Sylvio

I'm going to recommend this game because it has cool ideas, clever puzzles, great audio, love the voice acting, the music, and there is a peculiar mood that makes it special. And was made by practically one person, such a big accomplishment.

This said, I'm going to expose a few things that made the experience quite negative for me. The developer can stop reading now :D
My first try, a few years ago, I didn't understand anything, I kept dying, the recorder didn't seem to work and I was really confused about when I have to record things with the microphone. I wanted to kill Kurt Indovina who recommended the game and uninstalled it (the game, not Kurt Indovina).

Now I'm cleaning my backlog and decided to take a second try. This time I read the manual first and it was a huge change, because there are a few concepts that are difficult to grasp just playing. I understand that the developer didn't want to use cutscenes to make the game more immersive but it makes very difficult to realize what's happening and some base ideas like shooting nails to clouds don't make sense in terms of logic, and the feedback isn't obvious when you do it, so you think wrongly you're doing nothing when you try new things.

My big problem is that I can't see anything in this game. I missed objects that are in front of me, and having like a million collectibles here I only got a few reels. And looking for entrances in the walls was very difficult.

The reels are related to the story. I don't know if it made more sense taking all, I don't know what the recorder fast forward and slower were for and worst, didn't get the main beats of the story. Not having subtitles or a transcription for the reels didn't help. So when I ended the game I was totally confused and the only thing I got is that people died in several disasters and there was some kind of experiment and a "twist" that came from nowhere. And I was doing things like morse signals that didn't make any sense and made me jump to the next chapter without any perceived logic.

When my painful eyes could see anything behind the fog and the old school confusing and repetitive 3d, the meshes didn't make any sense. I get the idea of everything is rusted and deformed by time, but it's too much, there are objects that doesn't seem remotely what they're supposed to be. The rusted texture was too noisy and illumination didn't help. Even the big balloons were rusted, first time I saw one I though it was a giant stone monster or something.

The flutes puzzle was the most cryptic thing I've ever played and I was shooting to the words because I couldn't see a damn thing. The cart get busted and couldn't use it, fortunately, it was fixed turning the game off and on. The other problem I had is in the zoo, were the "it worked like a charm" audio got stuck at the beginning of my save and there was a terrible noise going all the time until I got to the observatory. The alpha of the black clouds wasn't in the correct order in the first level and they were invisible depending of the area.

The engine was quite robust and I didn't get trapped anywhere, so kudos for the good work.
So, a good/bad experience that needed more accesibility for me. Not going to retry and look for all the collectibles because my eyes got too tired and are difficult as hell to see.

A bit of a masochist experience.

Confusing, charming, with raw edges. Gameplay is simple, battles are not really a problem, most of the game is just running around the location and doing some puzzles. A lot of cryptic lore. The game is weird to the point of being sometimes perplexing, but i find Sylvio sweet, it's a passion project. It's more about the vibes, to be honest. Check it out if you ever feel nostalgic for 2010s indie horror games.

Atmospheric and strange. Great sound design. Probably not for everyone, but if you're a fan of weird fiction and games that are artistic and exploration based it's worth a play. I'd consider it roughly the same genre as Empathy Path of Whispers, but with visuals that are more bleak and haunting rather than epic and fantastical. The story builds gradually and with a sense of dread. "Bleak", "haunting", and "dread" probably make it sound like a downer to play, but the atmosphere is strangely calming, which makes the simple gameplay almost meditative. The ending is baffling, so if you need a conclusive ending it may not be the game for you.

Sylvio is pretty rough around the edges. It’s a ghost hunting game where you travel around abandoned areas in the outskirts of some forsaken woods. You’re capturing the dead through audio -- at least what’s left of them and their stories.

It’s actually a great way to tell a story a couple of words at a time, carefully letting you piece together a larger puzzle. It’s also where the game builds a lot of its atmosphere, constantly surrounding and overpowering you with noise, through a sound design that really jostles your attention and imagination

There’s this great bit where you get to analyze your sound library after a discovery. At first glance it’s just filled with static and babel. But by running it backwards, or in slow motion, you find hidden messages that reveal more pieces to the puzzle.

