The Silent Hill series may be thoroughly revered, but I can’t recall a time where I’ve seen an indie game that actively tried to act as a spiritual successor. Sure, there are plenty of games that take inspiration from it, but never ones that tried to offer the same exact kind of experience. Hollowbody changes this. The game wears its inspiration on its sleeve and is very openly a love letter to the storied series. In many of the ways that count, it makes good on this intent too, although poor combat and a few undesirable design choices hold it back from time to time.
The game starts out with a researcher named Sasha searching for a missing co-worker on an isolated beach. She enters a dark cave to try to find him but goes missing along the way. We cut to a woman named Mica in a futuristic city heading to try and find her via her hovercar. When the car crashes after entering a destroyed, empty part of another city, Mica has to try her best to track down Sasha on foot, or die trying. Hollowbody is fully voice acted and easily has some of the best voice acting you’ll find in an indie game. The cast does a great job which really helps the game’s tone.
The graphics are very nicely done. Hollowbody is evocative of the early 00s and the game has good art direction in general. In order to not make the faces look horrible on its small budget, they don’t animate, much like a higher-resolution PlayStation 1 game. I thought this worked just fine and didn’t detract from the experience at all. The presentation here is simply above board altogether, down to the menu sounds that are very familiar in the best way.
If I had to compare the game to its inspiration, it’s more like Silent Hill 3 than anything else. You’re not given free reign of a map that you’ll need to navigate and the sections are more linear than the ones in Silent Hill 2. Instead, this is a fairly short game where you’ll be guided from section to section without having to return anywhere. This varies between building interiors and city streets for the most part. That being said, the city areas are decently sized and have some room for exploration, as they’ve got plenty of supplies to find as well as radio broadcasts that act as echoes of the past.
Hollowbody is really exactly like Silent Hill in most ways. Creepy monsters roam the streets in decent numbers and you’re not exactly made of ammunition, so it’s in your best interest to avoid them as best you can. The atmosphere is heavy and unsettling and I often found myself pretty creeped out. This really is a scary game. When indoors, avoiding enemies becomes tougher, so it’s a better idea to fight so that you have room to solve the game’s puzzles, of which there are a fair amount. They’re mostly not difficult at all to solve, though. I did waste a fair amount of time on a couple solely because I failed to do my due diligence when exploring.
The puzzles mostly revolve around finding items and then using them somewhere to progress. Sometimes you have to combine two of them. Mica’s inventory is infinite, so you can carry as much as you want, which I appreciated. I strongly prefer this to the Resident Evil approach. Overall, the game has plenty of ammo and healing supplies, which made me feel a bit foolish by the end of the game as I got through it with nothing but my handgun and melee weapons. I found three melee weapons and none of them break, which is another nod to the classics that made me feel right at home.
However, the combat in Hollowbody is just poor. Yes, the characters in Silent Hill are normal people and have trouble defending themselves, but the combat still felt like it functioned as intended. Using a melee weapon in Hollowbody just feels kind of terrible. Mica’s attack range is odd and enemies react strangely to being hit. Usually you can just stunlock them until they go down, but the swings she takes vary so wildly that it results in inconsistencies. I also never felt like I was hitting anything and the game does a bad job of conveying whether or not you’re doing so. As such, I’d suggest just not messing with the melee weapons unless you absolutely have to.
Guns fare better, but they’re still awkward to use. The game uses a lock-on system that marks enemies with an icon. You can be pretty far from them and Mica just latches onto them with perfect accuracy, making it feel too simple to take foes down this way. There’s just a weird gap between the two kinds of weapons where you’re either completely ineffective (and enemies take forever to die to melee attacks,) or someone who fights back with aimbot precision. With that said, this isn’t a massive deal, as you’re still going to mostly be avoiding the majority of enemies. It’s just surprising to see in a game where everything else is so high quality.
The enemies themselves are grotesque and disturbing for the most part. The sound design does its job too, so just hearing that someone is out there snarling is pretty spooky. I will say, however, that the dog enemy is awful. They just randomly run up to you in the middle of the street and do damage immediately, leaving you with little recourse. They don’t even really have an attack animation. You’ll just be running down the road and randomly take damage to one running into you. Another little point that got on my nerves is Mica’s flashlight. Hollowbody is very dark, so you’ll need it to see, but it sways horribly when you swing a melee weapon, to the point that the flashlight sways so much that I literally couldn’t see what I was fighting.
Prior to playing, I was told that the game was about three-to-four hours long, but I’d wager it’ll take anyone who actually takes their time to explore five-to-six. It’s similar in length to Silent Hill 3, so there’s a decent amount of gameplay time here. The areas are well-designed and creepy, from an apartment building to a subway station. The apartment building is very heavy on being a Silent Hill throwback, down to having halls of locked rooms. Although, Hollowbody‘s map doesn’t show you where you’ve been or mark most points of interest. This is only a problem in the apartment, though, as no other part of the game forces you to hunt down unlocked doors. One section of the game forces you to awkwardly wander through tunnels looking for items, all with zero access to the map. It’s easily the worst part of the experience.
There’s only a single boss battle in the game at the very end, so don’t expect to have to contend with many of those. When you beat the game, you unlock a new game plus mode that starts you off with your revolver and a bit of ammo, plus items that turn on big head mode and first-person mode, respectively. Hollowbody makes use of a fixed camera that follows the player from variable angles, so being able to play it in first-person is really neat. But it doesn’t actually give you standard first-person controls, limiting how enjoyable this is. Turning is simply awkward and the amount of camera swaying can be a bit nauseating.
The game has multiple endings, so you’ll ostensibly be able to get more than one playthrough out of it. I only got one and am unsure as to how to get the others, so I look forward to seeing what the community figures out after launch. I have to say, I didn’t really understand the ending I got, but I’m sure folks will be able to pick through the game’s themes and symbolism to do so.
Overall, Hollowbody really scratches that survival horror itch with a well-made, creepy game. The combat is just plain bad, but everything else is pretty much right where it should be, even if save points could be more plentiful. Silent Hill fans will really appreciate what this one does.
Hollowbody: Thoroughly creepy and well-designed, Hollowbody offers some very solid throwback scares despite its sloppy, awkward combat. – Andrew Farrell
Check out our previous review:
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 PC review – Just another gear of the war |
