Tormented Souls is a retro throwback to classic survival horror and the first game from Chilean developers Dual Effect and for a low budget project made by such a small team it is a really damn impressive game!

You play as Caroline Walker, a Canadian girl in her 20s who one day receives a mysterious letter from the Wildberger Hospital with a picture of twin girls and the message "Do you think you can just simply abandon us here" on the back of the picture. Looking at the picture Caroline gets a sharp pain and she can't get it out of her head causing her to suffer from nightmares, so after 2 weeks she finally decides to go and investigate just what's going on at this hospital for herself. The story is mostly told in that classic survival horror method of drip-feeding the player information through various documents you find while exploring and while the actual plot wasn't bad despite being quite predictable, I was still always fully engrossed because reading all about the background of the setting and characters was often more interesting than the plot itself.

As I previously stated, Tormented Souls is a classic survival horror game and if it wasn't for the more polished and pristine graphical look everything from the tank controls and fixed camera angles to the resource management, exploration based puzzles, limited saves (Like RE's ink ribbons only tape reels instead), setting (It's a damn mansion that was remodeled into a hospital which is the perfect mix of both RE and SH), oppressive atmosphere, droning and unnerving OST, story and of course especially the campy, robotic voice acted dialogue could trick you into thinking you're actually playing a long forgotten gem from the PS2 era and I mean that in the best way possible.

I also want to make a special mention to the puzzles themselves because the developers went all out on them. These were some of the most clever, unique and at many times very confusing and cryptic puzzles I've experienced in quite some time. One of my favorite things about the game is how inventory items are used because most have multiple uses throughout the entire game and aren't just something you pick up, use on one specific puzzle and then it just dissolves from your inventory like in most games. There's legit an item you get at the very beginning of the game and it just chills in your inventory until almost the very end and that's so cool to me. The puzzles really make you use your brain and felt more akin to something you'd see in a point and click adventure game than a survival horror and while some might complain about them being a bit too cryptic or convoluted at times, I personally loved them.

Tormented Souls is a game made by fans of the classic survival horror genre with masterful knowledge of exactly what made the iconic 90s hits like Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark as great as they were and why they're still regarded so highly today and while Tormented Souls is not accessible to newcomers of this genre in the slightest and it is a very (deliberately) dated game that is only going to appeal to hardcore genre fanatics, that doesn't change the fact it is one of the best survival horror games I've had the pleasure of experiencing in years and I can only hope we'll see more from Dual Effect in the future.

Reviewed on Oct 31, 2022


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