By Aegis Malkav 
Have you ever grown tired of modern survival horror games and wished to go back to the golden era of the genre where managing resources, fixed camera angles, puzzle-solving, and tense atmosphere were the main focus? Then you’re in luck because Hollowbody is waiting for you.
Developed solely by Nathan Hamley of Headware Games, Hollowbody serves as a tribute to classic survival horror titles such as Silent Hill, Haunting Ground, and Rule of Rose. That being said, it’s immediately clear when playing that around 90% of its inspiration comes from the original Silent Hill trilogy and that’s certainly not a bad thing.
The events of Hollowbody take place in an unspecified dystopian future somewhere in England. At some point, a bio-terrorist attack ravaged the country, forcing the government to create a floating city surrounded by walls where only those who could afford entry were protected from the catastrophe. Those left behind were abandoned to their fate.
The game’s opening menu immediately establishes this bleak tone. A series of visual sequences paired with a haunting soundtrack evoke feelings of abandonment, loneliness and desolation before you’ve even started playing.
Before beginning your journey, Hollowbody offers several quality-of-life options that allow players to tailor the experience to their preferences. You can switch between fixed camera angles and a modern over-the-shoulder perspective, choose between tank controls and modern controls and toggle between walking and running. These options help satisfy both old-school survival horror fans and newcomers alike.
You start the game several decades after this incident playing as Sasha, who works as a biological waste cleaner who mysteriously disappears by the end of the prologue, 12 days after the prologue the game switches to the real protagonist called Mica who’s set on finding her missing partner Sasha venturing herself into the quarantine zone.
The place in question where the events take place is in a desolated town that has been cut off from the rest of the country, through the game you go through 3 specific zones: The apartments building, the sewers and finally the train stations with the town streets being the nexus between all the areas.
When you play the game you can tell that the areas take a lot of inspiration from the famous town where it rains ashes, from the desolated look of the town where half of It is in ruins while the other has been slowly being taken by nature.
One of the most interesting gameplay systems comes in the form of Mica’s augmented reality interface. Rather than displaying a traditional HUD, the game integrates information naturally into the world.
This system provides details about corpses encountered throughout the game, including gender, occupation and cause of death. It can also highlight important locations and collectible items making exploration easier without feeling intrusive.
Saving your progress is handled through phones and storage cabinets scattered throughout the environment. Interestingly, these save locations also contain some of the best conversations in the entire game.
Much of Hollowbody’s lore is delivered through notes left behind by former residents before everything collapsed. However, the most compelling storytelling comes through supernatural signals detected using the C.O.T.A.C radio. These transmissions allow players to experience some of the final moments of residents as the outbreak unfolded adding additional layers of mystery and tragedy to the world.
There are four main enemy types throughout Hollowbody, excluding the game’s only boss encounter. Yes, you read that correctly, there is only one boss fight in the entire game. Once again the inspirations are impossible to ignore as many of the enemies bear a striking resemblance to creatures fans of classic survival horror will immediately recognize.
One aspect that deserves praise is the lock-on system. It may genuinely be one of the most reliable lock-on systems in the genre. Not only can it identify enemies from impressive distances but it can also detect them through walls and floors. At times it almost feels like having your own motion tracker capable of spotting threats long before they become visible.
Combat is divided into two familiar categories: melee and ranged weapons.
Melee combat feels intentionally clunky, requiring players to learn enemy attack patterns if they hope to avoid taking damage. This becomes particularly important because the game is stingy with repair sprays, making health management a constant concern.
Ranged combat begins with a six-shot revolver but players can discover additional weapons throughout the game if they’re willing to thoroughly explore each area.
One important mechanic is the stomp system. Defeating an enemy isn’t enough as you must finish them off once they’re on the ground. Failing to do so leaves you vulnerable to attacks from enemies crawling toward you so quick reactions are essential.
Now let’s talk about puzzles and I’ll be blunt about it. Some are good and actually force you to use your brain while others are hilariously easy and there’s no in between.
Honestly i would have preferred that there was a more balanced puzzle difficulty in order to keep you sharp but unfortunately thats one of survival horror games biggest flaws which is the lack of consistency when it comes to puzzle difficulty or creativity, in the end it wouldn’t be fair to put the blame specifically on Hollowbody because that’s a trait that many games share including the biggest heavy hitters of the genre like the Resident Evil series.
The game has 3 different difficulties: Casual, Intended and Punished.
The game’s difficulty aint that hard so i highly recomment to start on the Intended difficulty because Punished can only be unlocked after you complete the game once, lastly the only 2 things that differentiates Intended from Punished are the next: Enemies hit harder and they’re more aggressive being most of them capable of killing you in two hits and also that the enemies respawn after a short period of time, the only way to kill them permanently is to burn them with your lighter (Geez i wonder where ive seen that before) and with a weapon that you can only get after backtracking all the way into almost the beginning of the game when you get an item almost at the end of the game so yeah have fun with that.
The game has 3 different finales and one of them which is the secret one (If you’re a fan of Silent Hill 2 youll recognize immediately which end im talking about when you reach it) and that one can only be attempted on the highest difficulty, good news is that the game is quite short and can be done between 3 and 6 hours depending on your skills and puzzle solution skills.
New game + offers different types of goodies like the chance of playing in first person, dungeon crawl mode, big head mode and a very familiar weapon from another game which I’m not gonna tell to not spoil the surprise but you’ll see the pattern if you’ve been reading the review so far.
Before reaching my final conclusions I have to talk about the game’s flaws.
There’s some issues with the sound mixing where some conversations are hard to listen to because they drown in the environmental sound of the game.
The final boss fight ( If you can even call it a boss fight ) consists on a gimmick battle that doesn’t rely on your skill of resources,meaning that no matter how many ammo you’re saving towards the end like i did its gonna be worth nothing so don’t hesitate to burn the ammo through the game, lack of boss fights is also something that I got bummed about since I’ve been spoiled by other survival horrors before and got used to fight a boss at the end of each zone.
Lastly is the amount of plot holes that the story has and it’s a pity because the premise looks good enough to justify a sequel of the game since there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered so I hope we get to see one in the future.
Despite its flaws, Hollowbody is an impressive throwback to the survival horror games that defined the PlayStation 2 era. The fact that the game was developed almost entirely by a single person makes the achievement even more remarkable.
It’s clear that Nathan Hamley has a deep appreciation for classic survival horror and that passion shines through every aspect of the experience. From its atmosphere and environmental design to its resource management and puzzle-solving, Hollowbody successfully captures the spirit of the games that inspired it.
It’s an easy recommendation for anyone who loves old-school survival horror.
Hollowbody launches on June 5th for approximately £14.99/$14.99 and features 26 achievements worth 1,000 Gamerscore.
- Fantastic recreation of classic PS2-era survival horror
- Excellent atmosphere and environmental storytelling
- Flexible camera and control options
- Strong exploration and lore systems
- Uneven puzzle difficulty
- Underwhelming final boss encounter
- Several unresolved story plot holes
Fletcher Wilkinson
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