It’s a super fun, detective-like part of Sylvio that is sadly overshadowed by what can only be described as the rest of the game. It’s the less flattering part. The less fun one. The one where you travel around inexplicable, awkward terrain -- sometimes by car -- in order to reach points of interest. Interspersed with puzzle solving and combat where you shoot apparitions with a potato cannon.

It’s a mess, to be honest. Which is a shame, seeing as the game is so close to being a horror game about something more substantial; a lot more specific and interesting. But instead of being a game about deduction and listening, it turns into a more abstract one where you’re once again just chasing down waypoints ad nauseum.

Love the theme, not so much the execution. Thumbs down for me.

Terror Meter 1/10
Narrative Intrigue 4/10
Visuals 2/10
Difficulty 3/10
Length <4hrs

Sylvio is a Puzzle Exploration Shooter game, with a creepy atmosphere which takes place over large maps. The player is exploring the remnants of an old theme park, and what brought the place to ruin. With the use of Audio Recording Equipment, listen to the ghosts and discover what actually happened.

On each map the player explores, they will be looking for ghostly apparitions which can either take the form of a general location, white orbs or black clouds. Locations are simply points the player will be guided towards to record a ghostly apparition. The white orbs are passive and the player will simply need to find the correct spot around them in order to record the ghost. While the black clouds can injure the player should they get close. In order to get rid of the black clouds the player needs to use the potato gun with a sharp object to injure them, the amount of shots needed to kill a black cloud increases through the game. Once the player destroys the cloud they are able to then record the ghost.

If the player destroys all of the black clouds in an area then a giant ghost will spawn, like with the black clouds the player will need to load their potato gun with sharp objects and shoot each enough times to deal with them, the amount of shots escalates per level the player is on. Should you get too close to the giant ghost the player will be injured and collapse, the ghosts will attack the player with a black fog from a distance which will also cause damage. The black cloud can be hard to see, and may kill the player before they realise what is happening. Once the giant ghost is dealt with the player will once more be able to record audio.

Once the player has recorded a ghost they will need to listen to what the ghost says by rewinding and listening to the tape. The player may need to go back and forwards through each recording at different speeds before they can find the ghost's message. I found the puzzles of working out what the ghost was saying to be one of the more enjoyable parts of the game, as each time you listened to the ghost stories you found out more of what actually happened in the park.

It is not easy to find the ghost apparitions, the player will need to explore old structures and attractions. In order to get through them the player will need to complete puzzles to open up the maps. This will be done with the use of the Potato gun and hard objects which can be used to knock over objects. The puzzles are not difficult, but can be hard to find some of the locations with there only being one approach.

The player will be traversing large maps in the game in order to find the ghosts' apparitions, the player will need to drive to get from point to point as locations can be minutes away from each other. Driving in Sylvio is very basic, though does suffer with some ragdoll moments which can send the car spinning should the player crash.

Sylvio’s story is interesting with lots of events leading up to the collapse of the park, and multiple stories coalescing from different perspectives. The story is told in such a disjointed way that it makes it really intriguing trying to learn more of what happened. Now saying that, by the time I was near the end of the game, I did get confused on what was happening anymore, to the point I would need to go through the game again to work out what goes on at the end.

Sylvio is not difficult, the problem comes that it is really easy to get confused on puzzles, parts can easily be missed, while others parts you may not realise you can interact with. This seems to be at worst in the Carnival, in which multiple attractions need to be interacted with in different ways to progress the game. At the same time puzzles that involve dropping platforms can be invisible in the red fog unless you are at the correct angle. It can come to such a problem that if you just do not notice a bullseye you can be wandering in circles for ages trying to find a way in.

When it comes to visuals, Sylvio is not a nice game to look at, maps can be bare, or so coated in mist that most locations are hard to make out. The theme park visuals of the early game are quickly lost to bare maps, in which the player will spend a lot of the game just driving from place to place. Buildings feel compact and tight, and having to explore them is both annoying and compact.

