EMPTY SHELL

Empty Shell is an atmospheric, top-down shooter/survival horror roguelike that uses its low-fidelity presentation to enhance its horror aspects. The central conceit is that the player controls expendable "volunteers" investigating an abandoned research facitlity on an island off the coast of Japan. These volunteers are given instructions they must complete in a zone before advancing to the next. If a player avatar dies, another "volunteer" takes their place with new equipment and a new level layout. Anyone familiar with survival horror inventory management or action-roguelike gameplay should feel familiar with the basic gameplay elements: enemy attacks can be dodged with correct timing, some enemies can be safely dispatched with melee attacks to conserve ammunition, etc. The key to survival will be understanding the different kinds of enemies present and using ammunition, equipment (like armed drones and turrets), and even level hazards (laser traps, crushin pipes, etc.) to efficiently dispatch enemies and avoid damage. The shooting is responsive and generally impactful, with a good variety of weapons that all feel distinct, and exploring levels is equal parts tense and rewarding, both with equipment stashes and lore/information that help you piece together what happened on the island. However, the pacing of information is a bit strange: most of the information you need to piece together what happened can be found in the first two-three levels, with the rest of the game being largely filling in some details about individual researchers and some other specifics. However, given the premise and story, it is a bit strange that this game is a roguelike: it is unclear why the levels should rearrange themelves after each "volunteer" death. If the research facility had some spatial or temporal anomalies, that would possibly make sense and add to the mystique of the laboratory, but instead it is entirely an excuse for the game to force you to retry the level with a newly randomized layout if you fail. It's not bad for gameplay, but it is odd for the story. What is slightly bad for gameplay is some of the presentation of the levels. The entire user interface is presented as if the player is monitoring events through CCTVs and/or drones, with a grainy, low-fidelity presentation to everything. This largely works in the game's favor by adding a bit of inscrutability to levels and enemies to allow the player to fill in the gaps with mystery or imagination. However, it also leads to some unfortunate circumstances where it is unclear why or how a player has gotten stuck on random debris in the environment that is hard to see, which can be very frustrating durign a fight. Or, even more frustratingly, it can make enemies difficult to spot due to perspective. One more mild complaint is the use of anacrhonism in the game's context: the facility is supposed to have been constructed in the early 1950's, but much of the logs encountered are on laptop computers, and much of the information is accessed through terminals which respond to slightly warped versions of MS DOS commands. It's not game breaking by any means, but why not just set the game in the 1980s if you want to have these elements? Overall, though, despite some odd design choices and occasionally getting stuck on scenery, this is a good game that effectively delivers on its horror-shooter goals, and is certainly worth the meager price of admission.