10/07/2026 - Besu's Best Games
Besu Tadesse is back with another horror game review! This week, he brings us his thoughts on Moth Lake.
Some spoilers ahead... proceed with caution.
MOTH LAKE
reviewed by Besu Tadesse
Released in November 2022, Moth Lake is a puzzle-solving adventure horror game developed by Stefano Mazzotta (Il Sui) and published under Sui Arts. You play as a group of teenaged misfits searching their small town to uncover dark secrets about the adults that control their lives, as well as come to terms with their own dark pasts.
Gameplay and art style are great. The pixel art is smooth and flows well with the story being told. It also adds to the creepiness of the monsters encountered, their faces all unusually positioned and gesturing at the teens. The flow from gameplay to cutscene is solid – you can tell Mazzotta took his time. The story is also compelling, with obvious comparisons to other stories like It, The Goonies, and Stranger Things. Each character feels fleshed out; their stories, easy to follow. They each have their own unique abilities as well, which are crucial both to how they interact with the game world and the trust they form among each other as they encounter more complex situations. Many of the cutscenes are also rather terrifying. With my limited gameplay, I had already been terrorized by a scarecrow and a knife-wielding old lady, both of which had meaningful effects to my characters. It’s a nice touch.
There are some places where gameplay can be a bit confusing. There were moments where the environment was tricky to follow, so trying to find the solution before getting hacked to pieces proved difficult at times. I considered that the medium (a small screen) and the art style (pixelation) probably played a key part in being unable to find what I was looking for, as well as introducing certain variations to the inventory mechanic. One clear example was knowing that I could pick up a nearby chair to jam into a door so that the adult trying to kill me couldn’t get in, or that I had to crouch immediately upon entering a new stage if I wanted to avoid capture. I hate to bring up one crass bit of humor in the start screen, where SUI ARTS flashes a small “F” to reveal “FARTS” as part of the branding. It’s a minor issue, but knowing how much care went into the game and that it’s meant to be a silly pixel-art horror game (as are many of their other game offerings), but I would like the developer to consider a change. It’s really solid, so treat the work as such.
Moth Lake is available on Android devices and PC via Steam. It’s a fun romp through a dark and twisted small-town hellscape, so give it a try. Enjoy!
MORE ABOUT BESU TADESSE
An author based in Maryland, Besu Tadesse loves to write horror and speculative fiction. He has published two books – The Ghosts of Poplar Valley, a paranormal horror novella about our history’s echoes into the present, and Broken Persons, a short story collection that deals with broad themes of grief, trauma, and speculation on the future.
His short stories have been included in several works, including Devour the Rich!, Arsenic and Grandma’s Refrigerator: Horror Told in Colours, Dark and Dreary: A Basement Horror Anthology, A Chronicle of Horrors: An Anthology, Recipes for Newlyweds: Stories of Marital Bliss, With Teeth: A Dark Fiction Anthology, and several upcoming projects. He also works as a gaming writer and reviewer for Calcopia and Uncomfortably Dark.
You can find him on all social media platforms under the handle @stickybearartist.
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