Evil Nun: The Broken Mask is yet another entry in the “escape horror” genre.

After doing its time in the trenches of Steam Early Access, Evil Nun: Broken Mask has finally launched into full release on Steam and consoles. In its final form, evolved from a mobile game, Evil Nun is a content-rich game that sees you exploring a dilapidated Catholic summer camp while evading the (you guessed it) evil Nun that stalks its halls. Solve puzzles, hunt for key items, and do everything in your power to escape.

This setup is fairly common within this genre, and Evil Nun makes no effort to deviate from that, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In a similar flow to the popular Granny series, you tentatively explore the summer camp, searching for clues to aid in your escape between ducking into cover whenever you see Sister Madeline approach, a beam of red light coming before her to give you a small chance to escape before you’re spotted.

Sister Madeline is the only threat in the game, and she supposedly hunts you as you sneak around. You’re made immediately familiar with her as the game begins at a hard sprint, dropping you into the building with Sister Madeline already in pursuit. There isn’t anything in the way of tone-setting or buildup here, just get to escaping.

What follows is a pretty by-the-numbers escape game.

The puzzles you encounter aren’t difficult to solve, but made initially challenging because of the sheer size of the map and the number of locked rooms and confusing hallways. Eagle Junior High is so massive and confusing to navigate that the challenge becomes remembering where everything is, as opposed to any real amount of puzzle solving.

This is helped somewhat by the way in which Evil Nun expects you to face these puzzles. It’s structured in such a way that you only ever have to deal with one step at a time. You’re never given several paths to take or objectives to complete in a free-form way. At any point, you can check your objectives, which give direction while thankfully never leading you with a waypoint on your screen.

After your first, easy enough escape from the summer camp, you’re quickly given a glimpse of a different way to escape. So you start a new game, now with more options for escape at your disposal, and new areas of the summer camp to explore. As you progress, this can begin to feel somewhat railroading. You’re never given much autonomy to discover anything on your own; rather, you just follow the instructions on the screen and work through the steps to get each new ending.

The objectives themselves are inventive enough, like sneaking into a laundry van and driving out of the compound or tricking a chicken to push a button by covering it in bird feed, and Evil Nun does a good job throwing a mix of simple tasks and quirky objectives at you at a pretty brisk pace so the momentum remains high.

However, while each new objective feels different from the last, there’s a rudimentary feel to most of what you do in Evil Nun: The Broken Mask.

While you interact with many items around the camp, it’s usually reserved for pressing a button, flipping a switch, or using simple physics to ring a bell or open a door. While you can pick up objects in the world, they’re exclusively used to be carted to their appropriate puzzle location, or they’re thrown to create a distraction. There’s no inventory system, resource management, or creative puzzle-solving to be had here.

Despite its breadth, Evil Nun: The Broken Mask can feel oddly shallow on the gameplay side. You need to make very few considerations as you approach each objective and can move around the summer camp with relative freedom, aside from dodging Sister Madeline.

While it remains consistently interesting to watch the summer camp expand around you, the gameplay feels mundane throughout the runtime. As you progress, you’ll unlock crafting recipes that require you to explore to find and combine ingredients, but these are mandatory objectives and don’t change the gameplay or expand your toolset at all. There is little flavor to be found in how you complete your objectives, as it all feels very straightforward.

The further you get, the more of the camp you explore, and the more lore you uncover.

As you continue in the game, Eagle Junior High becomes even more labyrinthine. It’s made up of tight, switchback hallways, cramped rooms, and multiple floors and attached buildings that connect them. It’s a treat to explore and one of the highlights of the game.

It’s perfectly dilapidated and difficult to navigate. Key items are strewn about in semi-randomized locations to add some variance from run-to-run. There is some really neat stuff to see around Eagle Junior High. It just keeps expanding and expanding, from gymnasiums and playrooms to basements and underground caves; you’re constantly discovering new and interesting areas to explore.

I think this is ultimately the highlight of the game. It’s a staple of the survival horror genre to become deeply entrenched in a single or small group of environments, and it’s the same here in Evil Nun: The Broken Mask. You’ll become intimately familiar with the summer camp, and as you chase down the puzzles, you begin to build out a mental map of all the shortcuts you’ve unlocked.

However, Sister Madeline, the single antagonist, adds little challenge to the game.

Sister Madeline might be the least efficient or threatening pursuer I’ve seen. She’s incredibly easy to shake; she only ever moves at a brisk walk, and she’s easily fooled over and over again by creating distractions by throwing items.

She’s so passive that the only obstacle in the game becomes solving puzzles. I began to run freely all over the summer camp because I knew that should I bump into Sister Madeline, I just needed to keep running to lose her. And I only needed to turn a couple of corners to do that. She’ll lose you only after a few moments of pursuing, then dutifully go back to wandering around the place, hoping to bump into you again.

She supposedly responds to noise, but in my testing, it’s inconsistent at best. Sometimes, she’d hear me throw open doors or toss an item from the other side of the building, while other times I could sprint right behind her, and she’d be none the wiser. When she did hear me drop an item, she had an uncanny sense of location as she’d close in on exactly where the item was dropped.

There is no consequence to being spotted, outside of potentially being pushed off track of your objective for a moment. Of course, should she catch you, you’ll be knocked out and sent back to your room to begin again, but that never once happened to me during my normal mode playthrough.

I certainly don’t expect Evil Nun: The Broken Mask to have incredibly advanced A.I., but Sister Madeline is a huge part of the experience, and unfortunately, she adds nothing to it.

Evil Nun: The Broken Mask is perhaps the biggest game in the escape horror genre, but it feels unpolished and rudimentary.

If you’re a huge fan of the genre, you’ll probably still enjoy what’s on offer here. The summer camp is a treat to explore, and the puzzle-solving is engaging enough that it keeps you moving at a brisk pace.

But unfortunately, there’s a mechanical stiffness to the game that doesn’t feel great. There’s little meaningful interactivity with the world, and while interesting, the puzzles feel railroading and basic, and Sister Madeline is an absolute dud of a threat.  And to round off an underwhelming experience, I also experienced multiple crashes while playing that caused much lost progress.

You can buy Evil Nun: The Broken Mask on Steam, mobile and consoles.