Tormented Souls

If you love classic survival horror titles, Tormented Souls needs to be on your radar. It’s a terrifically terrifying love letter to Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Alone in the Dark. With brilliant puzzles, a genuinely scary setting to explore, and unsettling monsters to face, it’s the kind of game that will shock you to your core and stick with you long after the credits roll. While it undoubtedly wears its old-school inspiration on its bloodied sleeve, make no mistake: Tormented Souls is a modern survival horror masterpiece.

Tormented Souls is a melancholic love letter to the fans of classic survival horrors. You need to play it if the phrases “fixed camera angles”, “tank controls” and “backtracking” give you goosebumps. [11/2021, p.32]

Tormented Souls is an excellent love letter to survival horror games of old. With that comes limited saving, dodgy voice acting and clunky combat but that doesn't detract enough from the exploration and puzzle solving to sour the experience. Fans of the genre absolutely must give this a try.

As an indie game Tormented Souls is never going to reach Bloodborne or Resident Evil level of polish but that’s ok. Despite its lower end graphics (compared to the latest titles on current generation, and even last generation consoles) it holds up. It holds up because it plays on that nostalgia for the survival horror games of old.

The average gamer might want to think twice before picking Tormented Souls up, as mechanically it feels outdated and often rather unwelcoming. The lousy voice acting and unconvincing character models will provide further reason for them to throw in the towel early, too. However, if you’re a fan of old-fashioned survival horrors and find yourself yearning for one that offers a modern lick of paint and a new setting, there’s a very high chance you’ll absolutely love it. It’s not as good as the classics of the genre, but developers Dual Effect and Abstract Digital have delivered something that is hot on their heels.

Is it more difficult to play than it should be? Absolutely. Did the developers make it more annoying than the 20-year-old games which inspired it? Indeed. However, it still manages to be a charming experience for fans of this content because the care the developers put in is so patently obvious via fantastic locations, a solid story, and a final boss fight that doesn’t try the player’s patience. The developers clearly wanted to bring back retro survival horror in a way that people could enjoy, and while they don’t entirely succeed, it’s good more often than it isn’t — and that’s more than I can say about the glut of Resident Evil and Silent Hill clones out there.

Admittedly, it is refreshing to see this classic style of game brought back to modern consoles, and some players may even appreciate the way this feels like an at-times-terrifying ’90s throwback. But even if you can look past its unoriginality, the lack of polish in stiff voice acting, character animation, and numerous bugs break the immersion. Retro revivals are cool, but if a game brings nothing new to the table and ends up worse than the existing ones it’ll inevitably be compared to, you may as well just dust off the old PlayStation and play those instead. [Issue#6, p.88]

This is for the fans a masterpiece of horror, looks like some horror game from ps1 and ps2 , the game remember me lost things about this golden era of horror classic. The game is hard but is perfect for à survival horror.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Tormented Souls, the work of the Chilean studio Dual Effect, presents itself as a video game, adding a new dimension to digital archaeology. Analyzing the diverse perspectives of those of us who have walked its halls, a clear conclusion emerges: the game is a love letter, sometimes excessively faithful, to the golden age of survival horror (1996-2002).Before beginning this review, it is imperative to recognize the value of this Latin American production. Under Chilean direction, the studio has achieved what many higher-budget projects fail to accomplish: the capture of an atmosphere. The game not only imitates the fixed camera angles and chiaroscuro lighting of references like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but uses them to evoke a sense of childlike vulnerability and primal terror. The music and level design are not mere coincidence; These are narrative elements that transport the player to an era where fear stemmed from the unseen.Tormented Souls begins with its protagonist, Caroline Walker, who receives a mysterious envelope containing a photograph of twin girls (Anna and Emma). A connection to these girls triggers a migraine, and after some initial cinematic events, you awaken in a bathtub, naked and connected to a medical machine. Looking in a mirror, you discover that one of your eyes has been removed. Thus begins the macabre game.Tormented Souls unfolds and its controls emulate the early Resident Evil games, with a fixed camera and fixed points that cannot be manipulated. This can lead to highly complex puzzles to solve. While the difficulty is an incentive that encourages "deep conceptualization," there is a fine line between intellectual challenge and logical ambiguity. There are mathematical and conceptual puzzles reminiscent of the density of classic games, and other puzzles that lack a coherent structure, forcing you to resort to external solutions that, even after being revealed, feel arbitrary. This "lack of experience" in game design can diminish the fluidity of the narrative. Tormented Souls, drawing inspiration from Silent Hill, features clunky melee combat, and the animations of the protagonist, Caroline Walker, also suddenly leave much to be desired. However, within the context of spiritual survival horror, this rigidity (including the tank controls) is a deliberate design choice. The wandering breaks the visual immersion and reinforces the avatar's vulnerability. Nevertheless, it's undeniable that the mediocre dialogue and the scarcity of final cutscenes detract emotionally from a story that, while interesting, feels constrained by its own reverential respect for the **** biggest point of friction lies in the save system, limited by consumables. Here, a battle rages between two philosophies: The purist vision, resulting from limited saves that generate real tension and consequences for mistakes; and the modern vision, representing an anachronistic system that adds no strategic difficulty but punishes external factors (lack of time, technical failures) and alienates the contemporary player. I believe the lack of a minimal autosave system or more balanced ammunition management suggests that the balance between "homage" and "frustration" isn't always successfully **** conclusion, Tormented Souls is an impeccable yet imperfect ode. It triumphs masterfully in recreating a lost atmosphere but stumbles by inheriting design flaws that the industry has already overcome. It's a must-play for genre enthusiasts seeking a "spiritual" experience, provided they're willing to sacrifice modern conveniences on the altar of nostalgia. RATING 7/10

This game has a great retro vibe and decent spooks. But my god, the gameplay is weak, the cameras can be funky, and the second half is basically Walkthrough Bait. I finished it but I was thrilled when it was over.

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about a retro-style horror game, but after the first few minutes of gameplay, I was thrilled with what Tormented Souls was about and the throwback style it used. Everything was polished and the amount of detail was a great treat. It was scary, and the storyline was gripping. The puzzles were unique and fun. The music was a treat. Mixed with spooky sounds of an old mansion fit so well.