You stick to the formula, and you always get a very good cake, it will simply not so exciting that, for example, a melted chocolate lava cake or a pineapple cake upside down. Silver Chains is a game that tries to… Well, have its cake and eat it too.
You play Peter, who wakes up an accident outside a mansion and heads inward to ask for help. You fade in the doorway and you wake up more deeply inside the dilapidated house and have to escape, crash completely forgotten. Unfortunately, although predictable, there are ghosts in the house who do not want you to leave. By exploring further, you find a Ventriloque model claiming to be your father and who needs your help to break the curse that has come to your family.
You quickly learn not to be afraid of ghosts, in particular Eveline, the great emancipated lady who tracks the corridors that appears only during scriptwriting meetings. I died once during all my part, and only because of one of the main problems of the game: to interact with something, it must be positioned just right on the screen, otherwise the prompt appears not. It was a repeated problem throughout the game, leaving me frustrated when I was chased and that I had to interact with things in a timely manner. You get a monocle at the beginning of the game that shows you the secrets of the environment, but rather than show yourself exactly what you need to do, it is content to show a compass pointing in the general direction, and I thought it There was a problem in my game when it was introduced for the first time because I did not have the door handle almost invisible exactly in the center of the screen.
The game does not look particularly impressive – not as impressive as the destination page on the PS5 appears to appear. The bathtubs appear in blocks, the textures are low resolution, the elements are reused and sometimes the doors seem to float separately from their doors. The design of the creature is sometimes quite interesting, but it is disappointed by a bad animation. As far as the sound is concerned, it is competent. Of course, games must target a little higher than competent. I quickly noticed audio loops that did not seem natural. The game tries to be subtle but still feels the need to announce the presence of Eveline with a powerful agreement of fear, even when ghostly whispers warn you of its presence.
The game was directed by the Russian developer Cracked Heads and seriously suffers from a bad location. Peter describes things badly, using words out of context or in a way that no anglophone, like Peter, would use them, as “suddenly I found myself in a strange place” or “how a great labyrinth could He is in the house? This saves even the moments I enjoyed.
The fact is that I can say that Cracked Heads was trying to do something interesting – have the cake. There are some passable jump frights and a particular room involving a labyrinth made of shelves that I found interesting, but these moments were too rare to excite me during the long periods when nothing happens. The story is mainly told through journal entries in the manor or the inner monologue of Peter, and in a legitimately pleasant touch, these log entries are reorganized as Peter finds the previous entries that add from the context, and I really wanted to get the whole story, as formulated as it was. It would have almost done a better movie than a video game and seems to aim for an emotional highlight and worthy of twisting dropped by a malicious tracking scene.
The fact that the monsters appear only during scriptwidth meets the atmosphere (and despite the sound and the mediocre graphics, the game et atmospheric) rather than looking over your shoulder while waiting for the next meet. It would have been better served if they had completely removed these meetings in exchange for something closer to what Remains of Edith Finch or Come Home. I feel that they are doing more, but decided to be content with less. There are some interesting moments scattered, except for the aforementioned labyrinth, a pretty pleasant moment in the first few minutes involving a turntable and a door that slams and an interesting dream sequence later, but these moments are rare.
It took me about three hours to finish the silver chains, and if you are looking for a distraction for an evening, you could do worse – but you can also do it, so much the better. __