Survival horror is a genre that I love, simply because of the stories of struggle it presents. From tales of combatting overwhelming trauma to the hard choices that define who we are, the genre allows for the deep-seeded fears of humanity to be explored in an active way. Whether your character is powerful or a victim, the stories these games tell can speak to you through terror. Hollowbody doesn’t really accomplish any of this. It attempts to pull at your heartstrings but only manages a slight tug once in a while. There’s not really anything here that left an impact on me, and that’s a huge problem for games of this genre.

Your friend has gone to investigate a city off the British isles that was bombed 60 years ago. This was to contain a disease that was getting out of control and the government deemed it the only option. Before doing so, they evacuated whomever wasn’t sick into a floating, manmade city just off the coast. Upon losing contact with her, you take matters into your own hands and fly out to search for her in the ruined city. Now the floating city was really interesting to see glimpses of as it’s sort of futuristic. It could have made for an interesting setting on its own, but we get to explore the dilapidated one instead. It’s strange to fly there in a hovercar, using a heads-up-display while driving, to enter an area where technology stopped advancing decades ago. I’d have liked to see that contrast more, but we don’t get to. Upon arrival, the car crashes from the sky and we find ourselves on a rainy street amongst creatures with hollow bodies. You’ve lost contact with your friend on the radio, so we decide to go to the top of the highest building we can see. Making your way through an old apartment building by solving puzzles and finding accounts of previous tenants. When you reach the roof, you find a man standing on the edge. A few dialogue choices present themselves and you might be able to get him to back away from it if you say the right thing. This is one moment where the direness of the situation hits, and I believe is the climax to the introduction of the game. It asks questions about the morality of the bombing as well as introduces the enemies of the game. Unfortunately, the morality of it is fairly obvious and the enemies might as well be an afterthought.

Enemy design is fairly limited and so are your methods of dealing with them. Most are ghostly creatures, missing certain parts, while others are larger and have what look like worms sprouting out of them. All they ever do is walk at you slowly and attempt to slap you with no clear animations for them. There is a boss battle that changes things up, but not in a revolutionary way and the actual mechanics of it are well past their expiration date by that point. You can engage the hollow bodies with ranged weaponry or melee. Melee feels like there’s no impact. Enemies barely flinch, however, most times you can just keep swinging and finish them off. There are a few different makeshift weapons to pick up like a board with nails and a traffic sign, and while each has different attack patterns, neither feel great to use. The same can be said for ranged weapons. The revolver feels like a slingshot as it takes six bullets to dispatch basic enemies. Meanwhile the bow only takes a couple arrows. It’s easily the best weapon to use, but you can’t get your arrows back which is a bummer. The only other weapon I found was the shotgun, and sadly it doesn’t pack a punch either. There’s simply no feedback for the weapons and the clunky combat sandbox is a real detriment. You can’t dodge or block and the lock-on system doesn’t help you land melee hits effectively. The range of them differs, but it’s hard to tell where you’re swinging, so most of the time I was just hitting the button blindly. It worked out, which is not a compliment. The combat and the enemies were just uninspired and dull. There was no strategy to fighting them and no reward for doing so. They don’t drop resources and there’s no XP, plus they don’t really present a threat, so after the intro, I was just running past them to the end. While the enemies can be bypassed, the puzzles gating your progress can’t be circumvented for better and for worse.

Puzzle design is all over the place. Some are mindnumbingly dull, others are so obtuse that you just have to luck into solving them, while some actually seem like they have thought put into them. One of the intro puzzles involves figuring out a safe combination, which is hinted at being the resident’s graduation. You see a photo with a child and a thirty balloon, most likely the resident’s age and assume the child to be three or four. The resident’s medical record says her birthdate and the picture of her at her graduation ceremony shows her pregnant. This being one of the first puzzles really gives the impression that the rest will have layers like this, but not really. The puzzle that gave me the most frustration because of how unclear it was is the flaming trash. So there are reused textures and assets all over the game in that it’s not clear what you can and cannot interact with. When the character does look at something there’s a slow zoom and she says something pointless and the camera pans back to her. Because of how much time this wastes, you’ll be disincentivized from checking everything. Well there’s a floor of the apartment building where doors are covered in roots, preventing you from progressing. What do you do to get rid of them? You are equipped with a lighter from the beginning of the game, maybe that? You also found a bottle of vodka, so that could be used as an accelerant right? Well it does as you pour it in some trash and set that alight so the sprinklers will go off, opening the doors. Why the roots retreat from the water, I have no clue. Not to mention you see the same trash pile all over the place. The only difference is a small red light above it, a smoke detector. Now if the light on it was blinking, that would be a good subtle hint, which I know the developer thought of because of other puzzles, but this one had me flabbergasted. I only guessed what to do after running back through the entire building multiple times. This took a lot of time as many areas, even tiny ones, required about a minute of load time despite the sparse decor. It’s surprising how varied the ideas behind the puzzles are, but none really leave a positive impact. Only one involving a machine with human arms sticking out of it really made me go, “wow that’s rad,” but the puzzle itself wasn’t really much of one.

Hollowbody lacks a satisfying combat system, intuitive puzzles and atmosphere. So what does it have? I wish I could answer that with something positive, but I just can’t. The experience was just so bland and at times frustrating. Combat doesn’t feel good mechanically and the enemies are so unthreatening that engaging with them felt more like a chore than anything else. Puzzles are where the game had the most potential, but the mixed bag usually led to disappointment. Visually, the game has no identity. Many of the buildings and object assets repeated so often with no differentiators that made the city feel as uninspired as the rest of the experience. Some voiced radio signals you find attempt to add some emotional layers, which only slightly gave me some connection to the world. Ultimately, the only feeling I have left after playing it is emptiness. It failed to leave any impact on me whatsoever. In fact, it left me feeling hollow.