Hang fire, Mariah. We’re not quite done with things that go bump in the night yet…

Whilst Dual Effect & Abstract Digital’s loving homage to the video game survival horrors of yesteryear – particularly those of the PSOne era – arrived on Steam and PS5 back in August (other platforms placated an indeterminate ‘early 2022’ date), it seemed a perfect title to hold back on experiencing until the Halloween period.

As a keen enthusiast of the Resident Evils and Silent Hills of the late Nineties/early Noughties, there is a lot that Tormented Souls does right in channeling the spirit of those celebrated, frequently frightening titles. Yes, they inject a limited dose of modernity into some elements of the control system and mechanics, but this is, for the most part, exactly the kind of callback to traditional third-person survival horror experiences that many fans of the genre have been clamouring for, for the better part three console generations.

With a suitably hokey story, following protagonist Caroline Walker travelling to a seemingly abandoned hospital solely off the back of a strange photograph she received in the mail, narratively Souls is as pulpy, simple and schlocky in execution as much of what came in early Resi titles in particular. This extends to delivery, too; with the voice acting of Caroline and the very limited number of characters she encounters on her journey performed in a juicily over-the-top, exclamatory fashion.

But as per its heritage, the slightly silly story of Souls is merely a framing device for its exploration into a creepy unknown, the solving of a myriad of some excellently-designed puzzles, bountiful amounts of back-tracking, and a liberal dose of combat taking out the twisted denizens of its sumptuously depicted locale.

The production design of the Wildberger Hospital, Souls principle setting, is gorgeously realised. And whilst many have jumped to point out aesthetic familiarities between it and the iconic Spencer Mansion of Resident Evil fame, outside of perhaps its main hall and adjoining corridors, much of what is found here seems far more reminiscent of, say, 2001’s Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, or the Silent Hill series, from the frequently limited lighting (Resi, conventionally, being much more generous in lighting your impending demise) with entire sections of the map bathed in lethal darkness, trips to a ‘dark’ alternative reality, right down to smattering of the industrial, occult and even tribal and indigenous.

But it is in its restrictive lighting mechanic that one of the game’s biggest bugbears rears its head. Players will frequently take Caroline into areas of almost pitch-black darkness, requiring her to forgo carrying any weapons in favour of a lighter, in order to avoid the almost-instant fatality of wandering around in the dark. This is not a commentary on its enemy design, either – if you spend more than a few seconds bathed in darkness, the game will quite literally kill you off in fairly unceremonious fashion.

It isn’t difficult to imagine the thinking behind the decision to rob players of their weapons in certain areas of the game, but in truth it is artificially attempting to up the scare factor when in actuality it becomes more frustrating than anything. Entering such an area is far more likely to elicit a groan than it is a gasp. Yes, at a handful of spots, it does factor in to map exploration and advancement strategically, but these are few and far between. For the most part, the dimly-lit sequences of Souls’ world are just unforgiving; not to mention meandering when combined with the unreliable control system, occasionally hyperactive camera jumps, and generally sub-par combat. It also robs the player of soaking in so much of the gorgeous world building and design work, with the game’s surroundings notably a step-up from its clunky, almost cartoony character models.

Thankfully, Dual Effect seem to have at least realised that their combat system – another area where it feels spiritually more akin to the laden, cumbersome shoot-or-smash mechanics of Silent Hill – is a bit of a lame duck at some point into development, as generally ammo is in bountiful supply, meaning a ‘kill it if it moves’ mentality quickly becomes a must, doubly so because of the sheer amount of back-tracking and revisiting of areas you will be doing over the course of the game. Just be ready to jostle with an at-times erratic auto-aim system, to0, that can easily see you waste ammo through no fault of your own.

