Steam Game Review] Exploration is the Main Focus! Visage, a haunted house-like horror game

In this series, Mina Tsujimura, aka SteamMania, a core gamer on Steam, reviews in detail the recommended games available on Steam, a PC game platform that is currently enjoying a lot of popularity. She will introduce the fun of the game.

Visage" is a game developed by the Canadian independent game development studio SadSquare Studio, which began development in January 2015. The game was successfully funded multiple times on Kickstarter during its development, and an early access version was released in October 2018.

The game is an exploration-based first-person survival horror game. According to the Q&A on the official website, the game was inspired by "P.T.," another first-person survival horror game that became popular worldwide in 2014.

The story takes you through a never-ending labyrinth in a house where there have been suicides, madness, and a family suicide, reliving the memories of those killed while searching for clues. For some reason, the family that died in this house has cursed you and played tricks on you. The player must find out for himself why he is cursed and what he has done to the family.

Sanity is the key to survival.

The feel of the controls is very similar to Layers of Fear, a game of the same genre released in 2016. Shelves and doors must be moved as if the mouse were actually opening them while holding down the left mouse button. For this reason, we recommend that you set your mouse sensitivity to high beforehand.

Since this is a horror game mainly for exploration, you will advance the story by exploring the house and finding "key items". You do not need to save each time you find a key item or advance the story, as the game automatically saves when you find a key item or advance the story. If you want to save separately from that, you can also use the F5 key for a quick save.

Players have a status called sanity, which decreases if they stay in the dark for a long time or if they leave supernatural phenomena (randomly occurring strange phenomena) unattended. If it drops beyond a certain level, the player must take a pill (an item to maintain sanity) to heal. If you leave your sanity level over a certain level, you will be killed as soon as an enemy appears. Be sure to turn on the lights frequently, using light bulbs, candles, lighters, etc. that have fallen in various parts of the house.

Actually playing!

Now, let's try actually playing the game. Since horror games are bad for the eyes if the screen brightness is adjusted incorrectly, first set the gamma value and video settings from the options on the top screen. I think a little brightness is just right.

When you start the game, the opening movie will play. It starts with someone loading bullets into a gun in a basement. After the bullets are loaded, a family (woman, man, and child) tied to a chair is shown. (a woman, a man, and a child) tied to a chair.

After the movie ends, the main character wakes up in a mysterious room and is ready to be controlled. There is a scar on the floor, as if the date had been recorded. Had he been locked up?

As you open the door immediately in front of you, the phone rings. It is a call from a woman who seems to be an acquaintance of the landlord, who is worried that he has not seen her for three weeks.

The call ends, and you explore the neighborhood. In the bathroom, I find a pill, an item that restores sanity. There are two items, one in each hand. In the pocket there are five. You can have up to seven total. In addition, important items related to the story will be stored in a different location.

Continuing our search, we found a picture of a panda on the wall. If you pick up that picture, a chapter called "Lucy's Chapter - Invisible Friends" will begin. When you open the door, you will find a girl's room. Is it the room of a girl named Lucy?

When I explored Lucy's room, I found a mysterious picture at the back of the closet. In the picture, the girl knocks on the wall, and the black monster knocks back. As usual, I knocked on the wall and something knocked back. Hee-hee!

After knocking, I looked around the room and saw a gap in the door that had not been opened earlier... It seems that someone has opened it. When I proceeded to the other side of the wall where I knocked earlier, I found a picture of a bear and a doll. I wondered if this doll returned my knock.

Continuing my search, I found a door that would not open. The desk on the other side seemed to be blocking the door. Move the desk toward the other side.

When I move the desk and open the door, I hear the sound of the camera shutter. I look around the room and see the camera moving on its own.

As I pick up the camera, I notice a mysterious trace on the wall at the moment of the shutter release. I follow the mysterious trace.

At that moment, I see a figure from ahead!　Something approached us and left what looked like a syringe. Oh, the dreaded .......

I got myself together and followed the trail on the camera again. It led to one door as we continued on. I opened that door and pointed the shutter at the back wall, and at the moment of the shutter a picture of a large monster and a girl appeared. Heartbreaking!

There was nothing special in the room, so we decided to explore the other rooms. Looking for any unlocked rooms, I found the door under the stairs glowing red!　There is definitely something here.

We opened the door and found it led to the outside of the house. In the pouring rain, we followed a path littered with dolls, and a treehouse appeared. There is a ladder hanging over it, so I think I can manage to climb it.

Inside the hut were pictures that Lucy must have drawn. Looking at them in order from the top left, you can see that the monster spoke to Lucy from the TV and radio and gradually took her in. It ended with a picture that read "FRIEND Did it".

Looking around the cabin, we found a box with a key. The key was on the back of the drawing that Lucy had written. When we opened the box, we found a drawing of Lucy being injected. It looks similar to the syringe that was dropped by something that appeared earlier.

The next moment, the picture disappeared and the voice of a monster was heard. The monster's words gradually became more and more violent: "Stay with me, Lucy," "Your father and mother don't understand you, Lucy," "Get rid of him, Lucy," and finally the ground collapsed and I returned to the house I had just been in. I woke up in a room with what looked like a cover for a light switch placed in a messy manner.

When I looked at a nearby switch to turn on the light, I found that the cover had been ripped off and destroyed. It was completely wiped out. From here, we had to proceed with only a candle, a lighter, and a camera.

Sure enough, I got lost in the pitch dark and died after running out of pills. When you run out of electricity, the difficulty level increases considerably. If you run out of pills, it's practically game over. I should have used it more carefully in the beginning! (Crying)

There are no unnecessary combat elements! A horror game to enjoy the atmosphere!

My honest impression after playing the game is that it is easy to get screen-sick! I was so sick of the screen. The camera shakes slightly as you move, which makes you feel drunk beyond comparison with FPS games. Incidentally, I played the game after taking anti-sickness medicine.

When it comes to high difficulty horror games, there are many games where you have to run away from enemies, or you have to fight many times until you beat the enemy to advance the story, or even the horror scenes are not interesting because of the long battles! The long battles make even the most horrifying scenes boring! In this game, however, there is no fighting or chasing. Basically, players are slow and unable to hold weapons, so they cannot run around or fight off enemies. Therefore, managing status and remaining items is very important.

As this is still an early access version, only "Lucy's Chapter" and "Dolores' Chapter" are available, but you can get them now for much cheaper than the full version. If you are at all interested in the game, why not play it now?

Title Information

Visage" (SadSquare Studio)
Released October 2, 2018 (Early Access)
Price: 2,570 yen (as of February 7, 2020)
#

Author：Suchimu Mana (Mina Tsujimura)

Writer and gamer who belongs to Office Mica. Her favorite game genres include sandbox survival games and horror games. Her style of game playing is a text-chatting game player who is afraid of VC players.

Office Mica :#
Blog :#
Twitter :#