Published , by Lucas White
Published , by Lucas White
Indie games are at a fascinating point in time, in that many developers have the same level of nostalgia for PlayStation and Nintendo 64 games as previous generations did for NES, Genesis and Game Boy games. Lots of games with that blurry, jagged, early 3D look have been showing up lately, built in such a way that the style persists without the limitations holding things back. It’s cool, and weird! And of course many of these games make being weird a priority, especially Sorry We’re Closed.
Like much of my output this month, we’re looking back at my recent trip to PAX East. I met up with publisher Akupara Games to check out Sorry We’re Closed, a neon-colored, PS1-era, survival horror joint from developer à la mode games. This game uses the likes of Resident Evil or Silent Hill as a starting point, then dumps buckets of garishly-colorful paint all over them and infuses a little arcadey gameplay twist on top. There’s an otherworldly sexual vibe dialed way up as well, reminding me of things like Shin Megami Tensei or The Neon Demon.
You play as Michelle, a visibly exhausted but loudly dressed woman who ends up face to face with a distressingly sexy sleep paralysis demon in her apartment bed. The demon opens up a “third eye” on her face, and it isn’t long before Michelle discovers her apartment extends into Hell, and she can sort of travel between dimensions in a limited chunk of her surroundings. Someone else in the apartment complex is there too, and she gives Michelle the “Hellhound,” a hot-pink gun with a mouth and teeth, that growls in murdery approval when you reload. Yeah, vibes all the way down from top to bottom here.
Combat with Hellhound is noteworthy, and stands out almost as much as Sorry We’re Closed’s bright colors. To do meaningful damage to enemies you have to hit them in weak spots, and to actually see those weak spots you need to activate Michelle’s third eye. This has limited range, and to actually fire the weapon you have to swap to a stationary first-person view. Now, if you activate the third eye in range of the enemy, they get stunned for just a brief moment. I quickly learned if I wanted to engage an enemy properly, I had to run in, get that stun, and hit those weak spots as fast and accurately as possible. It’s a stark contrast to the slow burn of similar horror game combat, but brings in skill alongside ammo scarcity in a way that only bolsters the anxiety.
Other parts of the game were more typical, deliberately leaning on the old PS1 survival horror tropes. There’s lots of backtracking to find various unlocking mechanisms, and the classic static camera angles of the era are out in full force here. An occasional twist, such as a vulgar, talking demon-slash-door lock you have to trick and use your liminal space powers to overcome, still adds that unique flavor to the genre’s Greatest Hits.
Sadly, just as things started to get really weird, and I mean weird for an already weird game, the demo came to an end. I was treated to a highlight reel of things to come, and am particularly intrigued by the arc this demon will take us and Michelle on. There are Persona-like indications of antagonist characters wielding supernaturally enhanced character flaws as weapons, the first one being a gatekeep, girlboss kind of person desperately trying to please the same demon by doing even more violent capitalism than before. But she gets her eyes plucked out, which seems like a thing demons would do to rampaging capitalists. But I wanna see what leads up to it and what happens after!
Luckily, if Sorry We’re Closed sounds neat to our readers, the same demo I got to try at PAX East is on Steam right now! I recommend any horror aficionado, especially folks who love when horror gets weird, check it out.
Sorry We’re Closed is currently targeting a 2024 release window for PC. The publisher gave us access to a demo during PAX East for the purpose of this preview.