Souls does encourage s0me trial-and-error, though, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the absolute smorgasbord of puzzles that have been worked into the game, many of which you can tackle in a fairly player-defined order. It is here where Dual really step up their game, with there being an element of early survival horror’s ‘fetch questing’, but invigorated with some more much interactive and inventive elements. Puzzles, and the items required to help solve them, frequently require direct physical manipulation, as well as a healthy dose of lateral thinking, to solve. There’s even some occasional use of time travel (we did say it was hokey) to create in the past the correct conditions needed to solve a puzzle – or access a specific area – in the future.

It’s a mechanic that creates a laughably bonkers disconnect between gameplay and storytelling, though, with our central protagonist zipping through time and materialising these time-centric changes and causality when under our control, yet in cut-scenes that follow, she acts not only utterly oblivious to it all, but so too is she seemingly actively confused by some of the changes her era-jumping results in.

For the most part, though, Souls is an engaging time, its focus on exploration and puzzle-solving particularly welcome when both elements are so well realised and executed. It can be a little unforgiving in its opening hour or so, but so too were its predecessors, and again, in bringing in a limited resource for saving (as close to ink ribbons as you can perhaps legally get), Souls demands players to plan routes, objectives and the gap they are going to leave between saving.

It’s at times like this that the game is at its strongest; exploring its beautifully macabre world, tensely venturing into the unknown and stumbling upon a particular item or file that suddenly makes that one nebulous puzzle click into place. Considering your path and options as you go between safe and familiar areas, managing your resources and planning ahead.

You know, classic survival horror.

Just don’t expect to rely too much on the game’s fairly useless map – which, even after you find the respective page for the area you’re in, is vague, confusingly coloured and gives little in the way of crucial information (bar the strange decision to very, very occasionally include an icon depicting a puzzle element).

Much like many of the titles that inspired it, Souls does has an issue with pacing, too. The game does eventually run out of steam, and much of this lies at the relative absence of bigger set pieces. There’s hardly anything in the way of boss fights, and whilst this isn’t in and of itself a dealbreaker, games like the original Resident Evil keenly understood how punchier moments like an attic encounter with a giant snake (after some suitably ominous build-up), or suddenly being sprung into a flooded basement full of Great White Sharks, gave shape and momentum to the overall experience. Souls, contrarily, seems mostly happy to recycle the same limited pool of regular enemies, which are themselves not terribly original, and almost all seemingly pulled straight from the nightmare-demons-by-way-of-hospital-equipment-gone-wrong monster mashing of the OG Silent Hill.

Board Game and survival horror enthusiasts alike can hold their collective breaths, grab a first aid kit or two, and celebrate/brace themselves/flee in terror (delete as applicable, depending on your nerves) as one of the most iconic locations in gaming (and indeed horror) history prepares to sprawl its way across tabletops next year.

Manchester-based Steamforged Games launched their latest kickstarter on Tuesday, this time for Resident Evil: The Board Game, an adaptation of the OG Resi title – or, more accurately, its glorious 2002 remake – that follows on from their highly successful takes on the 2nd and 3rd instalment in the original Playstation Resident Evil trilogy respectively.

If it seems a curious order to have tackled the titles in, that’s because, well it pretty much is (though their tabletop incarnation of 2 arrived in a storm of excitement for its 2019 remake), but from the myriad refinements and improvements Steamforged worked in between their Resi releases (3 landed earlier this year) – from refined mechanics to a far less cumbersome set up – its pretty exciting that arguably the most iconic instalment in the franchise is going to benefit from further tweaks to the formula.

Resident Evil 3: The Board Game presented an ‘open world’ campaign, where its first half (the full experience split once again across two boxes) could be played in a fairly flexible and player-defined order. It added an element of strategy and choice to the game that the more linear 2 was lacking – would you clear out the entirety of the ‘Downtown’ area, despite the later stages become densely populated with dangerous enemies, or instead chip away at each area of the map bit by bit? – and did a surprisingly good job of replicating Jill Valentine’s exploration and back-and-forth and key item hunting across Raccoon City in the original game.

