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| images c/o Steam |
I'm a big fan of old-school survival horror. That's why this blog exists, to be honest. So after years of the genre being seen as niche, even retro, it's been interesting to see it suddenly get a big resurgence in popularity in the last decade or so, and in such a variety of ways. Viviette was a sleeper hit released in the tail end of 2018 that takes after the "explorer horror" genre of games typically made in RPG Maker, though it's much more sophisticated and takes much more after Clock Tower.
The story is standard haunted house fare: Jules, his sister Felice, and some friends visit an abandoned mansion on an island somewhere (given the character names and style of dress, I’d say it’s Belle Époque-era France.) As they’re leaving, Felice goes missing. Jules is knocked out and wakes up after dark with his friends missing too; he eventually finds Felice, but she’s very much not herself. Most of the game involves Jules wandering around the mansion and grounds, trying to find his friends and avoid his possessed, knife-wielding sister. Much like Scissorman in Clock Tower, Felice has a nasty tendency to wander the mansion and burst in unannounced while you’re busy with one thing or another. Sometimes she’ll disappear for long stretches of time, lulling you into a false sense of security and then ping: she pops up hot behind you like toast. Luckily, she’s rather easily avoided: turning off your lamp makes you harder to spot and she’s not terribly sensitive to walking too near her as long as she doesn’t have direct line of sight. Simply leaving the room and coming back after a few moments can also dismiss her. If she does catch you, she’ll chase you for a short distance, though the safest remedy is to exit the house entirely, where she’s unable or unwilling to follow. And in the worst case scenario, you’ll have to button-mash to struggle your way out of an attack. Your only other threat — and the only one that killed me in my playthrough — is a sequence where you have to inch along on an upper ledge to get around a collapsed floor; when the wind picks up, you have to stop and press against the wall, otherwise you’ll fall to your death.
The
game is not terribly long at all; indeed, it’s entirely possible to
complete the game under an hour, and you get an achievement for it.
Where it takes up most of its time is in its puzzles, most of which are
thoroughly unexplained and some are just inscrutable. The worst one is
by far the very first one, where you are presented with a wax emblem in a
display case, with two buttons on the front, one with an arrow facing
up, the other down. nearby is a painting of people of various shapes and
sizes. What the game does not tell you is that the secret to the puzzle
is to press the buttons in the order of how tall or short each person
is. What it also does not tell you is that it remembers how many times
you hit a button, which throws off the solution’s count of six presses. In
order to complete the puzzle you have to hit the right combination of
buttons and get it right the first time. For example, if you hit the
buttons seven times before you input the right combo, it will start from
the 7th button press, not the 8th, and the puzzle will not solve.
Most of the other puzzles are more straightforward with a little observation, but rescuing Felice and the others? That’s pretty much a case of “prior knowledge required.” For example, if you get too close to a certain barrel, it collapses through the floor. Bam: one of your friends is dead. There’s no indication that there’s anything wrong with the barrel… but you’d best stay away anyway. Situations like this are frustrating and annoying, and it mars what could have otherwise been a fun horror romp.
In spite of that, the game does admirably succeed in its attempt to be creepy. Possessed Felice especially is unnerving, with her sobs and groans and weird growls as she wanders the house aimlessly, and the odd footstep or thud announcing her presence. The sound design in general is superb; aside from Felice (masterfully done by Elissa Park, though no actual dialogue is spoken) there’s also plenty of creepy sound effects, all set to a quality soundtrack that is spooky and varied, reminiscent of the early Resident Evil games.
The
game does make use of jumpscares, but most of them are pretty well
telegraphed, and none of them really signal any impending danger, though
they do feed into the gruesome atmosphere of the mansion, the sense
that something is deeply wrong. Though
it’s fair to say that maybe DYA went a little overboard on the detail.
The mansion is in decrepit condition, that much is clear, but the
background detail is overdosed in the macabre, resembling a theme park
haunted house… or any level from Blood.
All in all, though, this is a slick little adventure horror that really slathers on the charm with its Final Fantasy VI/Chrono Trigger aesthetic and good use of sound, and for $10 you can’t go wrong.
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