Verho - Curse of Faces

A cursed land, a mask, and a small Polish studio's second game

Verho - Curse of Faces is the latest release from Kasur Games, a Polish studio that previously released the mobile-turned-PC tank game BattleTanks Animal Wars earlier in 2025 before shifting into a considerably more ambitious first-person dungeon crawler. Published by CobraTekku Games and released 10 November 2025 for Windows, Verho arrived after an extended public demo whose save data carries directly into the finished game, a detail multiple reviewers specifically praised as an unusually generous gesture for a small studio to offer. Set 264 years after a catastrophic "Era of Solitude," the game's premise is that revealing one's face has become instantly fatal, and masks have become the only protection against the mysterious "Curse of Faces" afflicting the world. Players travel to the isolated land of Yariv to uncover the source of the curse, building a character across strength, dexterity and intelligence-focused paths while exploring a series of interconnected, PS1-styled dungeon areas structured openly in the tradition of the King's Field series.

Exploration and atmosphere that reviewers compare to genre landmarks

The single most consistent thread running through Verho's large review corpus is enthusiasm for its atmosphere and exploration. Reviewers repeatedly and specifically praise level design built around genuine verticality and rewarding secrets, with multiple detailed reviews explicitly recommending it to fans of Lunacid and Dread Delusion, the two games most commonly cited as having revived interest in the King's Field formula for a modern audience. One detailed review specifically credits the game with recreating the feel of "the early PS2 era" internet, when players had to puzzle out a game's secrets without extensive online guides, framing that isolation as part of the appeal rather than a frustration. The build-crafting system draws equally specific, repeated praise, with reviewers describing genuinely different playstyles available across strength, dexterity and intelligence-focused builds, supported by an elemental weakness system that rewards experimenting with different weapon and spell combinations rather than settling on a single dominant strategy. Story and world-building draw further consistent credit, with reviewers describing the mystery behind the Curse of Faces and the isolated kingdom of Yariv as genuinely intriguing, and several specifically praising a soundtrack that more than one reviewer compares favourably to Hollow Knight's for how well it reinforces the game's atmosphere.

A boss design and balance complaint that recurs constantly

Set against that praise, the single most consistent complaint in Verho's review base concerns boss encounters and combat balance. Reviewers across multiple detailed negative and mixed reviews describe poorly telegraphed boss attacks, hitboxes that feel inconsistent with what's visually communicated on screen, and attack tells that don't read clearly given the game's first-person camera, with one reviewer flatly stating "bosses suck, all of them" after nine and a half hours with the game. A closely related, specific complaint concerns the game's overall defensive balance: reviewers note the near-total absence of armor as a stat-boosting option, leaving players reliant on a small handful of shields, jumping and backstepping to survive, a limitation multiple reviewers argue is particularly punishing for intelligence-focused spellcasting builds, which one detailed review describes as facing "a big drought" of viable weapon options until very late in the game. A further, specific and pointed complaint concerns the game's final stretch of areas, with more than one reviewer independently singling out the closing hours by name as an unfair, tedious drop in quality that undercuts the momentum the rest of the game had built, with one reviewer comparing the experience unfavourably to the infamous Xen levels from Half-Life.

A genuinely split verdict on the game's own strongest selling point

A smaller but specific and directly contested thread of Verho's review base pushes back on exactly what the majority praises most: its exploration and level design. Where most reviewers describe Yariv's world as rewarding and cleverly interconnected, at least one detailed negative review argues the opposite, describing the game's exploration as "extremely linear" with "unfortunately quite uninspired" level design, and specifically criticising how individual areas are strung together in a way that leaves the larger world feeling fragmented rather than cohesive, undercutting the "isolated kingdom" atmosphere the game is going for. That reviewer, who describes themselves as a fan of Lunacid, ultimately can't recommend Verho despite enjoying real portions of it, a verdict that stands in direct, specific tension with the corpus's dominant praise for exploration and suggests the quality of Yariv's level design lands very differently depending on a given player's prior genre expectations.

Jank, voice acting mixing, and a game still finding its polish

A further, smaller but consistently repeated thread of complaints concerns technical execution. Multiple reviewers independently report enemies walking through walls, getting stuck in level geometry such as staircases, and a bug affecting the "You Died" screen specifically when alt-tabbing on multi-monitor setups, alongside smaller frustrations like a selected spell resetting after death and being unable to speak with NPCs while enemies are nearby. Voice acting and dialogue mixing draw their own specific, independently repeated complaint: several reviewers describe turning the game's dialogue volume down to zero entirely, arguing the voice work as delivered breaks immersion rather than reinforcing it, while still specifically crediting Kasur Games for attempting full human voice acting at all as an ambitious choice for a small studio's budget. None of these complaints appear to have derailed the broader review base's enthusiasm, but they recur often enough, and specifically enough, to read as a genuine, addressable rough-edges problem rather than isolated bad luck.

Value

At NZ$29.99, Verho - Curse of Faces sits at a reasonable price for a substantial dungeon crawler that multiple reviewers report completing in the 25-to-35-hour range, with a build-crafting system and secret-hunting design several reviewers specifically credit with real replay value. The Very Positive score, 1,233 positive against 111 negative across 1,344 reviews, reflects a large review base genuinely won over by Kasur Games' atmosphere, exploration and build variety, tempered by a detailed and honest minority whose specific complaints about boss design, defensive balance and a rough final stretch are worth weighing seriously, alongside a smaller but directly contested thread that disputes whether the game's exploration lives up to its genre comparisons at all. For fans of King's Field-likes such as Lunacid and Dread Delusion prepared to tolerate some rough edges, Verho is a strong, distinctive recommendation.