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Hollowbody Review
- Taylor Rioux
- 9 minutes ago
- 8 min read
No Secrets Here.
*Editor's Note: Story details are discussed in this review.
Video games are a sort of magical medium, in my mind. They exist at this sort of intersection of many other art forms, utilizing the visual language of films, the written word of novels, and the tactile experience of play. The way that the experience of a game is simultaneously affected by the sound, look, and feel is fascinating, allowing us to derive meaning and form stories through our engagement with the material.
However, there is also a sort of friction built into their design, existing simultaneously as works of art and toys. But there is artistry in toymaking. Although the aims may seemingly be less lofty than those of the marble sculptor, few would say that there is a lack of intent or craftsmanship in their design.
For games, much of the narrative is experiential. Stories are oft told through text, and a plot that selectively delivers them in the intended sequence to derive meaning — something Hollowbody achieves through flashbacks and found writings as the game progresses — but we engage with games through play. This relationship allows us to not only take something from the effort but also bring something into it as well.
Publisher: Headware Games Developer: Headware Games Platform: Played on PlayStation 5 Availability: Released on September 12, 2024 for PC, and June 4, 2026, for PS5 and XBOX Series X/S. |
Hollowbody hands you control quickly, wasting little time in having players take the long walk down to a beach to investigate some anomaly. There is a dreariness to the visuals that recalls the Jurassic Coast on a cloudy day, the uncomfortable controls lending weight to the unease of the moment. This intro is short, but it sets the plot in motion, showing the disappearance of the main character’s partner under mysterious circumstances.
We then cut to our lead, Mica, who crashes into a city — specifically, the Exclusion Zone —while searching for her other half, leaving no way out; the only way out is through. I couldn't help shake the feeling that we’ve been here before.
Landing on the foggy streets of this desolate urban sprawl, the roads drive us to a run-down apartment complex nearby. The apartments are dilapidated, crawling with bugs, mold, and grime. Exploring within leads us to dried-out bodies and handwritten notes, fleshing out the thoughts and actions of the people trapped here as their end approached, confusion dripping in much like the malaise that snaked through the pipes.
Occasionally, you can even pick up signals with your COTAC hand radio that relive the past through little vignettes, offering more intimate looks at the people who live in the houses or stayed in the nearby rooms.
Unfortunately, these notes and calls never amount to more than a basic recounting of things that transpired. There is a sense that those in the city were largely unaware of what was happening until it was too late, with these portraits painting a picture of people becoming more and more isolated, confused, and dejected over time.
However, there's no particular prevailing theme or message. No buildup to what comes next, or how the things you’ve already seen might relate to the events at hand beyond simple explanation. Their abundance makes the world-building feel repetitive, with each new piece doing little to differentiate itself from the last.
This is exemplified at the end of the game’s first area, where you come across a man on the ledge of the rooftop. Hollowbody doesn’t give you the full picture in any moment in its short runtime, least of all in its most important ones. This is one of the few instances in the game with a cutscene, so you know it is meant to matter, but I don’t think many would have guessed that this is the only event throughout the entire scenario that matters at all for the ending.
While we cannot see him fully, this man appears to be undergoing some physical distress, with his visage being reminiscent of the monsters you fight through the level. The conversation that takes place allows players to make choices in how to approach or address this person, and if players want to see the “good” ending, they must answer in a specific way to save him, and, by extension, Mica.
However, there's no particular prevailing theme or message. No buildup to what comes next, or how the things you’ve already seen might relate to the events at hand.
The problem, I suppose, isn't in the fact that this single encounter determines our fate. On the contrary, many events and decisions in our lives have pointed outcomes and effects. Instead, the failing is in the buildup and resolution. There are no hints as to who or what this stranger is, before or after the encounter. He is functionally a non-entity thematically and narratively — just a thing that might save you later, unbeknownst to you. A shallow object. Empty. A function.
His presence feels ephemeral, like a will-o'-the-wisp sent from beyond only to then dissipate. Except he stays nearby — a hanger-on to Mica’s little adventure. If he didn’t appear in the ending as an active participant, I’d almost wonder if he was a hallucination — a major technique that Hollowbody frequently employs in its scares.
Faces appear in the corners of the room as the player navigates the dark, disgusting homes, and rooms shift wildly as things get tense, subverting the player’s understanding and expectations of what comes next from room to room.
But the lighting is a major detriment to showcasing this, and greatly hinders both the navigation and experience of engagement. Hollowbody is much too dark to ever really get a sense of the space you are in. At times, I felt as if I were playing a bumblebee, buzzing from point to point, clumsily bashing into everything until I found the right object or the correct room to move forward.
Despite obfuscating the actual elements held within the corridors, this darkness largely fails to bring any real tension. While numerous horrifying entities are wandering the hallways, streets, and sewers of the world, they are given away by the rattling noises they make when nearby. There is little mystery to what the next room may hold when you can echolocate each living being within a four-mile radius.
