Sylvio

Sylvio is pretty rough around the edges. It’s a ghost hunting game where you travel around abandoned areas in the outskirts of some forsaken woods. You’re capturing the dead through audio -- at least what’s left of them and their stories. It’s actually a great way to tell a story a couple of words at a time, carefully letting you piece together a larger puzzle. It’s also where the game builds a lot of its atmosphere, constantly surrounding and overpowering you with noise, through a sound design that really jostles your attention and imagination There’s this great bit where you get to analyze your sound library after a discovery. At first glance it’s just filled with static and babel. But by running it backwards, or in slow motion, you find hidden messages that reveal more pieces to the puzzle. It’s a super fun, detective-like part of Sylvio that is sadly overshadowed by what can only be described as [i]the rest of the game[/i]. It’s the less flattering part. The less fun one. The one where you travel around inexplicable, awkward terrain -- sometimes by car -- in order to reach points of interest. Interspersed with puzzle solving and combat where you shoot apparitions with a potato cannon. It’s a mess, to be honest. Which is a shame, seeing as the game is so close to being a horror game about something more substantial; a lot more specific and interesting. But instead of being a game about deduction and listening, it turns into a more abstract one where you’re once again just chasing down waypoints ad nauseum. Love the theme, not so much the execution. Thumbs down for me.

[h1]Sylvio Santos vem aí, lá lá lá lá lá lá [/h1] [b]|***| Análise completa de quem jogou até o fim |***|[/b] Jogado com [b]Steam Controller[/b] + Trilha sonora anos 80 escassa, mas interessante + Boa dublagem - Gráficos ultrapassados - Jogabilidade truncada - Vai-e-vem cansativo para resolução de puzzles - Ninguém vai desligar a lanterna =======|||||||======= [b]ANÁLISE[/b] Enquanto jogava Sylvio e progredia na história comecei a pensar na análise no Steam, afinal já tem tempo que esse burro velho não escreve nada por essas bandas e meus fiéis 38 seguidores já devem se perguntar onde diabos estão aquelas análises que ninguém se importa, inclusive eles. Pois bem, quanto mais eu me aproximava do final, mais o dilema de Commodus me assolava: polegar para o alto ou polegar para baixo? Polegar para baixo. Sylvio é um jogo fraco e isso precisa ser dito. Videogames ainda são feitos para serem jogados (sei lá, vai que alguém resolve inventar jogos para comer ou cheirar) e o “jogar” de Sylvio não foi uma experiência agradável, que pode ser resumido em dois adjetivos: feio e chato. Sim, Sylvio é um jogo muito feio. É um jogo de baixo orçamento e de 6 anos atrás? Sim e sim, mas graficamente falando ele está no mínimo uns 10 anos atrasado. A sensação é de jogar algo de PS2/Xbox. E quando digo jogar algo antigo não me refiro só a parte gráfica, a jogabilidade e as mecânicas implementadas em Sylvio são de 15 anos atrás. Controles duros, movimentação arrastada, física em slow motion e nas fases em que guiamos um “belíssimo” Lada Laika 69 chega a dar pena de tão ruim que é controlar aquela lada velha. Pelo menos o dev criou uma mecânica de spawn do carro pressionando Q. Vou te contar, o que aquele carro trava no cenário é uma piada, mesmo assim o fato de precisar desse spawn constante é tenebroso. Sylvio é chato em muitas partes. Em especial na área aberta do parque, uma área bem grande onde precisamos usar o Lada velha para ir de um lado para o outro e que basicamente serve de hub para as demais fases. No zoológico também rola um vai-e-vem que eu vou te contar, por sorte já estamos perto do final. Outra coisa que não entendi em Sylvio foi a lanterna. Ok, a lanterna é para iluminar, mas porque existe a opção de ligá-la e desligá-la? Não muda em absolutamente nada os confrontos com os poltegeists (eles te acham de qualquer jeito) e quando a desligamos perdemos visão do ambiente, já que grande parte de Sylvio é com baixa iluminação. Por falar em poltergeists, o combate no jogo é bem bobo. Nem precisamos perder tempo comentando. Mesmo com esse lamaçal de desgraça dá para tiramos alguns pontos positivos. As dublagens são boas. A protagonista é tímida em suas falas, embora competente, já os áudios que coletamos de uma tal de Bobby que trabalhou no parque são bem interessantes. A trilha sonora nos poucos momentos que se mostra presente, também me agradou. Curioso que ela ocorre na área aberta do parque. É uma trilha synthwave anos 80 e que contrasta demais com o clima do jogo em si. Sei lá, talvez seja isso que me chamou mais atenção, justamente por quebrar a monotonia que é percorrer o parque de um ponto a outro só para desbloquear o acesso para a próxima fase. E por fim, o chamariz principal de Sylvio, [i]electronic voice phenomena[/i] (EVP), ou em bom português, fenômenos de voz eletrônica (FVE). Todo o jogo gira ao redor de tentarmos capturar mensagens ocultas em estáticas com um poderoso gravador de última geração. Sempre que matar um poltergeist você vai gravar uma mensagem dele, que vai te indicar a localização de objetos/ações para prosseguir na fase. Além do já decifrado é possível usar recursos AVANÇADÍSSIMOS do gravador para procurar mais mensagens ocultar em velocidade rápida, lenta ou para trás (não é para descobrir palavras satânicas igual se fazia com os discos da Xuxa, ok?). E é isso. Essa é a parte boa do jogo. Mentira, a história também é minimamente, interessante. Sylvio é um jogo com uma premissa interessante e que tenta usar algo ainda pouco explorado nos games, mas sua parte técnica e jogabilidade são tão fracas que ele não vai entrar no nosso top de todos os tempos da última semana. >_[b][url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/mremerson/screenshots/?appid=362860]Screenshots capturadas durante a jogatina[/url][/b] >_ [b][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32675902-Megatr%25C3%25B4nico]Para ver minhas análises, siga o curador Megatrônico![/url][/b] >_ [b][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/37848041]Também contribuo para o grupo de curadores do Gamerista, não deixe de seguir, também![/url][/b]

