You should check out Crisol: Theater of Idols

Now, I lived through the era where survival horror was in a bad place. While I loved the HD era of Xbox 360 and PS3 games, the horror genre was near dead thanks to COD. Even RE was taking a new path, and the closest thing we had was Bioshock… But thanks to RE7, horror is back and proved first person horror doesn’t need to be just running away, hiding, and solving tedious linear problems. And while we’re not expecting Bioshock 4 soon, we do have something definitely worth checking out for the time being, and there’s a great demo on Steam right now. Crisol: Theater of Idols is a mix of Bioshock, modern Resident Evil, and features plenty of creepy dolls!

Great!


What the Hell is Crisol: Theater of Idols?

From Vermila Studio, Crisol: Theater of Idols is a puppet/Clockpunk survival horror set in a twisted version of Spain. As Gabriel, a soldier who can use his own blood for ammunition, players will venture onto the island of Tormentosa, a beautiful hotspot of death, carnage and spilt blood to fulfil a divine mission from the Sun God.  

Gabriel has a divine gift allowing him to use his own blood as ammunition for powerful weapons, turning his own life source into bullets. The trade-off is brutal, as the blood in his veins can be used to withstand the brutality of his enemies, or be used to fend them back, as he uncovers the secrets of this Clockpunk, blood-soaked nightmare.

And it would be easy to make a comparison of RE7, meets Bioshock, meets Clockpunk, thanks to the beautiful aesthetics, the first-person perspective, and the robotic horrors/abilities you harbour to fend them off with. But even in this early demo, I found a couple of things noteworthy, along with the confident and solid gameplay design.


Divine beauty and blood …. And the yellow paint

Crisol is quite striking in terms of presentation and art style, showcasing a beautiful and haunting rendition of Clockpunk, where the world runs on gears and ticks along like a finely tuned clock. The incorporation of religious undertones, namely the striking nature of Latin-Catholic art, can be stunning and a little unsettling, depending on how you view it. But regardless, I love the fusion of the two styles, the scientific framework meeting the cultured overtones of beautiful religiously inspired art in the world design or presenting some terrifying-looking enemies. Even down to the golden gilded style weapons Gabriel handles, and the means they extract blood feels very … Spanish Inquisition-like.

While there was only a small section to play in the demo, there were a few things that popped into my mind by the end. Namely, the strong sense of flow and great exploration on offer in the world, featuring key hunting, looping level design, and plenty of points for ambushes and strategic manoeuvres. But also, just how much character the world had in the grand and finer details. Everything told a story, and it all reminded me fondly of playing Bioshock for the first time back in 2007, and staggered at how a game world could grip me, make me admire the decay, and relish every morbid discovery. It’s truly stunning graphically and is accompanied by excellent sound design.

My gripe so far with the demo is …. Yellow paint.

Okay, I don’t want to sound like a big moaner of yellow paint, and understand if used correctly, it can be fine (i.e. Resident Evil 2 remake). But here, it’s so distracting … The problem is the world is so beautifully designed, feeling incredibly thoughtful, interesting, and showcasing an immense art style, only to have a gate locked up with bright yellow chains, which, of course, you unlock with a pair of bold cutters.

I wish developers would feel more confident in using other methods, colours, or elements such as lighting to pave the way, and there has to be something more interesting than bolt cutters now … my theory is RE9 will kill off bolt cutters, and suddenly everyone will stop implementing them.

But aside from that, I was truly taken aback by Crisol’s world design, aesthetics, and the intimacy of exploration. I loved the art style, the fusion of two different worlds, and the little details, such as how the guns extracted blood.

Speaking off …


Oh yes … there will be blood!

Crisol has a lot of things I thoroughly enjoy, including first-person horror, tight and brutal combat that has a lot of make-or-break decision-making, intense exploration that rewards your curiosity, and looping level design. I love looping level design! These are all showing great promise from an early standpoint, and I hope that this continues and evolves over the remainder of the game.

The main dynamic which peeked my interest most was the use of your own HP to fuel weapons. i.e. using your blood directly from your flesh to make bullets. It’s so sick and twisted, it’s actually quite brilliant in many ways.

Instead of looking for boxes of bullets, your body is a factory of shells and ammunition, where you can trade your own life to take that of a strange and dangerous creature in your way. Of course, it is in limited supply since you don’t have an endless supply of HP/blood. So, topping up your HP and managing how much you take for one fight and ensuring you can get past the next brings about a lot of interesting and powerful choices.

At first, I wasn’t feeling the pressure and happily allowed the weapon in my hand to suck the blood from my veins in real time, to present me a full clip of ammo. But as the enemies got more brutal, with one terrifying stalker enemy emerging halfway through the demo, I found my health and ammo balance in question. Each shot is precious and does hurt me physically and mentally when that one critical shot misses, and I spent my literal life to make that bullet. And seeing that age-old question of risking health or ammo in a survival horror game be revamped in such an immense way does bring about more intense situational problems. But that’s a good thing!

Over the years, I’ve seen developers play it safe or try new things with ammo, resource management, inventory space and more to ramp up the tension and scares. But the notion of using your HP to craft bullets, and balancing that act while the stakes rise in such dramatic ways, is very thrilling indeed. I’m utterly invested in seeing how the developers handle this in the rest of the game, and whether more powerful weapons can quite frankly put me on the verge of death in a bid to dispose of a massive problem.

It can go wrong, and it is a big risk. Yet. I am confident of the promising content I've seen with this mechanic overall.

And I love how the guns take the blood, especially the spikes from the shotgun going into the palm of Gaberiel’s …. That made me squirm quite a few times!


Overall impressions?

I’m very excited to see more of Crisol: Theater of Idols after playing the demo (which again, is live on Steam… so check it out now!). There is a solid framework and familiar gameplay vibes that any survival horror fan will surely appreciate, from the gratifying exploration, intense moment-to-moment survival gameplay and tightly intense combat. But we now have something that feels fresh, invigorating, and utterly daring with the blood/HP to ammo balance, which could lend to pushing that intensity and tension even further … if done right.

I have a great feeling about Crisol: Theater of Idols, and I hope we will see much more soon! The demo is now available on Steam, and I highly recommend checking it out.