Add in the inclusion of narrative beats where players were forced to make decisions that could have long-lasting consequences on their campaign as a whole, a City ‘threat’ level that meant the ante was constantly being upped with even base zombies became more threatening the further you progressed (again, much like the original …those darned naked factory zombies), and Resident Evil 3: The Board Game was not only a notable step-up from the already-enjoyable 2, but also showed a keenness in Steamforged to channel as much of the spirit of their source material as possible.

Which begs the question of what unique treats and horrors lie in store as board gamers return to the Spencer Mansion and take on the far-less action oriented first game in the franchise?

Steamforged have again done a great job keeping fans and prospective backers up to speed with their ideas, new inclusions and creative thought process for the title, and from what they’ve teased so far (with further drops and reveals inevitable over the course of the coming campaign and beyond), Resident Evil: The Board Game is shaping up to be its strongest and most thematic Resi outing yet.

Taking on the role of one of the original S.T.A.R.S members of the game from  an initial lineup of series mainstays Jill Valentine, Chris Valentine and their OG supporting cast of Barry Burton and Rebecca Chambers, the most immediate and visible change this time round is in the game’s set up and exploration. Both of the previous Resi tabletop adventures saw players exploring streets, sewers, clock towers and, of course, the police station, of Raccoon City, and each scenario’s map of tiles, doors and passageways would be set up at the outset.

It had its distinct advantages – keeping the actual gameplay running at a brisk, smooth pace once everything was in place, and players were able to use their nigh-omniscient overview of the scenario layout to strategise and plan out their journeys, with varying ‘encounter tables’ and arguably Steamforged’s best mechanic, the tension deck, keeping things unpredictable and risky whenever your character stepped into certain unexplored spaces.

It did, however, necessitate slightly unwieldy and elongated set-up times, particularly in the later, larger scenarios. 3 did a solid job of mitigating and streamlining this by having universal item and tension decks (whereas 2 required these to be generated from scratch per scenario), but if you had the extra terrain elements, doors and other pieces to add to the table (why wouldn’t you?), it still meant you could easily be looking at a set up time that regularly crept over the 30-minute mark.

It also inhibited much of the sense of exploration and fear of the unknown (the aforementioned encounter tables and tension deck notwithstanding). It was clear from the outset where pivotal elements of any scenario – items, bosses, those lifesaving typewriters! – were, which in and of itself was a slightly regrettable downside of having every map visible from the off.

One of the most exciting changes for Resident Evil: The Board Game, then, is the inclusion of a more traditional dungeon-crawling mechanic of exploring the Spencer Mansion ‘as you go’. What looks to be an intuitive system of scenario cards (that correspond to numbered doors attached to each room you venture into) will mean that former safety net of knowledge and geographical awareness is gone completely. There’ll be no more planning a three-turn dash to an item box to recover that vital ammo or green herb, or getting all your aces lined up before tackling a particularly strong enemy or densely-populated room.

Add in to this an overhaul of the games method of encounter enemies, with Steamforged replacing the physical placement of enemy models with another organic, changing encounter deck. Venture onto a new room or tile, and it will tell you how many of these new encounter cards to draw. Will you get unlucky and draw multiple zombies (…or worse), or luck out and find yourself in an eerily empty room? Of course, given the success and variability of the tension deck mechanic in previous games, those will hardly be the only two options, either.

Explore-as-you-go looks set to work perfectly for the Spencer Mansion setting – see the likes of Betrayal at the House on the Hill or Mansions of Madness for examples of the genuine sense of the unknown and apprehension it can instill – and, buoyed by the fantastic tension and encounter decks, it seems once again Steamforged are doing a terrific job in crafting an experience that will uniquely honour the style and nature of the original game. 2 and 3 were more action-oriented affairs as videogames, 1 was an at-times disorienting and paranoia-inducing descent into a labyrinth of the unknown, and by all accounts Resident Evil: The Board Game looks set to channel this wholeheartedly.