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Updating this review now that I've finished the game! Hollowbody is an excellent throwback to classic PS2-style survival horror. If you grew up with Silent Hill and Resident Evil, or enjoy more modern offerings like Signalis and are looking for a more restrained, understated take on the genre, I expect Hollowbody will be to your liking.
Important to note that this is largely a solo dev project, and expectations should be set accordingly when making a purchasing decision. To that end, I'm going to begin with an enumeration of the game's flaws, as they are few, insubstantial, and easily remedied.
WEAKNESSES
First: menu feel is quite rough. Options may not always update correctly, or will update in-game but still display incorrectly in the menu; setting up keybinds is unwieldy; the default selection/cursor position can shift unexpectedly; and the presentation of the game controls in the options menu is a bit of an eyesore.
Second: a general lack of polish. The "Seek" vs. "Pickup" labels on certain items randomly switch; footstep SFX are disabled when using tank controls; stomp attack SFX only play about half the time; background tracks may stop looping after a little while; tapping "back" in the prologue sequence with tank controls enabled will send your character backpedaling indefinitely; thumbnails for manual save files are all red boxes; the cursor is impossible to see in the Load Game menu when hovering over the Autosave slot; clicking "Resume Game" from the pause menu will unavoidably result in your character executing a stomp attack as the game resumes; certain ammo boxes can be stomped multiple times for indefinite amounts of ammo; skipping lines of dialogue during specific segments will often splice the next half-second of audio into the start of the next line of dialogue; etc. etc.
As you can probably tell, these are minor bugs that come up naturally when playing a release hot off the presses. By my estimation the developer behind Hollowbody has proven nimble and reliable at squashing bugs of a similar caliber in the past, and I will not be at all surprised if most of the issues I have mentioned above are handled pretty quickly (I will be keeping an eye on these efforts, and will excise the whole above portion of the review if it is rendered irrelevant.)
My third and final critique of Hollowbody regards enemy and environment diversity. This, as well, is kind of unavoidable when you don't have the resources of a large dev team and a fleet of designers at your fingertips, and I mention it here more as observation than condemnation. That said: you will quickly notice that 90% of the time, you're fighting the same type of creature. There are one or two others, but they appear only quite rarely. For some people this will be an immediate dealbreaker - for those of us more interested in atmosphere and worldbuilding, this is no great concern.
STRENGTHS
Speaking of atmosphere, I now happily transition to Hollowbody's strengths, as they are numerous and well-appointed. All the weaknesses I have mentioned above are but passing irritants; I was rendered immune to their nipping by the immaculate vibes of Hollowbody, and the excellence with which its creator executed this loving homage.
And the vibes here are truly immaculate. Hollowbody's music is evocative of Silent Hill: less a conventional soundtrack and more a collection of eerie, droning soundscapes that will burrow into your mind and follow you home at night. The creatures you directly observe will not terrify you, but what they represent for the protagonist, and the implications of their existence, are well-leveraged reminders that the most frightening things in this world are rarely seen.
Broken-down mechs and darkened terminals litter the streets of a ruined tech-noir European city, their dying lights blearily cutting through an incessant twilit drizzle. The occasional fixed camera angles are striking and skillfully placed; this is a game world with many spots where a player might simply sit and steep in the unmoored desperation of a city that has suffered its own personal apocalypse.
I completely adored the protagonist, Mica - she is competent without feeling arrogant, maintains a steady composure despite being genuinely disturbed by her grotesque surroundings. Her mission is straightforward: a friend has fallen into shadow, and must be rescued. I appreciated the forthright manner in which this plot unfolds, true to its "short-story" ambition: three acts, a final escalation, a compelling finale.
Five other notable strong points are worth mentioning here. First: combat (read: melee combat) is precisely in line with the bizarre appetites of SH/RE fans. It is janky, and clearly not by accident; it has "the right kind" of jank, I think I would call it. Anyone who has swung a lead pipe as James Sunderland will certainly feel at home here.
Second: a well-deserved hat tip to the developer for including both tank controls and more modern controls, and allowing players to easily toggle between the two. I myself found that the tank controls were well-suited to the claustrophobic indoor settings, handling nicely alongside static camera angles, whereas the modern controls handled better when roaming around outside with an over-the-shoulder camera. This is a nontrivial development task and is deeply, deeply appreciated by many genre fans.
Third: this is a spoiler-free review, so all I will say here is this: a series of choices made early on in the game can have a pretty substantial effect on the entire mood/framework of your playthrough. I was surprised and delighted to find out about this after the fact, and will almost certainly go back to investigate this alternate route through the game.
Fourth: the save system is, like most other things in Hollowbody, just right. Occasional save spots can be used at will; where they are absent, autosaves occur at intervals wide enough to discourage reckless death, but close enough that if you wish, you really can bull-rush from one to the next once you know what to do. (The one exception to this compliment is, I think, the final encounter. At present it's about a 3-minute run to get there each time, followed by around a minute of unskippable cutscenes. The encounter itself can be a bit tricky, so if you mess anything up, well...get used to running.)
Fifth, and of considerable weight: I was pretty surprised to find that not only does Hollowbody feature full voice acting, but the cast is also extremely good! Difficult to overstate just how much life was breathed into the game world by this inclusion. Predictably, Mica's voice actress deserves special mention here, providing an exceptional performance right from line one. Bravo to all and I dearly hope this becomes more of a norm among indie horror titles.
VERDICT
Excellent game. Will delight long-time genre fans and could serve as a gentle, smaller-scale entry ramp for curious or apprehensive newcomers. With a nice crisp ~5 hour playtime and positively dripping in its moody atmosphere, Hollowbody is the perfect autumn treat for a creepy, rainy weekend, an expertly portioned love letter from a talented creator, and an easy recommend from me.