I don’t think I’m as gaming-hundred as Holstin this year. This survival horror quickly caught my eye with its gorgeous pixel art, perspective-changing gameplay and a creepy Polish setting.
So I felt very fortunate to be able to get it practically in a whole new 2-hour PC demo sliced straight from Holstin’s ominous beginnings. Previous Steam demos captured Holstin’s “feeling” through mock-up puzzles and weapons tutorials for fire range, but this new build brings it together with the (punny) story of meat.
My friend, you have to keep an eye on Holstin. Here are a few reasons.
#1: “Naughty” never looked this good
That’s the first thing you notice. Holstin is really, really cool, falling into a dilapidated yellow material that suddenly falls into a dilapidated railway station. The art already looks great on screenshots, but to truly understand what these graphics are, you need to see and feel Holstin in motion. Even the title screen is great.
What looks like 2D top-down pixel art becomes a truly impressive 3D when you learn to move the camera. Even if you know this before you start playing, swinging for the first time is honestly one of Holstin’s most amazing moments.
(As a side note, Holstin’s top-down movement is very good for twin-stick actions on the controller, but also works perfectly with the mouse and keyboard.)
Most players don’t necessarily choose Holstin because of technical proficiency, but that’s what really does this aesthetic job. There is a reason why graphics like this aren’t diverse in the industry. Based on studio custom in-house technology, it is possible that Holstin could make cement as a graphically standout game.
#2: Amazing perspective
So, so you can spin those three top-down cameras and see the world from multiple angles, but that’s not just a great gimmick. These angles are closely related to Holstin’s environmental puzzles. If you haven’t looked behind the box or checked alleys around to find alleys, you can miss out on anything that will help you find your way in Holsten’s strange world.
But wait! There’s more!
There are people with aggressive mutations everywhere. That means you need to shoot them. But unlike other twin stick shooters, you don’t stay in that fixed camera view to prepare your vision. Entering AIM mode will take you to the over-shoulder third-person view, releasing the camera for pinpoint accuracy in your headshot.
These two very different views really add to the suspense. For example, in a top-down view, you might miss an enemy quietly hiding around the corner. I always became my guard and switched both perspectives from the battle. (And sometimes, even that didn’t save me from being attacked and tackling the horrifying horrors of humans.) The only part of the battle that initially confused me was a brawl, as it wasn’t AIM mode, but I quickly got used to it.
Holstin has a more atmosphere than gameplay reasons, but it also plays with other camera perspectives. Think about it: a view of God’s eyes in a creepy, quiet, poorly maintained area. The cursor disappears and suddenly removes your main sense of defense. You may not switch to AIM mode here, but you will feel like the ominous powers are watching every move you make.
#3: Abundant of flesh, tentacles and gore
Survival horror fans will want to know how scary a strange environment can be, but don’t worry. The main focus of the genre’s bondage is undoubtedly represented by Holstin. After all, the overall goal of this demonstration is to find a way to the slaughterhouse.
Such a dissolution of the town into another world first appears in the form of the aforementioned yellow material, “plasmodium.” At first, someone appears to have gone wild with a spray of foam, but as you approach, the tentacles rise and sway at you. Are they saying hello or are they provoking you? Either way, it’s appropriately troubling and adds a pervasive sense of anxiety.
And there’s a mutant enemy. Imagine a shining orange orb taking over your body. Imagine the same orb buried in a Plasmodium. It slowly spreads across the streets and parks, like an aggressive, terrifying fungus.
It was the tacit gore that I also found anxious. Although the demonstration doesn’t show the actual slaughterhouse, you’ll learn how it is captured in the overall story through dialogue and scraps scribbled around the world. Something evil is happening in the place, but when we finally get there, we know that it will not become clean.
#4: No Suck Adventure Game Puzzle
As a gamer who grew up on classic point-and-click adventures, I was very impressed with Holstin’s approach to the puzzle. Maybe I’m getting older and crotched, but I’ve been disappointed in how linearly confused I’ve been in the games adjacent to adventure in recent years. You receive your purpose, find a way to resolve your purpose, then receive your next purpose.
Holstin is story-driven, but it doesn’t feel like a linear story with different puzzles slapped above. In fact, I have almost forgotten how challenging a well-designed puzzle tree can be. Holstin does not achieve your goals in the order listed. Understanding that you can tackle multiple goals at once and can be resolved at any moment is almost a puzzle in itself. You may need to follow your own steps, but that feels realistic (such as searching for your car key three times).
And when it comes to the puzzle itself, they make sense (well, as much as something makes sense in this crazy world). Survival horror fans are all familiar with some of the most unstable challenges of the genre, from the need for a frightening sliding puzzle that requires Shakespeare’s intimate knowledge to properly shelve the book to get a door code (*cough*Silent Hill*Cough*).
There’s no nonsense here. Holstin asks, you are simple: how are you going to open this trap door? What twisted paths do you need to fake to reach the playground? I feel that how to solve these problems is organic and I really encourage you to thoroughly explore your environment.
#5: 1990s Poland is a travel
The Polish setting forms the bones of a very specific and unique story. It’s not a great tourist ad at all for Poland, but even being covered in plasmodalities of strange tentacles makes the town of Zeziorne Colonia clearly feel like a foreign experience compared to other games set in a more obscure place.
The demonstration has Polish narration and as an English speaker, I found this to be something like watching a foreign flick, which adds to the credibility and vibe. There is no context for how Polish is structured, but the voice acting sounded dead-on.
There is a woman who committed suicide. Her voice is filled with defeat as she handed you a gun. A big, childlike man, squealing, talking in riddles, and twisting from losing it completely. The strange cast here is far broader than your usual survival horror game, but their persuasive spooky doesn’t undermine the suspense at all. (But I hoped they would help me in the battle.)
And although Holstin is set in the 1990s, it’s not exactly boys’ bands or geography. For example, a save checkpoint is an aging phone booth. You will need to find a physical phone card to actually store it (like the actual anachronism for changes to do the laundry). Our hero Thomas definitely doesn’t have a cell phone to track your goals. Expect all the inconveniences of the pre-internet era.
Overall, this demo honestly blew me away. If the rest of Holstin is refined and carefully crafted, it is considered a survival horror classic in the decade era. I was impressed with what I’ve seen and played.
