Expansive worlds with cinematic realism have become a staple of RPGs, but sometimes you just want to experience a fantasy world that’s a little different.
Terrible deception
Title: Terrible deception
Genres: RPG
Edition: March 17, 2026
Developer: Beautiful place of Hell
Available: Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One
Price: $19.99
Xbox Anywhere Play: ❌
Xbox Game Pass: ❌
Dread Delusion’s distinct visual style is evident early on, with players starting the game choosing to build their player character’s skill set from the four available offerings, then building it up with four skills to further develop it.
You can choose to be a fist-pumping brawler, or stealth and lock-down are more of a focus. Of course, no fantasy RPG would be complete without a magical skill track to choose from as well.
Regardless of your initial choices, the player character wakes up locked in a cell with only the hollow eyes of a lifeless skeleton staring at them from the corner of the cell after being imprisoned for past mistakes. This imprisonment is only temporary, as the Apostate Union of the Oneiric Islands offers the player a chance to win their freedom if they help the Inquisition hunt down the alliance’s most wanted criminal: the leader of the Black Star Mercenaries.
Your newfound freedom allows you to explore the Oneiric Islands, a collection of floating islands created after an apocalyptic event left the world’s surface in peril. While there is a main quest line for players to experience, the choice to engage with that story or sub-quests that can be found by interacting with NPCs is entirely up to the player.
Completing quests can help players collect Deliriums, skulls that act as support for upgrade points that they can use to upgrade their characters during gameplay.
The islands are home to a collection of diverse environments, including brightly colored but somewhat disturbing mushroom forests and towering cities floating on cliffs set against uniquely colored skies.
Dread Delusion’s visuals are almost crude, mimicking the classic low-poly horror art style of the 90s and early 2000s, but still manages to add charm to this fantasy RPG. In an interview in 2024 Gamesline.netLovely Hellplace creative director James Wragg said Dread Delusion’s “strange aesthetic” inspired the team’s creative writing proposals, while also helping to break Dread Delusion’s world into more cohesive elements.
“A lot of games these days have this pseudo-realistic aesthetic, but there’s a disconnect between the realism you see and the limited interactions you can do in the space,” said Wragg, “What I love about this style is that it’s immediately obvious with low-poly gameplay, what you can interact with, where you can go, what you can do, and a kind of simplicity. I think the low-poly style works pretty well with the game mechanics.
Wragg documents the game’s development over several development diaries, often highlighting how the game began with the intention of being a smaller project in its early days.
Dread Delusion went through several different genre iterations—even briefly becoming a walking simulator RPG hybrid at one point—ultimately evolving into an early-inspired open-world RPG. Bethesda the headlines it has grown to date.
Even as Dread Delusion’s scope continues to grow, Lovely Hellplace has managed to hold fast to at least one of the game’s earliest goals: to be a “small” RPG. Despite its extensive character roster, with every NPC having a say, Dread Delusion can comfortably be completed in less than 30 hours—making it a great bite-sized break in a genre that likes to lean into hundred-hour epic adventures.
