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It’s no secret that I enjoy a good horror game, just look at our Choo-Choo Charles Review. While that game is by no means a classic horror game, that rush from a good fright was still there! Let’s not get too sidetracked, at least not this early on. We’re here to talk about Tormented Souls.

This game is described as a modernization of classic horror, taking inspiration from the Resident Evil and Alone In The Dark series. Which, I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like a good time. After doing a little research, I found out two things: the game was going to be played from a fixed camera angle and with tank controls. I swear, reading that made me shiver (in a good way). Needless to say, I was excited, even more so when Mandy told me that she would join me for the wild ride that would soon follow.

Without further ado, let’s dive into what it was like for us to play Tormented Souls!

Tormented Souls: Thoughts and Impressions:

The premise of this game is that a letter has been delivered to you from a mysterious stranger. Inside of the letter is a picture of two girls that you just had a dream about. What does it mean!?! Well, that’s the exact question Caroline Walker (the MC) has, only, she has much more motivation than I do. She then proceeds to investigate the return address on the letter, then, makes her way to this location. Where did this letter come from you might ask, a creepy a** abandoned hospital. What’s inside of the hospital, you ask again? Well, you’ll just have to read on and find out won’t ya 😏

Being completely honest, I started this game, then had to stop and come back to it. To no fault of the game that is, I’m just always in a rush and don’t listen to dialogue. When I eventually got back and started LISTENING to what the Father NPC was saying things started to fall in line. But boy, running around those first few sections, that was a bit tough. You’re introduced to puzzle after puzzle, much like an escape room, where you’re not quite sure which piece fits into which puzzle. If you end up in this boat, just keep going, you’re not missing anything, certain puzzles were meant to be solved later.

Tormented Souls: Basic Mechanics:

From what we’ve experienced so far, the game is fleshed out quite nicely. Having a fixed camera angle + tank controls take the average enemy encounter to the next level. One minute you’re in a corridor with the perfect angle to fight a bad guy then, a step too far and suddenly you’re the one exposed. There were many instances where camera switching caught me off guard. My favorite would have to be walking into an unfamiliar room, a top-down view, with monstrous clanging in the background. I cannot tell you how fast we noped out of there!

Monsters n’ Such

Speaking of monstrous clanging, we haven’t talked about the badies. I’ll give you a lil sample:

A real looker that one is. What about this guy here:

do we see a theme forming? How about one more:

As we can see, the general theme is deformed patients with sharp attachments. This idea carries on throughout most of the enemies (at least the ones we’ve seen so far). To fight them you have a handful of options including a crowbar, a pressurized nail gun, and a pipe shotgun. I did not mistype there; your character constructs an OP shotgun out of metal piping, and it is devious. There’s also one more weapon, but we’ll leave that one for you to discover. I’m sure you’ll find it positively shocking.

Most enemies drop in a few shots, others take a bit more, but one thing is for sure. You bet your sweet cheeks I tried fighting as many enemies as possible using just the crowbar solely to conserve ammo…. that I ended up not needing. It’s just the law of conservation: put me in a scary place with limited resources, and I’ll die more times trying to conserve those resources than actually fighting for my life.

Pros:

If I had to pick a something I really enjoyed about this game, it would have to be the atmosphere. You see, I haven’t mentioned one of the game’s core mechanics, the dark. When your character is in the dark, they cannot see… obviously, but that’s not all. Stay in the dark too long and it’s game over. You do have a lighter to counter the darkness, but you can not hold the light and a weapon. This means that you have to consider your options when entering a new room. If you hear a monster and it’s dark, is it worth bum rushing them? Is there a means to light the room up? Can you safely make it to the other side? All of these should carefully be considered, especially with the limiting camera angles.

The developers seemed to have taken their time in how this mechanic was manipulated throughout the game and I look forward to seeing what other tricks they have up their sleeves.

Cons:

The cons thus far: the dialogue can be a bit…questionable? Specifically, when coming from the main character. The way that she engages in conversation feels robotic at times and in most cases served as comedic relief. While it was enjoyable in its own right – this made the main character feel indifferent and, in some cases, detached from what was happening around her. This, much like everything else in the game, could just be an homage to classic horror games. If it is then they’ve nailed it once again, but on a personal level, it did not add to the atmosphere in a positive way.

Below are just a few examples, two of which were back-to-back knee slappers.

Some of what Caroline says can feel so disconnected with the situation at hand, especially with the last comment. There are many MANY dead bodies, and of all of them this is the awful way to die? Needless to say we lost it when she said that, with the unfortunate being that this room was actually really creepy.

Tormented Souls Takeaways:

Everything runs as good as you would expect from the tank controls. You’re allowed enough flexibility to avoid incoming attacks, but only if you see them coming. This, in conjunction with a fixed camera, will leave you vulnerable in multiple situations. In most cases you will have to proceed unsure of what comes next. We highly recommend getting accustomed to dodging as early on as possible. Pro tip: If you opt for a stick and move playstyle early on, you just might save enough ammunition for the final act of the game.

If there’s one thing that we didn’t like in particular, it would be most of the MC’s lines. The atmosphere would be grim, intense even, we’ve just finished off a couple enemies. Then while inspecting the surroundings, Caroline would say something that felt very detached. The best example of this is all when she interacts with dead bodies. Even in late game, she asks questions that make you want to just shake her while screaming GET WITH THE PROGRAM!

This didn’t ruin the game for us by any means. In fact, for some situations it acted as a buffer when things felt a little too tense and we burst out in laughter. All things considered this game was a lot of fun to play through. We had a lot of fun playing through this game and look forward to future projects from this developer.

If you’ve played through this game, please let us know what you thought in the comments! And if you have any horrific recommendations for what we should play next, slap them right down there and we’ll get playin’.