Hollowbody is to Silent Hill what Crow Country is to Resident Evil.
I find it interesting how visual styles have come back into fashion. Not that long ago, we were seeing 2D pixel art platformers and 16-bit inspired RPGs. In more recent years there’s been a significant uptick in the number of polygonal Playstation and Playstation 2 era games. I have a theory about this and what’s going to come next, but for fans of classic horror games like I am, there’s a lot to enjoy at the moment. Throwbacks like Crow Country and Conscript have come out in the past few months alone, and now we have the very enjoyable Silent Hill inspired Hollowbody.
In the near future, cities in Britain suffered some sort of bioterrorism attack, resulting in them needing to be quarantined. People considered to be of value were evacuated to a floating city off the coast of the country, whilst everyone else was left behind as society in those cities gradually collapsed. After a cold open, decades later, in which a lady named Sasha goes missing whilst investigating the area around one of these cities, you take control of Mika who goes looking for her.
The Silent Hill influences are all over Hollowbody, from the design of the world to the fact that someone visits an abandoned town looking for a loved one. A vehicle accident as you arrive, other characters who speak in cryptic ways, and juddering monstrosities in the streets all reminded me of how playing the first two games in that renowned series. Whilst it’s shorter than many survival horror games, those who miss the glory days will enjoy this one.
Much of the game has you walking through the streets or buildings of the town. Most of the places you visit will be inhabited by humanoid monsters seemingly taken over by some sort of virus. They don’t look like zombies as such, but more decomposing bodies covered in wires and tendrils. They’re unpleasant to look at and even worse to hear thanks to the grotesque groans and gasps for breath along with the almost mandatory radio static that these tech-inspired horror games quite like. They hit pretty hard too, with you being able to survive a couple of hits on the regular difficulty before succumbing to your wounds.
You can, of course, fight back. Mika starts with a revolver that you practically need to empty to put down a single enemy, but you’ll also acquire a shotgun and a variety of melee weapons along the way, as well as a couple of hidden weapons if you’re willing to explore. The weakness of the pistol and clunkiness of melee combat meant I attempted to run past almost every enemy I could. I’m glad I did too, as ammo is very scarce, and towards the end of the game I really needed to make use of it as tighter confines meant fleeing wasn’t always possible.
This certainly made getting from place to place tense, as I wasn’t really equipped to deal with all the monsters and irritating dogs I came across. Healing items are fairly limited, but not nearly as limited as the save points. There were a handful of autosaves along the way, but manual saves were locked to using landline phones. I felt these were just a bit too spread out for my liking, meaning I’d have to do a good ten minutes of backtracking to get back to one if I wanted to save, or hope that I didn’t die. There are no checkpoints here, so if you die, you’re kicked back to the menu, meaning potentially a fair bit of time lost if you were fifteen minutes into exploring and puzzle solving. It does ratchet up the tension at least, but dying several times in an area could probably get quite maddening for some.
As you make your way around, you’ll often find yourself in front of a locked door that will need you to solve a puzzle. These aren’t too taxing, as the solutions are often fairly nearby and need you to find a key or an access code. I quite like one in a church where you needed to light specific candles to open a hidden chamber. If you’re paying attention it’s easy enough to solve, but it made a change from key hunting. It was nice that you needed to inspect items in your inventory to find other items within them, a lot like in older survival horror games.
Now the presentation is really well done. The visuals are modern enough to look nice but also have that angular retro look to them. It’s like the art from Paratopic or a Puppet Combo game, but with much higher res textures. This means things look clear and well defined rather than pixelated and blurry. I appreciated being able to see just how British the scenery was in particular. Keep left signs, rows of terraced houses, and a Spar knock-off reminded me a lot of being in a local town. A lot more stray handgun bullets than you might expect to find though. Audio is equally excellent, with minimal music, but maximum ambient sound. The groans of those monsters just off screen really set my nerves on edge. Voice acting is neat too thanks to some good use of distortion effects when speaking to people remotely.
It’s not perfect though. The aforementioned checkpointing is frustrating, and the camera was a pain in the backside at times. Sometimes there are fixed angles, which worked pretty well, but others it would track Mika as she moved around, meaning you’d often lose sight of an enemy, or simply never see it in the first place. This was especially noticeable in the tunnel sections, where turning around would mean the camera could get stuck on the walls and flatly refuse to turn around. Certainly matches the camera issues from genre luminaries I suppose.
The other issue is the length. I managed to complete my first play through in just under four hours. Now, I like a short game, especially when it means it doesn’t outstay its welcome, so this wasn’t really a problem for me, but I can see some being less than pleased. Luckily, there are a few extra features here and there. Unlockable bonus modes, including a first-person view option are really neat, plus there are three endings and an unlockable super hard difficulty. There’s a fair bit here for those who are going to play through a second or third time.
Hollowbody is a well put together love letter to Silent Hill but with a neat technological twist. There’s a great, creepy atmosphere along with a couple of jump scares for fans of horror, but also an interesting story for those that enjoy a creepy tale. Considering this was mostly made by a single developer, it’s even more impressive how well it’s come out. This isn’t a revolution in the genre, but it’s great to see a throwback to a better time in gaming’s history.
Hollowbody is available now on PC.
