy, because Giulia has access to the map and her diary, so we always know where we are and what to do next. It’s also worth mentioning that there are few optional side-quests available. They allow us to get a better understanding of certain events, but we also can completely ignore them and focus just on the main plot - it’s totally up to us.

Before getting to the story I’d like to say few words about the setting. The game is set at the Italian countryside during World War II and the protagonist is a daughter of an Italian woman and a Nazi general. This alone gives quite an unusual (and basically unseen in video games) perspective, but there’s more - as it turns out, Giulia seemingly has absolutely no idea that Italian fascist and the Nazis are the bad guys (!) and she’s genuinly surprised that partisans are constantly fighting the Axis armies. Developers did a really good job here showing not only the girl's different (and ridiculous) perspective, but also how blind to the facts she is, because there’s enough evidence lying around to know what Mussolini’s and Hitler’s people really do. This whole thing is basically a detail always subtly appearing somewhere in the background and it’s really easy to miss if we’re not exploring carefully enough, but it is really well done.

And now it's time to talk about the best thing about ‘Martha is Dead’ - absolutely fantastic story. I'll write it right away to make it clear – this is NOT a normal story about solving Martha's murder. The plot is really dark, heavy and reaches into the deepest, darkest parts of our minds making us wonder what's real and what's not. We’ll witness a lot of strong and very violent scenes (and I woudn’t be surprised if some people call them shocking or disgusting), but all of them make sense and are justified by the story the developers are telling. The story that at some point turns into the absolutely fascinating and messed up journey that keeps us hooked to the screen the entire time and does not disappoint at the end of the game. On top of that devs treat us like adults, so there is not just one simple explanation to everything and we should pay attention to details as some of them can totally change the way we’re understanding some events. Moreover, the atmosphere throughout the entire gameplay is simply incredible, because developers are revealing next layers of the story in very smart way and we know something unexpected is going to happen sooner or later.
There’s also one thing that should be mentioned: even though the game is not a horror, it has some jump-scares in it. There are literally few of them (and they work as they are supposed to, because they are truly unexpected), but I know some people hate them, so I think it should be mentioned.

As for the technical stuff – ‘Martha is Dead’ looks stunning, especially on the ultra graphic settings: the textures are razor sharp, the lights and shadows work just like they should and some of the views are simply gorgeous. It’s basically one of those games where we can just go from place to place and spend hours taking screenshot after screenshot. The same thing can be said about the soundtrack as the music is simply phenomenal and complements what we see on the screen in an incredible way. I played the game with the Italian voice acting (it’s really solid) and English subtitles and I think it’s the best way to do it, but English voice acting is available as well (can’t say anything about its quality though). And it’s also worth mentioning that we can save game anytime we want plus there’s also an autosave feature.

Now the complains and luckily the list is not long.
First and foremost - ‘Martha is Dead’ was released 2,5 years ago and the technical state of the game is still.... Well, disastrous. Regardless of the graphic settings and DirectX version (we can choose between DX11 or DX12) I was experiencing constant stuttering, freezes, FPS drops, texture pop-ups and a whole bunch of other problems, such as camera jumps, crashes or the fact that sometimes after closing the game it turned out that I have to manually kill the process in the task manager because it was still running in the background. I have really decent PC that allows me to comfortably play games like ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ or ‘Elden Ring’, so it's not a hardware problem on my end and there’s a lot of topics about it on the Steam forums and it’s constantly mentioned here in the reviews. It’s kind of surprising to be honest, because previous LKA game (‘Town of Light’) worked like a charm and I had no technical issues with it whatsoever. Obviously I know every game is different, but I just didn’t expect that ‘Martha is Dead’ could be THAT messed up technically.
Apart from that I can complain about literally two little things.
First – sometimes during the exploration ambient music just stops and restarts only after saving and reloading the game. Not a big deal, but still an issue.
Second – backtracking is a little bit annoying sometimes. Developers seem to be aware of it, because there’s a bike available in the game, but because of the technical problems I described earlier it becomes completely useless, mostly due to the sudden camera jumps as they make it impossible to drive straight even just a few meters.

To sum up this review – ‘Martha is Dead’ is really a great game. Dark, thought-provoking, incredibly intriguing and sometimes simply fascinating. And yes, it’s a mess on the technical side, but in my opinion the story makes up for everything. Give it a shot, I’m pretty sure you won’t regret it.
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TL;DR? Here's the short version.
Pros:
+ Fascinating story with many unexpected twists
+ Creepy and disturbing atmosphere
+ Graphics are absolutely stunning
+ Beautiful soundtrack and really good solid voice acting
+ Manual saving system (and there's also autosaving feature)
Cons:
- Constant stuttering and framedrops
- Random freezing and crashes
- Backtracking can be kind of annoying
It's a great game with a lot of technical problems, but the story IMHO makes up for everything. Is it worth giving a shot? Totally.

This game had me hooked from the start. The story was deeper than I expected and well done!

It's been a while since I've played a game that's really made me have to sit back and think about what I just experienced. This game, however, did just that. There were times where some things went a bit too far and some scenes were drawn out a little too long for my liking, but the story was amazing. This truly was an amazing experience.

I was enjoying the game for 50 minutes and then it crashed. It keeps crashing the same place. I tried un-installing and re-installing but nothing works. I was enjoying the game up until that point but unfortunately I won't get to finish it because of this issue.

I really love walking simulator horror games, but this thing is horribly optimized. I think a big selling point was supposed to be the visuals, but I had to play most of the game on low quality, which was pretty awful. The story isn't bad, so if you've got a killer PC and the patience to learn Morse code (yes, really) then you might dig this game.

game so far is poor ( story wise ) lots of running back and forth and dont let me start about optimization.

If you are looking for a great story, this is your game.

The story was nice. It was a bit overcooked i might say but its okay it aint bad. One time play on a chill day as a variety gamer things i would say. Ending felt too long for me to the point it kinda felt boring and overstretched, it made sense but maybe a bit long. But over all i would say a 3.5/5 game. Loved it. Nice atmosphere sounds, great music and songs, good voice acting, well made game. Had bugs i it but thats ok.. ♥♥

prost rău. îngrozitor de prost.

I wanted to like this game, but several repetitive and frustrating game mechanics made it impossible. I don't mind gore and psychological horror, but again the scenes everyone was talking about at release went from impactful and creepy to irritating at how long it took. The setting was gorgeous, the premise intriguing, but it left me disappointed and as an achievement hunter, unwilling to put another hour or so in to hit 100%.

Ancient photography simulator would have been a better title. Don't get me wrong, the photo's developing process is very interesting, but I bought the game because I wanted to play a horror game, not a simulator. It's a shame, because myself being italian I was very interested in the world war II setting in italy, but the game simply isn't immersive enough, it makes me not care in the slightest for the characters, and that makes the whole experience overall boring.