Black Soul Review

By – Steven Smith

The survival horror genre has undergone many changes over the years.  Some titles (F.E.A.R., Dead Space) take the Horror aspect to mean big weapons and lots of jump scares.  Others (Amnesia, Slender) have focused on the survival idea by completely removing combat from the game. Italian developer XeniosVision has decided to take the genre back to its roots (Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil and Silent Hill) in their newly released Black Soul. The controls are clunky, the puzzles can be a bit confusing and the zombies are better at combat than the character; which is exactly how I feel a Survival Horror game should be.

The story takes place in a small town nestled in the English countryside named Blackwood. You assume the roles of Ava and her brother Sean.  Ava is a reporter intent on investigating the strange occurrences that have quarantined the town. Sean travels to Blackwood in an attempt to save his sister from the horrors found there.  The game will automatically switch characters for you as events unfold. The story itself, which is actually very sad, revolves around the dead coming back to life and is told through diary entries found around the game world.  There is almost no voice acting and only a few short cut scenes. I really like this minimalistic form of storytelling as it avoids the common pitfalls of being either too campy or trying to spell out every minor detail and plot point.  It was also quite refreshing to have a zombie game where the cause of the outbreak is not some evil corporation or a military experiment.

Controlling your character is both simple and unwieldy at the same time. You can move in only two directions, forward and backwards, while using the mouse to turn.  This means there is no way to strafe or sidestep the many dangers.  Usually the safest course of action is to turn 180 degrees and run.  Of course running is not always wise as the third person perspective doesn’t necessarily show what is in front of you. This sets up the classic Survival Horror trope of forcing you to have already walked into a hazardous situation before showing you the actual danger.

Another classic is the darkened corner, which may or may not hide an imminent threat.  Black Soul pulls this off quite well. You are given a flashlight but it can only be aimed around the area in front of you and only if your character is stationary.  There were times when I could hear moaning or shuffling but not see the zombie until shining my light on it.  In fact most of the mechanics in the game have been seen before in other classic horror games, but this is not a bad thing at all.  XeniosVision made a perfect homage to these earlier titles that also stands on it’s own as an original game.

Traversing your way through the game presents a few obstacles, namely fighting zombies, solving puzzles and just plain getting lost in the level.  As you play there are various items to pick up and place in your inventory. One of the first items will be a map, which looks hand drawn and definitely not to scale.  This makes it a bit harder to read and thus figure out where you actually are.  It took me a while to get used to the idea that this was not a precise map but more of a guideline. Once I had visited every area in the map and moved to the next location I became really lost as there was not a new map.  In fact most of the game areas are not mapped for you.  There were a few times I regretted not making a hand drawn map for myself as it is very easy to get turned around with the odd camera angles, especially if you are focused on a zombie encounter.

Fighting the undead can be very frustrating.  The camera angles sometimes obstruct your view and the characters themselves are not designed around efficient combat.  Each character has a choice of three weapons; a crowbar, a 9mm pistol and a powerful third weapon capable of killing a zombie with one shot.  For Ava this is a .44 magnum revolver while Sean gets to use a double barreled shotgun.  The key is choosing which weapon is right for your situation.  The crowbar is surprisingly effective, especially in the hands of Sean.

When playing as Ava I tried to avoid using the crowbar as it was slow and took several hits to kill a zombie, this made combat a matter of precise timing.  Sean swings the crowbar faster and harder, taking down zombies in just two quick hits.  Both characters are equally matched when it comes to the 9mm pistol, unfortunately it is not very effective.  The main advantage of the pistol is that you can attack from a safer distance, however this is severely mitigated because the camera angles don’t always allow you to properly aim.  When you do manage to hit your target it can take anywhere between four and seven shots to kill it.

One design choice I found interesting is that the only enemies you face are human zombies, there are no zombies dogs or birds, no giant snakes or frogs or mutant dinosaurs.  Typical Survival Horror games feel they have to keep introducing bigger and badder foes as you progress.  Black Soul keeps the enemies consistent throughout the game.  I liked this idea as I never found myself in a situation where I felt relatively safe because I was back to fighting low level monsters.  This does not mean that all zombies are the same, there is a little bit of variety.  You will encounter just a few different types of undead but each type has its’ own look, sound and behavior.  Some move faster and some are harder to kill, fortunately these two traits are inversely proportioned.  The faster a zombie moves the fewer 9mm shots it takes to kill them, whereas the slowest movers take the most hits to bring down.  If you have the big magnum or shotgun it can kill any of these creatures in one shot at close range, the downside is that ammunition is very limited for these weapons.