Awesome sound design makes this game ultracreepy. Ugly, clunky graphics makes it even more oppressive. I enjoyed it a lot.

Confusing, charming, with raw edges. Gameplay is simple, battles are not really a problem, most of the game is just running around the location and doing some puzzles. A lot of cryptic lore. The game is weird to the point of being sometimes perplexing, but i find Sylvio sweet, it's a passion project. It's more about the vibes, to be honest. Check it out if you ever feel nostalgic for 2010s indie horror games.

Sylvio has some great ideas. Unfortunately they're wrapped in a seriously buggy product. The atmosphere and setting are intriguing, and the ghost recording elements are fascinating and really draw you into the plot. The downside is that the puzzles swing wildly between easy and extremely obtuse. Which elements of the game are interactive, and the general physics, are not particularly well explained and can lead to some frustrating moments where a puzzle solution seems slightly out of your reach for an unclear reason. This reaches its apex in the final level, which happens to be the most bland of all the levels graphically and design-wise while also managing to place items you need in positions that make little sense other than to extend your time walking around this extremely dull area. The combat is also extremely basic, and it is never really clear what exactly will 'kill' you. Some enemies seem to damage you simply by being nearby, and as they can float through walls you will regularly find yourself dying by an enemy that you have never even seen. There is also no way to change ammunition, so if you find yourself with the wrong ammo for a situation you are forced to waste whatever you have loaded into the gun before you can put the correct one in. The driving sections of the game are extremely basic. It is simply: A) Drive in this direction, don't hit any trees. B) Record some sounds. C) Repeat. You will regularly find yourself at the whims of the game's very basic physics, and it is a blessing that the game includes a button to right your car. Unfortunately you have to do four almost identical driving levels through the course of the game and it never gets any more interesting. I'm surprised by the number of positive reviews for this game, which suggests that horror game fans are so starved of content that they will lap up anything without being critical of its shortcomings.

