Psychological Nightmare with Difficult Puzzles

Bring a change of pants and prepare for intense frights if you can get over Visage’s clunky mechanics and minimized puzzle clues. The three main chapters and different endings offer plenty for a brave gamer to uncover but will have many frustrated when they need to use the controls developed by SadSquare Studio quickly. Other players may not enjoy Visage’s flashing lights or suicide themes, but the overall graphics are almost photorealistic. The Load Screen reviews the indie first-person single-player horror game for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Game Pass.

There is not much back story for the “hero” Dwayne, but the game begins with an extreme cutscene where he murders his family and then himself. He rises again within the house that is the real story of Visage. Most of the narrative, including two of the three chapters, happens in the house. The oversized manor is creepy on its own, with tight, poorly lit hallways that seem to wind impossibly between dozens of individual rooms. We appreciated that the game warms the player up to its environment with an exploration mode and does not trap them into any chapter functions first.

The graphics and sounds of Visage make even wandering the house psychologically unnerving. Details of every object inside the horror show are photorealistic, with good texturing and light reflections. Like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, many items are interactable, and the gamer can examine those features in a preview mode. I nearly lost it when inspecting a random object, and the room darkened since the game loves to turn off lights and blow bulbs out. Those Poltergeist-style home possessions turn up when the monsters roam, and lights really start flashing. Add in the off-putting ambient tones of the soundtrack, and hairs stand on end, particularly during the random crash sounds that give the strong impression the player is never alone in the house.

Sounds and lighting are integral to the puzzle mechanics by guiding Dwyane to his next objective, so it is disappointing that captions leave out nonverbal sounds like the unnerving audio guide points. The puzzles are quite difficult in Visage, and losing a portion of the subtle assistance the game gives can make solving them impossible. Also, the lighting clues often use fast flashes that could cause issues for those with Epilepsy. However, when any of the souls trapped in the house catch Dwayne the personal ways in which they kill him raise the tension with scaling visual focus and gruesome sound effects.

The lighting and audio clues are only one of Visage’s many issues. Player controls are complicated, and there is a limited inventory space that forces the issue further. Dwayne must hold some items for using them, like lighters and pills, but he can only store five single-handed ones. Most of that gear has a limited life, but that is not the only usable gear throughout the game. Other elements, such as keys, require bouncing into the inventory menu and selecting the right one, which is problematic. Pulling up the correct object in a limited time is beyond frustrating with inconsistent autosaves. Then there are the pushable objects with no UI, so there is no direct way to tell they are interactable.

SadSquare Studio made an immersive horror explorer in a well-designed haunted house with their development of Visage. However, the complicated puzzles mixed with the problematic controls and inventory will turn off some players. Fans of classic psychological horror games will love this title, and it rivals Resident Evil 7’s hide and seek mechanics with well-placed jump scares. The Load Screen team enjoyed the intense frights from Visage but had issues with the mechanics. Xbox Game Pass users can try it for themselves in time for Halloween.

Visage

• Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

• Developer: SadSquare Studio

• Publisher: SadSquare Studio

• Release Date: 10/30/2020

• Played on: PC