Do not come into Sylvio expecting a horror game, at times it can be creepy with the story behind the events and seeking ghosts. There are no scares, or real threats apart from dealing with the giant ghostly forms, shooting dark clouds at the player.

Still I really enjoyed Sylvio, and I am not really sure why. The puzzles were fun, and offered a fair challenge to work out where to go, some of the more enjoyable ones were tactically shooting potatoes to open doors. The story was interesting, though I did get a bit confused the further I went in. I guess I truly enjoyed the game because it is such a unique experience that I find it hard to compare it to other games.

If you want to see what the gameplay is like then check the video below, I would advise you just about twenty minutes in, to see more of the exploration parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3vSDmzsN0M

You can find other games I recommend in my curator feed:

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41770172/

I’ve pressed play to hear what the EVP caught in the wind. Among the static, a broken women’s voice can be heard. She speaks in slow and melancholic tone “I didn’t want to… Daddy… They put me to sleep… I’m not alo…” Her voice turns to short scream. I’ve stopped the recording and played it backwards, at half the playback speed. At first there was nothing except distortion but a faint sound can be heard. It’s a horrid imitation of human speech, with no discernable accent or phonetic pattern. Its words now etched into my mind: SHE IS HERE WITH ME.”

In the late seventies, something terrible has happened in the Saginaw Park. Since then, no living creature, except for the crows, can live there. You play as Juliette Waters, a professional Ghost Whisperer, as she travels into the park to put her skills to the ultimate test.

Sylvio is a first-person survival horror game inspired by Silent Hill games and Twin Peaks in the best possible way. Its unique story premise, creepy atmosphere, and bone-chilling ghost recording gameplay left me in awe and hooked till the end. Considering it’s made by one person, this amazing horror indie game is very rough in its execution.

You‘ll spend 70% of the time investigating and solving puzzles, and 30% shooting and defending yourself. There are 13 chapters/levels in the game and you’ll need between 8-12 hours to complete the game. You start each level by using the Electronic Voice Phenomenon recorder to capture the messages from ghost residues or trapped apparitions. Since ghosts exist in a realm where time flows differently, you’ll manipulate the playback speed and direction to uncover what they have to say.

Some of these ghosts will part with their secrets peacefully, while you’ll have to “reason” with others before communicating by using your compressor shotgun. As much as the investigation and sound manipulation segment of the game excels, the combat is quite floaty and imprecise, barely getting a passing grade.

The biggest problem with this game is sheer obscurity on what to do next. Puzzles in the first few levels are straightforward and logical. As I reached the second part of the game, I was often stumped on how to proceed, as puzzles can reach the infamous “moon logic” levels of difficulty. When you uncover how to proceed, you’ll scratch your head thinking how that puzzle made any sense.

Controls are also obscure, with too many keyboard input requirements for something simple. There is a guide in the main menu that I recommend you to read first. Even after this, I didn’t realize how to change and use objects in my inventory until near the end of the game. Your gun, for example, uses two types of ammo: solid, blunt objects to solve puzzles, and sharp and deadly ones to fight the ghosts.

On top of this, you’ll notice a small compressor meter on the gun that loses its power every time you shoot. You’ll have to pick up compressed pesticide canisters to refill your weapon’s range and power. And all of this could’ve been simplified or better explained in the game, but it’s not.

Regardless, the outstanding sound and music immersed me completely and sealed the deal for me. Talking to ghosts got me unnerved every time. Juliette sounds like a curious and fearless kid, and yet very fragile and afraid adult at the same time. The voice cast in general is superb.

The graphics are okay, but the art direction is amazing. Decrepit and mist-filled park locations felt eerie, packed with tension, unwelcoming and alien. Lastly, the unfolding story never disrespected my intelligence and chewed plot points for me. You’ll uncover some answers, but you’ll have to use your brain to get the full picture.

Among throngs of cheap jumpscare games out there, Sylvio has masterfully done the rising dread and uncertainty. If you can go past through rough design and no hand holding, this game will leave a lasting mark, just like a well told short horror story does.

