Note: For the purposes of this review I'm playing the Windows version, but the game also has a web version published on Newgrounds.

Have you ever felt that it was a bit eerie being alone in an empty church? Maybe not a cathedral, but something more contemporary with white walls, narrow hallways and other hallmarks of modern construction. Even worse is when the lights are turned off, allowing our imaginations to play tricks on us as we hear our own footsteps echo through the silence. It's perhaps something like this unsettling feeling that the point-and-click horror game Sanctuary is trying to capture. But does it succeed?

The story begins with you arriving by bus in front of a church known as Mapleland Dwelling Place, where you are met by a very odd and somewhat unnerving pastor who allows you to sleep at the church while you're trying to get through some hard times. However, you quickly discover that there's a demon infestation problem and there's no way you'll catch any winks with that going on, so you grab a nearby Bible and expel these demons by reading verses out loud. Each night you explore the church to expel more demons, collect the Armor of God, and eventually get to the bottom of what's going on.

A single playthrough is relatively short, only taking a half-hour to an hour according to the developer, which lines up with how long it took me to beat the game if I cut out the times I stopped to take notes for the review. While there are multiple endings and achievements that could theoretically provide replay incentive, I didn't personally feel there was enough story or gameplay variety to warrant another playthrough.

The gameplay loop is divided into five nights. For the first four nights you must explore the church with Bible and flashlight in hand, find a certain number of demons hidden throughout the church and expel them before returning to the sanctuary to fight the boss. You have to do this before the clock hits 6:00 AM, or else face a game over and have to replay the night. Complete the first four nights this way and defeat the final boss on the last night and you'll have beat the game.

You explore the church by clicking on doors to take you to different rooms. You cannot interact with much of your environment aside from doors, demons, and the occasional item. To find a demon, you must find small spots of moving static and click on it to engage the demon in battle. You can also find pieces of the "Armor of God", which mostly give you passive buffs with the exception of the Shield of Faith which allows you to block enemy attacks with your cursor.

Fights against demons are similar to an old-style RPG where you're facing the enemy from your POV. You'll be given a Bible verse with words missing and a selection of different words you can click on. You must click the correct words to fill in the blanks in order to deal damage to the demon. Failure to do so within the time limit or clicking the wrong word will damage your faith and allow the demon to approach you. "Faith" is the HP of this game, and it can be replenished by praying in the sanctuary. Praying takes 30 minutes of in-game time, reducing the amount of time you have to complete a night. Losing all of your faith will result in mild jumpscare of the demon lunging at you and a game-over screen. As you progress the amount of blank words per verse increases and you're given less time to pick them.

There are two types of enemies you encounter besides the bosses: demons and sinjas. Normal demons appear as ghostly arms that appear brighter and closer the more you lose your faith. They don't attack you, so you only have to worry about running out of time or picking the wrong word. These are the demons you fight when you click on a "static" spot in a room. The other enemy type, the sinjas, are a ninja-like enemy that ambushes you when you enter a room. They have the startling power to defeat you in a single hit, but not only can this hit be blocked with your shield-cursor, the sinja itself also dies in a single hit.

These are the only two enemies in the entire game as far as I can tell, and neither offer much of a challenge. This is because picking the correct words is incredibly easy to the point that I rarely have to read the verse to pick the right words. I had a harder time finding the demons than actually fighting them. The bosses on the other hand were more interesting, because each one introduces their own twist to the game mechanics that makes picking words more difficult, causing a fair bit of tension compared to the usual enemy.

Difficulty wise, Sanctuary is easy to the point of tedium and doesn't offer a lot of variety outside the boss fights. The "Shield of Faith" mechanic could have spiced things up if used more, as having to block enemy attacks while picking the right words would add much needed difficulty and tension, but it's only used for a single boss and the sinjas.

The art direction is one of its weakest points. It's highly inconsistent, ranging from fuzzy JPEGs to flat-colored pixel art. Sometimes it seems to enhance the eeriness, and sometimes it just looks really janky. The character designs are also fairly odd, often having weird proportions or other inconsistencies. While this can sometimes make a given character more eerie, such as the Pastor at the beginning of the game, most of the time it comes off as simply inconsistent.

