Devotion

The game is an adventure game, where the player explores the apartment complex where Feng-yu and his family live. In certain sections, the player can also play as Mei-shin. Devotion is composed of different levels which each represent a different year, which can be freely switched between through the lobby. The player can interact with different objects and examine them, and read letters and diaries scattered around the home. Players can add certain items to their inventory, which can be used to solve puzzles which often require items from different time periods.

Players, for the most part, control the troubled screenwriter Du Feng-yu (杜豐于) through a Taipei apartment with rooms that represent various years in the lives of the Du family during the 1980s. The family consists of Feng-yu, his wife Gong Li-fang (鞏莉芳), a retired singer, and their daughter Du Mei-shin (杜美心), an aspiring child singer. Feng-yu's screenwriting career has stagnated while Mei-shin begins to show signs of a mysterious illness. As the family's financial situation deteriorates, Li-fang has frequent arguments with her husband regarding her desire to return to work so she can help support the family. Despite Li-fang's offers, Feng-yu refuses to let her work due to his own insecurities.

In the midst of the domestic disputes, Mei-shin enters a popular singing contest, seeking to please her parents by becoming a popular singer. However, her performance of her mother's signature song "Lady of the Pier" (碼頭姑娘) comes one point shy of advancing to the next round. Mei-shin's condition worsens after the setback and she becomes unable to sing. Despite a doctor's suggestion that the family seek psychiatric care for Mei-shin's illness, Feng-yu instead begins to follow the teachings of cult leader Mentor Heuh (何老師) about the folk deity Cigu Guanyin (慈孤觀音) (fictional deity based off name merging of Zigu and Guanyin), who could supposedly help cure his daughter.

Devotion draws inspiration from atmospheric first-person games like P.T., What Remains of Edith Finch and Layers of Fear. Red Candle cites the reason for creating a horror game was a narrative decision to introduce players to Taiwanese culture. The developers of the game expressed a desire to make an atmospheric game that feels familiar with Taiwanese players, explaining that the culture of Taiwan rarely gets showcased in video games. In its planning stages, Devotion was not visualized to be a first-person 3D game, but subsequent discussions steered the game into that direction to realize producer Doy Chiang's vision. The development team, which consists of 12 people, had to learn the Unity 3D game engine as a result.

Unlike their first game, Red Candle says that Devotion was not intended to be political, but was instead about "religious fanaticism". The studio also mentions that translation was difficult, as they had to communicate Taiwan-specific concepts to an international audience in different languages.

Devotion received generally favorable reviews from critics, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received strong approval, being recommended by 95% of critics.

T. and Gone Home, all first-person exploration games that subvert the safe and secure feeling of home. David Jagneaux of IGN gave Devotion a positive review, praising it as "a fantastic psychological horror game that's short, concise, and well-paced from start to finish." Despite the "wonderful environmental storytelling", Jagneaux felt that the actual gameplay is "relatively unimpressive and boring".