Subliminal: A Subversion of Expectations

Intro

Have you ever stared down an empty building, once brimming with life and stories yet to be told? That feeling of awe and wonder as you hope the walls could talk? Well, today's review covers just that! Subliminal is a 3D psychological horror game (with elements of adventure and puzzles) made by Accidental Studios. With "The Backrooms" and indie horror being all the rage these days, it's hard not to be excited for when something that looks like this game comes out. 

Body

Subliminal is a game that follows a pretty standard formula when it comes to indie horror and borrows a ton from the pages of mascot horror. For those unaware, mascot horror is any game with a particular character(s) that simply insert horror into something once joyous and playful. The game is basically a point and click adventure with minimal moving of objects and more solving logic puzzles. Some of the mechanics are basically never used, such as sliding things on rails, dragging objects to obscure the vision of other objects, and in the case of my playthrough, an entire puzzle being completely different from launch and using a mechanic that was very rarely used. 

This doesn't necessarily detract from the mechanics whatsoever, sometimes you need less to be more. I do wish that some of the mechanics were thrown in a tad bit more so when you came to a point like I did, you would remember it is a feature. Another thing I would appreciate is more narrator feedback, some of the puzzles were pretty hard. For example, I still cannot figure out the unnamed puzzle that I have nicknamed 'two steps back, one step forwards' based on the only hint in the looping room. I tried to follow it literally and I got nowhere. I think I spent what felt like almost an hour on this puzzle in the deafening flickering light ambiance trying to figure out what it wanted from me. 

So now you may ask me, what is the point? If this is a point and click adventure with minimal mechanics, why should I play it? And that's where I counter you with a trap card and say, lore! Subliminal subverted all of my expectations with witty charm and genuine jumpscares. For those who do play Mascot Horror, you should be well aware of the tropes and how boring those can be. This game however makes the best (and worst) of those tropes with pretty intense moments.

It's honestly impressive how gorgeous this game looks. It makes everything feel that much more intense. The monster design is freaky, and even the slow trickle of not seeing that monster does wonders. The only unfortunate part is when you introduce a mechanic in the middle of a chase sequence and expect the player to understand what is happening. This reminds me heavily of Poppy Playtime Chapter 5, where sometimes you don't need to fix what wasn't broken. 

Unfortunately for this next part, the writer in me has to be a bit negative. I liked the story, and what it was trying to potentially tell, but the lore and the story is pretty confusing. A normal player would probably not pick up on what it wants to tell. It follows the trope where everything has to be theorized on and it only gives enough information to answer the vaguest of questions. If you don't want spoilers, I recommend reading the conclusion, and I will put the spoilers down below it. 

Conclusion

Subliminal shows a tremendous amount of promise. It does suffer in areas and completely destroys other games in different areas. I can't wait for chapter 2 to see where it goes and if they can fix some of the issues in the first game. I have to give it a 7.9 out of 10, it was so close to 8 but some of those puzzles were so difficult and it tended to crash on start-up and in menus. 

Spoilers

Now for those of you writers and readers that wanted the spoilers, read below:

This game follows a protagonist who we learn is named Caleb (or Calib if you listen to the pronunciation by the narrator) and we are stuck somewhere in his head with memories. We aren't given much to go off of, but we start fiddling around and realize something pretty terrible has happened. The game drip-feeds us over the course of the game that something happened to our sister Lily at a water park and we blame ourselves for it, but that is never confirmed, only given to us as hints through graffiti. Sadly, this is about as much as the game is willing to give us, as all three endings don't quite answer enough. Especially since the canon ending just sees us going deeper. For once I might have actually liked some lore notes or maybe more witty commentary from the narrator to give a tad bit more information cause the ordinary player will probably not fully notice or put this together.