Adults Only-rated Lust for Darkness is back on the Switch after being retooled so that it’s a little less sexy.
Last year, Lust for Darkness came out on the Nintendo Switch. It was ported to the handheld console after releasing on PC back in 2018, since that's what happens to every PC game these days. It's a psychological horror game with occult themes and bizarrely erotic imagery. Lust for Darkness starts off with an orgy in a strange Victorian mansion before your wife gets kidnapped by a horny demon, and that sort of sets the tone for the whole game.
Think of it like Amnesia, only the walls have genitals. And so do the statues. And the characters. Just genitals everywhere, really.
That's actually kind of a turnoff to some people. Lust for Darkness has a rating of 50% on Metacritic because most reviewers thought that the overt sexual imagery actually detracted from the horror elements. A portal to another world that's shaped like a woman's lady parts just isn't all that shocking in the 21st century when there's free porn lurking around the corner of every website.
Anyway, some people are into that sort of thing, so Movie Games contracted out to SimFabric to port Lust for Darkness to the Switch. It originally released with an M rating, but then the ESRB re-rated as AO (Adults Only 18+) which got it kicked off the Nintendo eShop because Nintendo doesn't allow that high of a rating.
So SimFabric went back to the drawing board. They retooled Lust for Darkness to remove some of the worst of the sexual imagery and are now re-releasing the game as Lust for Darkness: Dawn Edition. Now the focus will be more on the Lovecraftian horror elements and the Zdzisław Beksiński-style atmosphere rather than the phallic statues.
Dawn Edition will be the only available version on the eShop for Canada, Mexico, and the USA, while Europe and Australia will still have the original version that's rated PEGI 18.
You can really tell the difference between the two by looking at the eShop page for Dawn Edition and then comparing it to the Steam page for the original Lust for Darkness.
Frankly, toning down the sexual imagery might even improve Lust for Darkness. Dawn Edition returns to the eShop on March 20.
Source: SimFabric