Sixth Generation Survival Horror
HIGH The world is survival horror perfection — dark, moody, and oppressive.
LOW Movement can be a bit finicky to learn. Objectives may not always be clear.
WTF The sewers were so intense!
Over the past couple of years, there’s been a resurgence of ‘classic’ survival horror — titles often employing low-fi graphics and content inspired by the parameters made popular in the original Resident Evil, which tended to focus on escaping horrific situations, giving players extremely scarce ammunition and healing, and a lot of puzzle-solving and exploration in addition to combat. Hollowbody, developed solely by Nathan Hamley, takes these time-honored concepts and amps them up.
In Hollowbody, players control Mica Holloway from the third-person perspective. (Tank controls are available for the hardcore.) She’s in search of her missing partner, Sasha, who’s disappeared in the “exclusion zone” — it’s an area that was quarantined six decades ago after a bioterrorism incident, leaving countless people stranded inside and left to die after the area was cordoned off. Mica crash-lands in the zone and must then struggle to survive after discovering the only things thriving in the zone are nightmarish monsters.
As she searches the area, Mica will pick up weapons to help her dispatch these hellish creatures. From simple things like a wooden stick with nails all the way up to a shotgun, I had no shortage of ways to defend myself. However, like most survival horror titles, ammunition is extremely limited, and only found in scant few locations throughout the world.
Since bullets were tight, I had to pick my battles wisely. I could easily dodge most enemies in open areas, but tight corridors meant that I often had to risk taking damage by trying to dodge or using a melee weapon before committing to firing off a few rounds. Ammo really is that scarce here, but in the end, I found that how precious it was given more weight to my situation in the world.
The atmosphere is absolutely on point, too. I found that I was generally tense while playing, and the settings are quite dark. Mica’s flashlight only provides so much visibility, and ambient light is limited. Sometimes lightning during a storm will light up the immediate areas, but it’s unreliable. It’s all, quite frankly, oppressive and creepy as hell. I was attempting to escape this horrific world, not fight the monsters within it — fear was my motivator, not a desire for action, and trying to stay alive is intense.
That fear is surely intentional, as evidenced by the environmental storytelling. As I explored, I found the remnants of people who lived and died through the incident that triggered the quarantine in the first place, and their stories were coldly haunting. For example, one of these conversations details features a couple of workers disposing of dead bodies by burning, and discussing the ethics of their work and the people who were trapped in the exclusion zone. In other areas, there were recordings I could intercept with Mica’s radio, and the final messages were damning, cruel, and sad. Not only was the zone hell on earth, it put Mica’s own desire to find her partner into focus — it would be all too easy for the zone to have another tragic tale to tell.
For those looking for old-school vibes and old-school challenge, there are multiple difficulties and unlockable game mode modifications, such as a first-person mode and a second ending. (Hollowbody is fairly brief, clocking in around 6—8 hours for an initial playthrough.)
I went through this harrowing adventure twice to see both endings, and it was worth it, as each paints a consequence for in-game actions. Without spoiling anything, my choices the second time changed some aspects of the experience completely, so I’d strongly argue that Hollowbody is worth playing twice. However, with that said, there are some minor nitpicks I have…
While the vibes are spot-on, the mechanics can be a bit weird. There’s an option to toggle auto-run, and when applied, it only activated when I pressed a button. However, I had to do this each time I interacted with an object, went into the menu, and engaged in combat. If I needed to shoot an enemy and quickly run away, I had to push the run button to toggle the auto-run again. This became annoying, but was bearable after some time, since I became I used to doing it after every action that required me to interact with the world or fight.
There’s also weird and inconsistent verbiage for certain action prompts. The developers will write “Seek” or “Use” for things like looking at an object or scene, for example. It was pretty inconsistent, but otherwise harmless. A more standardized word like “Interact” would have solved this issue. In some cases, I was expecting to find an object with “seek”, but Mica ended up simply looking at a scene and then opining on what was there.
Lastly, there are some small bugs lurking about. I encountered some minor clipping problems, such as going through a wall in one area and getting stuck, and an instance where it seemed like I could continue my progress from the demo, but attempting this caused Hollowbody to get trapped in a loading loop. Most of these bugs are fairly benign, however, and don’t really detract from the experience –though I do hope that they will be addressed in the future.
As a complete work, Hollowbody elevates video game horror by making players afraid of its world in a way that’s far more effective than many others, and its creepy atmosphere and oppressive gloom made me feel tense at all times. It’s a scary-as-hell love letter to fans of the genre, and I can only hope that horror devs out there take some inspiration from Nathan Hamley’s frightening work.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Headware Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 9 hours was devoted to the game, and it was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB, but it has content that falls in line with many other survival horror games, which typically fall under the M rating. This is not a game for children. Players will have to fight and kill mutated monsters that attempt to attack the player. A message before the game states that it contains violence, and depictions viewers may find disturbing and/or cruel. In my playthrough, there were several instances of adult language, such as “f*ck”. The setting is very grim, and has instances when the main character will encounter and opine on deceased individuals, including popups on screen detailing how these people died, such as starvation, dehydration, and disease. There are also dead bodies found in nearly every area. In one case, there’s an area where corpses have been piled up and then burnt. There are also scenes which either discuss or depict suicide, which can be very upsetting. Please remember that, in the United States, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 or 988 for short.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind options.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game offers subtitles. Subtitles cannot be altered or resized. While the text was generally large enough to read in most instances, larger font options would have helped. However, the game does include an option to prevent dialogue and text from automatically moving on to the next line in the script, giving plenty of time to read. This option is off by default. Some lines uttered by the character did not have matching text appear on-screen. There are no visual cues for monster groans and other audio associated with their proximity. This game is not accessible.
Remarkable Controls: Yes, this game’s controls are remappable.
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