ECHOSTASIS’s curious and thoughtful horror doesn’t overlook the importance of an excellent shotgun

ECHOSTASIS is the third entry in Enigma’s Studio’s horror trilogy, and it’s one of the more interesting games I’ve played this year. There’s a demo on Steam, and you should grab it if you're interested, since everything I have to say about it is going to be a spoiler of some kind. I’ll attempt a brief description below, but a lot of the fun here is discovering how all its parts fit together, and how even its more prosaic game conventions are defamiliarised through a spooky, static-drenched ensorcellment.

You’re thrown into the game’s opening after you’ve entered your name in a purgatorial terminal, and it immediately feels a little like Bloodborne’s Yharnam might if Sony trolled the world by releasing it not for modern PCs, but for a consumer grade PC prototype left to marinate in embalming fluid for several decades. It takes an effort just to exist in this place - exploration drains away a resource named resolve. Even moving your head to look around is costly, as if perception itself were some exhausting act of will.

That’s the vibes, and what vibes they are - there’s a depth and stark beauty to the image manipulation that elevates it far above the ‘we’ll bung some scanlines and RGB manipulation on it and call it a day” you sometimes get with retro homages. The game itself is part text adventure, part FPS, and part exploration puzzler. You’ll quickly fall into a rhythm of discrete runs that have you trying to unlock shortcuts and other permanent progress points before your resolve runs dry.

Hey! It's me! | Image credit: Enigma Studio/Rock Paper Shotgun

To begin with, you’re helplessly at the mercy of shambling pink ghouls and floating, orb-flinging phantasms, but progress far enough in a given stage, and you’ll usually find yourself a very nice shotgun. Kill enemies, get resolve bonuses. It feels like a joke, almost. To leave you grasping for something tangible amongst clattering sideshows of disparate images and haunted mazes, and then give you little ‘+5!’ time bonuses for gibbing bad dudes with a boomstick. But it also fits into the game's whole personality: a disorientating nightmare infused with a sense of traditional adventure and optimism - and both a love letter to, and deconstruction of, familiar tropes.

It’s that hidden optimism - a pinprick-thin beam of natural light at the end of a twisting maze of simulacra and vaguely SOMA-ish sci-fi despair - that resonated most with me here. It’s absent the post-squared irony you might typically associate with the vaporwave beach loading screens and accompanying reverb-soaked elevator muzak. The writing feels open and authentic; the mysteries worth unraveling. This aside, there’s a palpable horror tension to the almost masocore, trial-and-terror game loop that props it all up very sturdily. Usually, horror games giving me a shotgun just make me scared for what’s about to pop out. Here, I’ve never been so happy to see one.