Survival Horror has often been a genre of awkward controls, crap combat, and mind-bending narratives with a cult following. Hollowbody is the latest twisted tale from Chasing Static developer Headware Games and aims to bring everyone back a few generations to the “golden era” of the genre.
Do Androids Have Nightmares of Electronic Spiders?
Hollowbody mixes a sci-fi setting with the feeling of creeping unease players may experience in titles like Silent Hill. You play as an android on a rescue mission in what is technically a cyberpunk setting, but the ‘zone’ in which you find yourself stranded is almost a time capsule of modern-day England.
The narrative is mostly told through text and audio files left to be discovered by the player. If you want to find out what happened to turn the city into ground zero for android/monster fusions and why it’s now evacuated, you’ll need to actively go and collect them.
Despite starting as a personal tale of rescue, the story felt more focused on world-building than character-building. It worked to create a rather interesting tale, but it can be a little disjointed if you happen to miss a file or radio transmission.
While I enjoyed the story, it did take at least 2 playthroughs for it to land with me properly. Fortunately, the game clocks in at around 5 hours on your first playthrough and you can easily halve that on repeat playthroughs. This makes it feel quite manageable to go through again. Hollowbody also offers a number of secret unlockables for completion which can make the second playthrough feel different enough to be worth it.
What Is Old Is New Again
Hollowbody feels like a traditional 32-bit-era survival horror game. It has more in common with the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill than it does with many modern horror games that have a stronger focus on stealth, hiding, and enemies that stalk you. Instead, Hollowbody is a traditional blend of puzzle-solving, exploration, and tough decision-making over what combat you need to take part in and what enemies you can comfortably avoid.
Hollowbody offers two control schemes. One of them is more familiar to modern gamers with the character moving in the direction you press, and the other is traditional genre standard “tank” controls. While some find tank controls awkward, I’ve personally never had much of an issue with them for this style of game. It feels more natural to me, especially when factoring in the fixed camera angles at points.
Combat is serviceable while taking the approach of pumping up the damage taken to make it just as deadly as any encounter from older survival horror titles. Melee is an option, which includes stomping on the corpses of the abominations that rain down on you—always fun. But the damage you can and likely will take while engaging in melee combat is heavy. It doesn’t help that the healing “Repair Spray” is extremely rare either.
Ranged combat is of course available too, with a lock-on that has you constantly facing the monster as you move. This function alone elevates the combat above many other survival horror games where you’ll find yourself standing still and awkwardly aiming. That said, there is only a strict amount of ammo for the handful of ranged weapons, one of which can be quite easily missed.
There are about a handful or so of puzzles throughout the game. I ran into about one per hour. What surprised me was how much I enjoyed figuring out these puzzles. While initially quite daunting, there was a clear logic with all of them. Once I started putting pen to paper, I got such a rush from figuring out what felt like a such clever collection of puzzles for the genre.
Digitally Buffed
There are a few sections early in the game that feel like pace killers where you’ll do a fair bit of backtracking. This felt like padding. On top of that, I ended up backtracking even more due to missing items, though this is something more natural for the genre.
These required backtracking sections overstay their welcome and don’t help Hollowbody in making a good first impression. While I appreciate that it was trying to add to the atmosphere of being lost in a city that is alien to you and potentially dangerous at every turn, I instead just felt like I was slowly running back and forth around a giant area mostly empty of anything of note. Fortunately, the game came on leaps and bounds after this, culminating in a finale that was both unexpected and quite enjoyable.
Hollowbody isn’t exactly the next evolution of the survival horror genre, but more a reaffirmation of what made so many people fall in love with the genre, warts and all. Yes, you get the horror thrill with combat that’s better than average for the genre, but then you also have the backtracking and item hunting that has plagued the genre since the dawn of time. Fortunately, the short length means it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Beauty In Brutality
I don’t know how the developer managed to make the game look like a Playstation 2 game and a modern game at the same time, but they did and it’s magnificent. To describe something that falls under horror as beautiful seems a little macabre, but that’s how I find it.
The lighting and camera angles coupled with the minimal soundtrack and ambient sound create easily one of the strongest atmospheres in the genre without a doubt. For older players like me, it’s on par with the first time I took those steps into Silent Hill, but this time it’s set in the United Kingdom. It eerily hits home for me who resides in the UK, and I imagine will for anyone else who does too.
The lighting is fantastic and the world design is done in such a way that you can feel slightly lost but still pick up on certain prompts within the environment to subconsciously know where you are going. I never really felt truly lost aside from one section in a cave area toward the climax of the game. That part aside, I felt the way the world looked and was designed felt not only natural but intuitive to the player.
The voice acting is brilliant and believable. The mystery antagonist is sinister sounding, and the radio transmissions you pick up do a lot to put you in the shoes of the residents of this town as it descends into hell. The genre has a terrible reputation for voice-overs, particularly from the era it harkens back to; fortunately, Hollowbody nails its voicework.
Verdict
Hollowbody is exactly what I wanted as a fan of survival horror. I will fully admit the early section did rock me somewhat in terms of enjoyment, but by the end of the game, I was eager to jump back in with a higher difficulty to find what I had missed and earn even more bonuses.
It’s got a thought-provoking story, some genuine scares, and gorgeous visuals all nicely tied together in a short but sweet package. Hollowbody is a quick horror fix that’ll no doubt stay with you a lot longer than you might initially think.
HOLLOWBODY IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another Horror game, you might want to check out Alone in the Dark (2024).
Many thanks go to Headware Games for a PC review code for Hollowbody.
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