Developer: Stroboskop
Platform: PC (Reviewed)
Genre: Adventure, Horror, First-person
Publisher: DreadXP
Sylvio: Black Waters is a short psychological horror game. This game is the third instalment of the Sylvio Series, which had two previous games. Sylvio: Black Waters was developed by Stroboskop and published by DreadXP. Games similar to this game are Amnesia, Layers of Fear and more. This game is only available for the PC.
Sylvio: Black Waters is a single-player game where you play as Juliette, who is a ghost hunter. The story for this game follows a similar premise to the other previous games, where Juliette spends her time in creepy locations recording ghost evidence. The game plays out similar to where you capture ghost images and record EVP’s decipher puzzles, all whilst exploring a location that is quite peculiar to the rest. This instalment for Black Waters adds a science fiction eeriness which sets it apart from the previous games. As someone who has not played the previous games, I found out that this game picks up from where the second Sylvio game had left off in terms of the story. I found the story to be decently captivating. It was not anything out of the ordinary, mainly because you are roaming a desolate place whilst ‘capturing’ ghosts.
The controls for the game are very straightforward. When starting the game, you are brought into a sequence where you have to wind up a recorder that tells you the basic controls of interactions. The controls were nicely mapped on the keyboard and worked smoothly with no noticeable delay.
The visuals of the game resemble another first-person horror game by the name of Slender: The Arrival, which has a realistic yet eerie atmosphere. The almost fuzzed-out graphics give the game a more spooky vibe, especially with the ambient lighting in certain areas. I quite liked the lighting in this game as it created a path for the player to follow, which would keep them from getting lost. The recording mechanic visuals are really nice as well, as it has a subtle orange hue to make it look rundown and rusty. The game does a nice job of creating an unsettling environment, one that almost seems to resemble Mars. The game truly is best played with headphones on. A lot of the gameplay mechanic involves listening to the voice recordings of spirits paired with dreary noises, which adds to the horror ambience. The voice acting done for the recordings/characters makes the game a lot more captivating to play as it puts you in the player’s position. Character makes the game even more captivating to play. In addition, the soundtrack to this game was really outstanding as it almost had a subtle folk churchy type of beat. The visuals coincide with the sound effects to really add to the alluring yet creepiness of the game.
Sylvio: Black Waters is a game where your main objective is to explore the world whilst discovering fragments of videos and voices that belong to a number of spirits/people. The mechanic of finding these EVPs made the game much more realistic in the sense of their sound quality. What I quite liked is that after having found the recording, you had the ability to rewind, forward or speed up the audio. The game does such a good job at backmasking messages onto the audio, which gets the player to really pay attention to what is being said. The underlying messages are context clues to the unforeseen events/locations that you will be exploring within the game. In the sense of spookiness, there were not really any jumpscares or sudden frights that I was expecting when playing the game, which was an interesting take on this horror game title.
Something I had found by surprise was that there was a bit of combat in the game, nothing too out of pocket but a little here and there, which I think was done to vary the game mechanics in places. The combat in the sense of this game was done through the use of these guns, but I felt that when ‘attacking’ the ghosts, they were relatively easy to defeat. Now, the game took me about 6 hours to complete, and once I started playing it, it was enjoyable. The game is enjoyable in the sense that it is different to other horror games that people often tend to play. The mechanics are interesting, and they follow through the game in a really good way.
If you are looking for an atmospheric, well-short horror game with aspects of ghost hunting and collecting EVPs, then this game is just for you. Sylvio: Black Waters sets itself apart from usual horror games by creating an unsettling environment through the use of outstanding audio. Even if you have not heard or played the previous Sylvio games, you can still check out Sylvio: Black Waters!
Overall: 7/10
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