Neon survival horror Sorry We’re Closed looks rad as heck
Enter the demon world to sort your life out
Imagine not being fazed that a powerful demon cursed you, while maintaining your style and composure to investigate how to free yourself before your time’s up. I’m not sure I could manage not to totally lose it under those circumstances, but survival horror Sorry We’re Closed from devs à la mode and publishers Akupara Games plonks you into the vaguely 32-bit shoes of cool cucumber Michelle to do exactly that. The game takes the familiar fixed camera angles from classics such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Alone In The Dark, but combat’s being handled in first-person. Have a look for yourself below, and watch out for your third eye.
Michelle needs to jog around and try to sort her predicament out, with other characters drawing her deeper into Sorry We’re Closed’s demon realm. You’ll have to chat up some interesting looking peeps, including that one chimera lad from the trailer who’s part winged beast with some horse thrown in. This is a game where goat heads appear from tongues unrolling from disembodied, floating vampiric mouths, and creatures that look like plucked geese try to kill you. I can’t believe Michelle’s going to have a straightforward time figuring out how to lift her curse working under those conditions, so it's not entirely surprising that there’ll be multiple endings to discover.
The trippy demon mystery is enticing enough, but what’s really got me intrigued about Sorry We’re Closed is its merging of first-person shooting with those old school survival horror camera angles when you’re exploring. Survival horror is one of my favourite genres, so I’ve been hoping someone would take a shot at combining the two styles for a while. Third-person combat at fixed camera angles is pretty clunky, and the first-person view of a monster heading right for you is way more tense, but I'd rather have the fixed camera spring things on me than wander around everywhere in first-person. I’m interested to find out how switching between the perspectives works in practice.
Sorry We’re Closed is coming to Steam, but there’s no release date just yet. I’ll let you know when that’s announced. For now, you can check out the official site here.