This week I played a game that started out great, with a dark and creepy atmosphere. Unfortunately, though it gets the lift-off right, it fails to deliver on the landing. The horror is quickly lost, and the game devolves into a tedious slog that loses its grip on the player.
The opening scene of Husk is extremely well put together. You are travelling on a train to Shivercliff with your family when they suddenly disappear. As you walk through the train in search for them you encounter no other people. But you see suitcases, books, uneaten food – all signs that people were on this train. It is fantastic visual storytelling that sets the scene for the rest of the game.
In the final carriage things get even weirder. All the seats have been turned to face away from you, something that shouldn’t be possible. It’s as if there is some invisible force saying you’re not welcome. Then, before you can contemplate this for too long, the train crashes.
After the train crash, the suspense only builds. You are lost in the wild, alone. Fog swells around you. You slowly walk toward the town and find it as empty as the train you started on. Then you start to notice things moving in the shadows. You aren’t alone. You are being hunted.
Finally you come across one of the creatures that is stalking you. And immediately all tension is gone. The creature looks horrifying enough, but it is ruined by animation that feels like it came from a high school project. It doesn’t feel like you are getting hurt, and fighting back has no weight behind the blows. In fact, I was actually surprised when I died because I didn’t even realise we were fighting.
After that all tension and potential for horror was lost. I figured out the best way to avoid enemies was to “stun and run” – a quick blow with your weapon to stun them before fleeing to safety. You don’t need to flee that far, a point drilled into you by the change in music. It’s trying to give you the feeling of being hunted. Instead it just feels like you need to run 100 meters once in a while.
The game starts slow, which is perfectly fine to set up the atmosphere. But then it stays slow. You can walk for 30 minutes before you come across anything interesting. The “puzzles” aren’t very involved: find a key, press a button, or explore a small maze until you can keep moving forward.
To top off the boring enemies and simple puzzles, the main character isn’t well written. He seems to forget about his family immediately, instead shouting “oh fuck!” every few minutes. This often comes as a surprise, since you as a player don’t always notice what he is “oh fuck”-ing about. As you progress he delivers some monologues about his past, which seem very out of place. I’m sure these are getting to some kind of point, but unfortunately I couldn’t make it that far.
The last level I played was a cave level. It was extremely dark, and a long and involved maze. At one point you come across some water that is being electrocuted. To progress, you need to shut off the power. So I backtracked, trying to follow the cables on the floor to the power source. Then the cables get very tangled and I got lost trying to find the way. After exploring for what felt like an hour, I still couldn’t find the button to press to disable the electricity.
I was bored, unterrified, and unengaged and I couldn’t see the game getting any better. I do try and finish every game I play, but after this level I couldn’t keep going. So I gave up.
The game is also littered with a some strange bugs that make it feel unfinished. Every time you examine or pick up an item, your light goes out and you have to turn it on again. If you save after unlocking a door, the door will relock after you load. Small details like that, and as I’ve said before, details matter.
Notice weird bugs – light goes out every time you examine an object, doors relock after load, details matter. When details like this are broken, it feels like the game developers haven’t tried.
In the end, I can’t say for sure that this is a bad game all the way through. What I can say is that, while it initially hooked me, flaws in the game design, storytelling, and niggling bugs ended up pushing me to move on to another game.
It’s a shame, because it does feel like there could be a good game here. It really shows how not applying that last bit of polish can ultimately set a game up for failure.