In some cases, these enemies can be clearly seen, while in others, it may require a bit of stumbling to engage with them. There is an uncertainty to these encounters, despite them posing no real threat to the player, and it comes in the form of how incompetent Mica is at doing much of anything.
Aiming at an enemy, swinging your weapon, or even running — each action as awkward as a baby bird’s first flight, only poor Mica must flail in the dark instead of under the supervision of a caretaker. Perhaps Mica is simply afraid, letting the scenery get the best of her, a trepidation under Mother’s watchful eye.
Bashing their heads in with a guitar is a mercy. Not only are these waking nightmares pathetic as combatants, but they are made up of those aforementioned trapped citizens — a sad end to the people locked within this town.
The clumsiness caused by the pervasive darkness gets its tendrils into other mechanical aspects, as well. Without the ability to clearly see, players must rely on dim lights to indicate points of interest and spatial direction. And so the player must meander toward the lights, like a moth searching for salvation.
There does happen to be a flashlight for players to use, but it provides very little focused light and swings wildly as players run or flail a weapon about. Yet the flashlight does reveal the pathway to us, even if only marginally.
When traversing the dark tunnels of the sewers or the shadowy halls of a hotel, the flashlight slowly illuminates our path, revealing details one would otherwise miss in a casual jaunt through a bright room. The darkness recedes in small chunks as players press forward, giving off the appearance of a creeping mold set to devour this world. But our light, our torch, drives it away. The darkness cleansed as if facing the full power of the Sun.
But when that darkness is driven away, there is very little of interest to be found. This is especially true in the back half of the game, where the environments and cohesion of the writing lose a bit of focus, with the final spaces shuffling Mica from point to point seemingly haphazardly, until we finally blunder into whichever ending we have been given based on the presence of the mysterious stranger.
The darkness recedes in small chunks as players press forward, giving off the appearance of a creeping mold set to devour this world. But our light, our torch, drives it away. The darkness cleansed as if facing the full power of the Sun.
So, the question remains: what makes a great horror work? There’s a quote from John Carpenter that I love to think about:
“There’s a very specific secret: It should be scary.”
Fear can be brought forth in myriad ways. Threat of bodily harm is certainly the most prevalent one, but great horror films, books, and games build on their ideas, formulate the story and perspective, and shape it into an experience that elicits some sort of response to the actions of the characters and monsters; they drive us into caring about the characters, set up the stakes, and put those characters through something.
In Hollowbody, Mica mostly moves through the action undisturbed. I was left undisturbed. Aside from a few short conversations on the telephone, very little can be taken from Mica as a character. She has no reactions to any of the events as they transpire, and she makes few comments on the monsters prowling about or the sadness of the people who became them. She exists only as a means to move through this space.
Much has been made of a supposed horror game renaissance in the last decade or so, but one does have to wonder: why is this moment considered a resurgent period?
I’ve never really gotten the sense that horror left. Every era since the original PlayStation has generated classics, with indie and blockbuster titles making names for themselves in equal measure. Is it by simple numbers that we are seeing more great horror games? That much is true — the sheer volume of games made today outlandishly eclipses the numbers of yesteryear — but I think something else is happening to push this along: nostalgia.
The current attitudes toward horror are not necessarily driven by the elevated quality of the works, but by recognition. This can be seen in the fevered reactions to each new Resident Evil remake, and in the overwhelming response to reinterpreted games like Silent Hill 2 (the Bloober one). Conversations, impressions, and expectations are all foisted upon the games before they have even come out — another thing Hollowbody has itself fallen prey to in the past.
Conversations, impressions, and expectations are all foisted upon the games before they have even come out — another thing Hollowbody has itself fallen prey to in the past
Even many new, original releases are explicitly trying to capture the feel or essence of older games, and Hollowbody is one such example. It adopts the graphical stylings and atmospheric language of its direct influence, the Silent Hill series, harkening back to a time when games were made “like this”. It reaches for the past, trying to tie itself into conversation with Silent Hill, without ever attempting to emulate the “why” that makes those games interesting or unique.
There's a certain romanticization of the horror classics seen in the game that just doesn't do anything for me, and I think it largely comes down to the types of things Hollowbody takes from its inspirations. The secret notes, the malformed bodies, all the way to how the game looks — these are not the essence of those classics. It is not what made them great.
By pushing itself into the same room as the classics and deliberately evoking them, Hollowbody does itself a disservice. In the simplest terms, Silent Hill games are about more than fighting scary guys, and are aiming to convey specific messages and themes, using both the language of play and the written word to guide players into taking something from the experience. When James fights a monster in Silent Hill 2, he is reckoning with his own fears and mistakes, but when Mica fights a monster, it is just a thing that happens — a hollow body in the way of task completion.
Verdict  |
Image Credits: Headware Games via JetsonPlaysGames
Disclaimer: We received a copy of this title for free from the publisher.