Hollowbody review

While there are a decent amount of engaging and spine-chilling horror games on the market nowadays, for many the glory years of horror were over twenty years ago on the PS2. Whether you loved something more obscure like being chased around Haunting Ground by various creeps, or spent many hours wandering through the thick fog of Silent Hill, if you liked to feel unnerved and in danger it was a great time to be alive. Hollowbody is a throwback to this golden age of horror, and while it isn’t perfect, it’ll give you a nice dose of nostalgia and maybe even keep you awake at night.

Our protagonist Mica makes her money in the not so distant future world of Hollowbody as a black market shipper, traveling through dangerous locations with her partner Sasha. After deciding to explore the exclusion zone without you, Sasha has vanished, and after twelve days of worrying, you decide to try and find her in this walled off world devoid of life. It doesn’t take long for you to get stuck in the eerie ruins where people used to live, but it turns out you’re anything but alone in this place.

If you’ve played an old school horror game before then you’ll feel right at home in Hollowbody, although thankfully tank controls aren’t required for this spooky adventure. Mica is equipped with a gun and melee weapon just in case something goes wrong on her rescue mission, and can use them to deal with monstrous threats should the situation arise. I won’t pretend that using the melee weapons especially is anything but painful, but I also can’t deny that you’ll feel a little more helpless because of the sluggish speed and poor range of your attacks too. Guns are much more simple to use with a lock on function, but if you go too crazy with it you’ll be out of ammo and basically screwed for the rest of this horrific adventure.

Mica’s main mission in the exclusion zone is obviously to find Sasha, but to best do that she first needs to reach a high enough point to use her radio effectively. This means making your way up an apartment building full of death and things that want to slice you into convenient sized chunks, and conquering your first Silent Hill style dungeon (for want of a better word). To make your way through you’ll need to look for keys, hunt for key items and work out how to solve a puzzle or two. It won’t be easy, but with a bit of brain power and some nifty dodging and weaving you might just survive for a little while.

The puzzles especially will remind long time fans of the genre of old school horror games. Having to work out the year someone was born by using maths and clues in someone’s flat is done with nothing even slightly resembling hand holding, and this is but one of many brain teasers that’ll block your progress. This might not necessarily appeal to everyone, but I must admit I found it rather refreshing to be tested instead of being told the solution to a puzzle the moment I walked into a room.

The very best moments of Hollowbody will leave you panicked and sweaty, and although they aren’t particularly frequent, when they do hit; they really hit. Discordant music, horrific imagery, and waves of mutated monsters who want to chomp on you combine to create a nightmare situation, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

As much as Hollowbody is a fun horror romp, it has a lot of issues that while acceptable in 2002 aren’t so much in 2024. Battling an unwieldy camera swinging around as you’re under attack is a pain at best, and a distinct lack of save points mean you’ll likely lose a lot of progress at least a couple of times in Hollowbody’s short runtime – which could be frustrating enough to make players put the controller down and do something else.

Maybe worse than all these issues though is the map, which is hard to read and in certain areas non-existent. When stuck in labyrinthine environments full of corridors and rooms that all look similar, this issue becomes particularly miserable and with practically nowhere to save you’ll force yourself to push through unhappily more than once on your horror quest.

Hollowbody is a throwback to the creepy era of PS2 horror, for better and indeed for worse. Wandering through heavily Silent Hill inspired locations with little hope of survival is still as panic inducing and compelling as ever, but dealing with a poor map, a lack of save points, and frustrating combat is less so. Those looking for a spooky nostalgia trip will get a lot out of Hollowbody, but if you’re used to more modern experiences then you’ll likely be a bit put off by the gameplay more than the monsters. That said, for a one-person developer, this is a hell of an achievement.