Mechanically, I don't think this is a good game, but conceptually, and as a statement piece, I find [i]Sylvio[/i] really brilliant. The reliance on dread atmosphere over cheap, haunted house jump scares for a player-interpretative narrative call back to a brighter time when games like [i]Silent Hill[/i] ruled the proverbial roost. I also don't know of anything else that uses EVP as its core mantra, or at the very least, not so successfully. That said, the level design is atrocious. While each area fills you with unease, they're too sprawling and lacking in guidance to successfully navigate given the lack of a map or even a compass; expect to look up a guide if you want to actually find all the hidden messages, as well as plenty of failed experimentation over actual progress given the poor tutorial/mechanical explanation and physics-related bugs. Ammunition is another recurring problem. There's different types of ammo for the potato gun; some are for solving puzzles, while others are used to combat aggressive spirits. Unfortunately, you can only queue up ammo as the barrel empties, not swap sets entirely. This inevitably results in wasted pesticide—your source of air pressure—spent on emptying the cannon just to swap in a metal ball to knock open a door, in turn leaving you vulnerable to spirits if you didn't a. pick up some ammo boxes along the way (which don't carry over to the next level) or b. ran back to the car to reload. Surprisingly, the voice acting and original score are exceptionally well done, particularly for an independently developed game. Juliette—the protagonist—sounds like a moody, exhausted Björk, something that puts me at ease despite fumbling through red-misted woodlands. More crucial, however, is that despite being kind of broken and janky and not very well thought out as a game, I still felt compelled to see [i]Sylvio[/i] through to the end, driven off of atmosphere and narrative intrigue alone, something that's a bit of a lost art in the survival horror niche today. [b]Rating:[/b] ★★★½

I was sufficiently enjoying this game, exploring around, trying to find every achievement, until I got to a part of the game where the only way to progress is to [spoiler] stun, capture, and burn alive 4 crows [/spoiler]. So far, the game had no violence in it, which is one of the things that drew me in: I try to avoid violent video games, but I love ghost stories, and what I had read about this made it sound like the perfect fit. The story was dark alright, but pretty hard to grasp, and I assumed either it would make more sense as you went along, or I'd stop near the end and try to piece everything together. The main character enters the park supposedly to try and help lost souls that may have been trapped there. She can leave whenever she wants, she knows the way out, has a working car, and everything. And yet she still doesn't seem to show the least bit of apprehension when she decides that, [spoiler] in order to get a lantern working, she should kill 4 innocent birds [/spoiler]. It didn't make sense story-wise, the idea of it doesn't make sense in real life at all either, and it definitely crossed a line for me, by so readily including animal cruelty as a puzzle. Everything else so far was fine, but just that; it wasn't impressive or anything, had too much backtracking, and blind exploration on repetitive environments. I definitely don't recommend it.

Solid horror-exploration game with very good sound at times and unsettling atmosphere. Not very challenging, almost walking simulator level but still very enjoyable. Love the main character's voice too.

For something made 10 years ago this is still so unique, creepy and macabre in a way I haven't found in any other game. It's got a sort of weird mix between being dread-inducing but also kind of relaxing to play, it's more like a horror-themed puzzle/exploration game rather than outright scary, but there are certainly chilling moments. The best part of the game is the EVP deciphering, it's so creepy yet satisfying finding the different words/phrases hidden in your recordings, piecing together what happened to the ghost and how it relates to the overall story. It's definitely not perfect by any means, the controls/UI are pretty dated and some of the puzzles feel way too obscure or easily sequence-breakable, especially in the Zoo level. But if you're prepared to deal with a bit of jank, I'd definitely give it a go if you're an indie-horror fan.

I will forever have the name of Sylvio seared in my mind as a trauma trigger, the mere sight or sound of this disgusting word unleashes indefatigable waves of ruinous misery, enshrouding my soul and denying passage into the afterlife. Its interesting concept has been wasted and what's left is too vile to expatiate, yet my fate is sealed and such concerns are now beyond me. All you do is wander around the infernal red mist, shoot bolts into black clouds, converse with tiresome spirits and continuously reset the placement of your car because terrain collision has been implemented with the grace of a blind butcher. This could very well be the ugliest game I have ever played, the screenshots don't do it justice but I would obviously recommend against receiving the first-hand experience. Actual communication with the dead is more plausible than enjoying this game. 2/10