No matter how well you fight, eventually a zombie will get close enough to attack you.  They have two attacks, a swipe and the bite.  If one strikes you it will decrease your health. Your health is represented by a colored EKG line in the inventory screen.  If the line is green you are at full health, as you take injury it changes from green to yellow, orange then red.  After red you die.  Once your health drops to orange your character becomes visibly injured, grabbing their side and shuffling along.  They cannot run in this state which makes it impossible to get away from most enemies. Fortunately all you need is a medkit to bring your health back up.  If you are bit, the health meter will also show the word Infected.  You must use an Antidote to cure the infection and then a Medkit to restore health.  While infected your health will slowly drop over time.  You will not be able to save your game if you are engaged in combat or infected.

There are many different types of puzzles in the game, and you cannot advance the story until they are solved.  Some require you to solve problems, such as a sliding picture puzzle or moving an imaginary knight across a chessboard.  Others require you to find and interpret clues that give you the combination to a lock.  Sadly, you cannot look at the clue and the puzzle at the same time.  I resorted to taking pictures of my monitor while the clue was displayed.  Even then there were a few puzzles I never quite figured out for myself.  Although I had the clue and a general idea of what it meant, I was unable to come up with the right answer.  At these times, I did the math and determined that there were only a few dozen different combinations

I would then try every possible permutation until I was able to brute force my way through. While this method got me through a few locks, it is not a good strategy for the whole game.  One particular lock has over 390,000 possible combinations!  For that one I kept studying the clue until the answer hit, then I felt foolish for not solving it sooner.  Finally there are the empty slot type puzzles where you must gather a number of unique items together and insert them into or onto a specific set piece.  While it was nice to see a wide variety of puzzles, they felt a bit disjointed overall. Some were well thought out and imaginative while others seemed overly simplified.

The graphics are decent for a small indie team. Since it is a horror game that takes place at night, most of the color palette is black and grey.  Though there are some nice color and shadow effects to be found inside of some buildings. In fact, many of the inanimate objects and set pieces are nicely modeled.  It’s not until things start moving that you notice any graphical issues.  In one particular scene, there is a beautifully rendered sheet of water flowing from overhead pipes.  Upon closer inspection, the water is flowing in a perfectly straight column which looks a bit unnatural.  The characters themselves look good but the animation is a bit stiff at times. This is perfect for the zombies movements, but it is a little awkward to see in Sean and Ava.

Where the game really shines is in the sound department.  Sometimes I would stop and listen to the ambient noise in a particular area.  From the sound of rain and distant thunder to eerie whispers and even a crying baby, there was always something a bit unsettling to hear.  On top of this is the sound of footfalls across various surfaces and the zombies themselves who groan and scream.  The lighting, or lack there of, along with the sights and sounds all combine to create a creepy atmosphere throughout the game.  There are some jump scares to be found, but they are few and far between.

There are some minor issues to be found. You need keys to open most doors in the game, and almost all the keys are named Common Key.  At one point, you find a key that can open all doors in a particular area, however it is labelled Passe-Partout which is the French term for Master Key.  Being that the developers are French this makes sense as something simply missed during the translation to English.  When Sean reloads his Double Barreled Shotgun it holds four shells instead of two.  There are also a few misspellings and grammatical errors found in the diary entries.

Given the size of the game and the fact that it was created by a small development team I am willing to overlook these minor issues.  My biggest disappointment was the many unuseable doors found in the game.  Often I would find a new area with several doors but when trying to open them I would get the message ,“This door is broken and cannot be opened.”   These broken doors look no different than any other, you have to actually interact with them to tell the difference. Essentially this new area would have just one actual door with the rest being just decoration.  Which was unfortunate because I really wanted to explore more of the game world.

Conclusion – Is it Worth Your Money?

The price of $7.99 is a bargain.  XeniosVision has crafted a classic survival horror game that, according to the developers, should take you about 14 hours to complete.   If you are a die hard Resident Evil or Silent Hill fan who is not happy with the latest entries in those series, I say grab yourself a copy of Black Soul and “Welcome back to the world of survival horror”.