If you need a horror game to tide you over till the Silent Hill 2 remake, you can do a lot worse than Becrowned’s demo

A wife guy amuse-bouche, if you will

While I’m all for building dread through a lingering introduction, it’s always a treat to play a horror game that wastes no time tearing the moorings of familiarity right out from underneath you, as is the case with 13th Street Studios’ Becrowned. In fact, the game’s demo managed to make me go “oooh” than “ah!” in three different ways before I’d even exited the starting elevator. It also made me go “ugh” once, because I opted against tank controls, despite the suggestion to use them with mouse and keyboard. I come to you as disembodied voice, trapped between the worlds of video game inputs, with a dire plea: don’t do that. Just use tank controls. I’d restart but I’m already in too deep.

What a beaut, eh? There’s something about capturing the actual ambition of PSX-era visuals, and not just wallowing in its limitations for grunginess, that I find really endearing. There’s still a fair amount of grunginess, granted, but with some added creative flair that makes Becrowned’s setting feel like its own place, despite obviously evoking some genre classics. Also, I’m glad to see the Silent Hill 2 tradition of having you play as a premiere wanker haunted by his own wankery adopted whole cloth:

Richard Torrance is a man who will do anything to get what he wants. Не is a man of strong will and unbreakable character. He is rational and cold-blooded. Richard strives to shape the world to his liking. Despite his efforts, he has never achieved what he truly desires - happiness. What led him to a world of endless suffering? Uncover the mysteries of the protagonist's past to find out.

Image credit: 13th Street Studio/Rock Paper Shotgun

I actually did restart and choose tank controls in the end. After the elevator shenanigans, I shuffled along a long corridor, found a knife on a corpse, then banged on a door until the person behind it got annoyed enough to send a scythe-limbed ghoul at me. Combat is incredibly awkward, and your dude swings the knife like a ping pong paddle. In other words, it’s everything I want from melee combat in a survival horror game with fixed camera angles and tank controls.

I won’t go into too much detail about the discoveries you’ll soon make, except to say that I get the feeling ol' Dicky Torrance has done some very bad things. I'm very much into the art and atmosphere here, and while we’re circling around the periphery of old school survival horror revival fatigue, Becrowned has enough going for it to be worth a look. Again, make sure you go with tank controls, unless you want to fully embrace the latent self-flagellation I’m sure is lurking somewhere close to the surface of the protagonist’s psyche.