The soundtrack is a bit simple and sometimes repetitive, but it's not intrusive and sets the mood well enough. The ambience while exploring the church also helped it feel more ominous.

The game is stable, having no noticeable glitches even when playing on Ubuntu via Proton. However, it seems to lack a pause feature. I tried pressing the ESC key but this instantly closes the game without bringing up a menu. The game autosaves as you play through, but it only saves at the beginning of each night, so closing the game or getting a game over will send you back to the beginning of that night. You also only have one save file with the option to continue or start a new game. One hiccup I did notice was that sometimes clicking on words during battle didn't seem to register, making me have to click on them again. This could possibly be because I'm running the game through Proton, but in either case it wasn't so disruptive that it caused me to lose a battle.

If you're looking for a horror experience, I don't think you'll find this game particularly satisfying. There are moments of dread and spookiness, especially earlier on, but this quickly peters out the further you play. The further you go the less you have to dread. I ended up more afraid of running out of time than anything lurking in the dark. There's no risk to exploration aside from wasting time, and there's no boogyman or anything else to keep you on your toes. The demons are less a source of horror and more objectives you have to complete to progress.

Morally speaking, this game doesn't have much going on. Enemies are defeated by speaking words, and are also implied to be incorporeal and vanish when defeated. They're referred to as "demons" but aren't overtly demonic in their appearance. Here they generally resemble ghosts, ninjas or weird looking people. There isn't any occultic activity either, and as far as I can tell occult practices play no part in the story.

In terms of language, there's one use of "h*ll" as a swear and one use of "d*mn it", but otherwise no swearing. There's no nudity per se, except for one of the bosses having a design based on Cupid, making him essentially a flying baby in a diaper with a grown man's face. Yeah, it's about as unpleasant as it sounds. As for the bosses themselves, they're based off the seven deadly sins. Their designs overall don't seem to present any issues, though some of the choices made seemed odd to me (like Sloth being an Internet memer, or Gluttony being a gourmet chef).

However, it's worth mentioning that at the end of the game certain characters briefly mention more mature topics in the context of confessing past sins. One of the characters mentions that they beat their child in the past, and another character alludes to committing unspecified acts of sexual immorality (with potentially disturbing/uncomfortable implications given the surrounding context, though I'm not sure this is intentional. In any case, the game deliberately avoids being specific and the character breaks the fourth way by saying "it's a family friendly game" as the reason why).

The most concerning moral aspect I found was the potential promotion of a doctrine known as KJV-onlyism. A friendly character notices you have an the Authorized King James Version Bible and says "You can't go wrong with the Authorized Kings James Version. In fact, I wouldn't rest my eternal fate on anything else. Did you know that some newer translations... actually leave out verses? ... supposedly in the name of fixing God's word? Be careful, kid, our enemy is very sinister and sneaky".

For anyone not familiar, KJV-onlyism is a doctrine that essentially states that the King James Version is the superior or pure Bible version, with other translations being tainted, incomplete, or inferior. A common supporting argument for this assertion is the "removal" of verses from modern translations. This assertion ignores that the verses in question aren't in the oldest manuscripts, indicating that they were actually added later. Speaking for my own views here, it's a misinformed and thus a false assertion that causes unnecessary division between Christians.

It's possible that KJV-onlyism isn't the developer's actual view, as he states on his website that Sanctuary uses the AKJV because it's public domain, but it's still peculiar that a KJV-only view is even brought up in the first place. Overall my personal impression was that the view was being promoted, rather than being a trait or flaw of a specific character.

Otherwise the game seems to promote some good religious values, such as showing characters realizing their sin and repenting, the power of prayer and the Word of God against evil (even if game-ified), and one character even states that "faith alone saves, but saving faith is not alone" when speaking of the relation of faith and works to salvation. It also pokes a bit of fun at prosperity gospel and rock concert-style worship services.

Overall I'm not sure if I can wholeheartedly recommend Sanctuary. I don't think it quite succeeds at being a horror game, though it definitely has some horror elements. The gameplay itself, while it has potential, tends to fall short in execution. But if you're curious it shouldn't take more than a couple hours to play through once.