A Stifled Review – Where Calling For Help Is Not Always A Good Idea

Stifled is a VR Horror game that is available for the PS4 and will be coming to PC (Steam) soon. The game has a unique way of projecting fear upon players by taking away your sight. You’ll need to use only your voice as an echolocation to navigate through your surroundings. Using the voice provided in-game, or using your own voice through a microphone, you’ll emit echoes into the game to help you navigate your way. However, making noises may not be safe. Instead it might attract other beings that are hostile against you. So what will you do when you can’t scream for your life?

The Game

Well, to answer the previous question, the game’s environment is full of objects lying around on the ground where you can pick them up and throw it to create sound. That sound can either be used to create sound waves that provide you with a short and small window to view your surroundings OR it can distract the hostile beings that are out to get you. Nonetheless, you’ll need to play the game quietly but with some strategy in mind to get around the beings.

What are those beings you say? We don’t know either because we can’t see them. But we do know what they are because we’ve made mistakes and were actually eaten by them. They are either a baby, a female or killer lamprey-like creatures. However you won’t be able to see them as clear as day, only outlines of them that are clear enough to distinguish them. Because they also rely on their ears to detect you, you will need to cleverly distract them away from you by throwing objects (press X) onto the opposite direction of where you are going.

Here’s our short gameplay below:

Of course, you’ll also need to see where you’re going so you’ll have to use your voice to light up the way. If you don’t have a microphone, well don’t worry, the game has a button (press R2) that comes with its own “sound pack” that occasionally coughs, blows a puff of air or says “Hello!?” loudly. Nothing unusual, but it can get a little tiresome to hear the same voice lines over and over again. However, it’s also a good thing to play without a microphone, as you will be able to avoid random noises from your ceiling fan or your heavy breathing to be picked up by your microphone which could be bad when you’re in a hostile area.

While the game is unique in its own way, the story of the game is pretty short. For a story-driven game without action (except throwing rocks), the game can be finished within 2-3 hours. Though Stifled has brought in new light to the horror game genre with the use of sound, it’s also frustrating at times when you hit a difficult stage of the game. You’ll find yourself crouching and throwing objects around to navigate the area but making too much noise could draw the beings closer to you; which is only a matter of time they find you and take whatever that’s left with your life. The game’s checkpoints are sometimes too far apart as well, leaving you to replay from where you left off and go through the frustrating stage again.

Verdict

Overall, the game doesn’t scare you as much as you scaring yourself. With the lack of visibility in the game, the developers used the elements of sound and sight to deliver the horror. We fear easily just by the eerie sound and fear more when the sound is accompanied with an image. To go even further, we have to create sound waves in order to see which attracts the beings to us that may cause us to panic when being chased. Thus the elements do go well in Stifled making it a unique experience on the VR.

So if you are planning to play Stifled, it is best to play it with a VR set as it gives you a more immersive experience compared to just watching it on screen. The story could’ve been a bit longer with some depth, it’s still a great experience playing it on the VR.

Stifled is already out on the PlayStation 4 and will be coming soon on the PC (Steam).

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