ECHOSTASIS is the third entry in Enigma’s Studio’s horror trilogy, and it’s one of the more interesting games I’ve played this year. There’s a demo on Steam , and you should grab it if you're interested, since everything I have to say about it is going to be a spoiler of some kind. I’ll attempt a brief description below, but a lot of the fun here is discovering how all its parts fit together, and how even its more prosaic game conventions are defamiliarised through a spooky, static-drenched ensorcellment.
You’re thrown into the game’s opening after you’ve entered your name in a purgatorial terminal, and it immediately feels a little like Bloodborne ’s Yharnam might if Sony trolled the world by releasing it not for modern PCs, but for a consumer grade PC prototype left to marinate in embalming fluid for several decades. It takes an effort just to exist in this place - exploration drains away a resource named resolve. Even moving your head to look around is costly, as if perception itself were some exhausting act of will.
That’s the vibes, and what vibes they are - there’s a depth and stark beauty to the image manipulation that elevates it far above the ‘we’ll bung some scanlines and RGB manipulation on it and call it a day” you sometimes get with retro homages. The game itself is part text adventure , part FPS , and part exploration puzzler . You’ll quickly fall into a rhythm of discrete runs that have you trying to unlock shortcuts and other pe.