Sylvio (Video Game)
Developed by Stroboskorp
Available on PC through Steam
Suitable for ages 15+
Graphics have always stolen the spotlight of the ever building console wars. In an attempt to constantly push the newest hardware and one-up the competition, pixels, dimensions, polygons, and renderings are the clarion call driving us to open our wallets and pour out our hard earned dollars. And yet, decades after Silent Hill dropped our jaws with its futuristic 3D models and unforgettably macabre environments, it is Akira Yamaoka’s haunting strings and melodies that lead chills up our spines. The foggy streets are dated, and the creatures now laughably silly, but the music delivers the same feeling of dread that it did all those years ago.
I’ve always been more of an audiophile when it comes to loving a game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I prefer the OST to the game and go out of my way to fill my playlist with video game soundtracks. Rather, I remember the iconic spanish mumblings of the villagers in Resident Evil 4 better than I recall any of the gruesome death animations. I’m hard pressed to recall the exact structure and behavior of any particular necromorph, but their screams and cries have me instinctively reaching for my plasma cutter. In an indie game market littered with dull silence and blaring static jump scares, it doesn’t offer a lot for me. It might explain why I’m so miserable with 90% of recent horror titles (aside from them being shit, of course).
Just when I was getting ready to lower my standards and accept that all was lost, here comes Sylvio to show me what an inspired dev can do with naught but his own creativity and a great respect for audio design. There are a few missteps here and there, but overall Sylvio is a testament of how to make an unforgettable game with limited resources. In a sea of knock-offs and repeats, Sylvio does the unthinkable: it’s new. While most titles settle for shambling zombies and ghouls spurring you on to the next objective, Sylvio’s enemy is far more insidious.
You play as Juliette Waters, an EVP specialist who hunts ghosts with an oscilloscope and recorder. Finding a back way into an abandoned amusement park that was shut down after a landslide, Juliette uses her ghost hunting skills to uncover what happened to the park’s various inhabitants. The horror is unique, as it is primarily sound based. The oscilloscope can point you to objectives and potential dangers, and recording the spectral voices of white orbs and more malignant specters forms the main drive of the narrative. Piecing the voices together reveals both secrets and main objectives, making progression feel more like a puzzle than a straight line.
Uncovering the secrets isn’t just a matter of recording every voice, as the messages are always distorted and cryptic. Using your reel recorder, messages can be played forward and back again at various speeds. Listening intently to the various blips and static are equal parts fascinating and unsettling, and deciphering between white noise and ghostly voices quickly becomes a captivating experience. It demands your focus, unnerving you and drawing you in at the same time. While other games allow you to swat the horrors away or bury your face in the sand until they leave, it forces you to directly confront the most terrifying aspects of the paranormal to progress. It sets the game far apart from other titles, and is truly a worthy and novel concept.
The world can also at times be just as cryptic and unsettling as the ghostly voices. On the surface, the amusement park is a destroyed beauty, vast expanses and abandoned places of merriment spooky in their own right. It’s an open world, allowing you to hunt around as you please or follow waypoints to main objectives. Just beneath the surface are lairs far more insidious, with empty labs and exam rooms painting a far more sinister picture. As the sound weaves forward and back, so does your understanding of the park. Each location lends itself to exploration and analysis, forming a complete tale in the end similar to the fragmented stories of the ghosts.
Unfortunately the game is not without its glaring downsides. Right off the bat, the combat is dumb. Using a makeshift shotgun, you suck up various “sharp” and “soft” objects to disrupt enemies and manipulate objects. Giant black orbs slowly float towards you like slow motion water balloons, waiting to be popped and their ghostly messages absorbed. It’s a cool audio effect when it happens, but looks very silly. There are other larger enemies that can be menacing when first encountered, but all boil down to the same “pop me open for the candy inside” concept. Combat is not this game’s strong suit, and it doesn’t need to be. I just wish it would get out of the way and let me explore the creepy environments.
Another con is that the game is relatively ugly. It’s a Unity engine title developed by a single guy (Niklas Swanberg), so take this with a grain of salt. I know there’s only so much he could have done, but nothing seems to flow together naturally. The chairs buried in the landslide didn’t seem to be disrupting the landslide at all, sticking out at awkward angles and looking like overlapping textures. Textures are all repeated, and done so too frequently to be ignored. The level design is also a bit sloppy, with various puzzle platforms feeling intentionally placed as puzzles, and not as part of a natural world. These are all amateurish problems, which make sense given the amateur developer.
Regardless of the flaws, the solid execution of the main mechanic easily puts this game far ahead of titles with similar budgets. What Swanberg manages to accomplish with such minimal assets is a massive accomplishment. This is one of those indie games with no advertising budget and little hype that horror fans will stumble upon randomly over the years and wonder why they never heard of it. Consider this review me doing my part to spread the word about a genuinely unique idea done well. This is better than just an interesting concept, this is someone proving that this has legs. Buy it today, and expand your horizons.
Categorized:Horror Gaming Reviews