The young man’s voice has changed to a rhythmic thumping sound as if it’s trying to tear the fabric of the universe apart, “…the blood of the mist inside my skin.” Only the screams of others could be heard in the background.

Solid horror-exploration game with very good sound at times and unsettling atmosphere. Not very challenging, almost walking simulator level but still very enjoyable. Love the main character's voice too.

Awesome sound design makes this game ultracreepy. Ugly, clunky graphics makes it even more oppressive. I enjoyed it a lot.

Sylvio has some great ideas. Unfortunately they're wrapped in a seriously buggy product. The atmosphere and setting are intriguing, and the ghost recording elements are fascinating and really draw you into the plot. The downside is that the puzzles swing wildly between easy and extremely obtuse. Which elements of the game are interactive, and the general physics, are not particularly well explained and can lead to some frustrating moments where a puzzle solution seems slightly out of your reach for an unclear reason. This reaches its apex in the final level, which happens to be the most bland of all the levels graphically and design-wise while also managing to place items you need in positions that make little sense other than to extend your time walking around this extremely dull area.

The combat is also extremely basic, and it is never really clear what exactly will 'kill' you. Some enemies seem to damage you simply by being nearby, and as they can float through walls you will regularly find yourself dying by an enemy that you have never even seen. There is also no way to change ammunition, so if you find yourself with the wrong ammo for a situation you are forced to waste whatever you have loaded into the gun before you can put the correct one in.

The driving sections of the game are extremely basic. It is simply: A) Drive in this direction, don't hit any trees. B) Record some sounds. C) Repeat. You will regularly find yourself at the whims of the game's very basic physics, and it is a blessing that the game includes a button to right your car. Unfortunately you have to do four almost identical driving levels through the course of the game and it never gets any more interesting.

I'm surprised by the number of positive reviews for this game, which suggests that horror game fans are so starved of content that they will lap up anything without being critical of its shortcomings.

Lightning in a bottle. They built an adventure game around a very clever game mechanic of playing tape at different speeds. This brought back childhood memories of trying to record ghost sounds with a Fisher Price tape recorder. Had I been able to do playback modulation, then I am sure it would have looked just like this gameplay.

Hunted for ghosts on an ubuntu linux computer system, with radeon mesa graphic drivers. This game uses the Unity game engine, and it works through the Steam Play compatibility libraries. I had to use the PROTON_USE_WINED3D launch option to get it to run. There were some technical rough spots with later level design, puzzles in the last levels were a bit poor, but overall a solid recommendation even at full price.

Sylvio is by no means a conventional horror for so many reasons.

1. Conventional horror protagonists are like "Wow, we're innocent annoying milk-sucking overgrown teenager idiots! Oh no, what is this?! AAAAHHHH!!". Julliette here knows precisely what she's doing, where she's going and what the consequences can be. She goes looking for supernatural trouble, just because she feels like if she doesn't do what she does, then who will?

2.Conventional horrors hate outdoors. The better part of Sylvio is set outdoors. And what an outdoors it is! Surreal, red mist, half-buried shacks, rusting metal all over the place. The world of Sylvio is akin to Stalker in a lot of ways.

3.Conventional horrors make the protagonist passive. Here you're always on the active side - looking for ghosts with your mic, making your way towards them, not away from them.

4.Conventional horrors do screamers and try to play on your reflexes. Or if not - then create the sense of panic or dread, like in Alien:Isolation or evoke the feeling of being lost and confused like in projects by Bloober Team. Sylvio does noting of that. The feeling you get from playing it is not fear or dread so much as a delicate mixture of apprehension, curiosity, gloom and awe.

5.Conventional horrors never get this scary. No conventional horror has this feeling when you start catching something on your mic out there. And then you suddenly see that while you are standing still, the number on your distance meter is changing. And it's slowly getting lower. Which means whatever it is you caught on your mic - it's getting closer. No conventional horror will just let you come out of the barn and behold a three-story-high black human figure against a red sky. No intense music, no screamer, just the raging static in your mic. The figure isn't aggressive, it's just standing there, do what you want about it. It's bewildering.

Sylvio is subtle, generous, mechanically original and simply beautiful despite its simplistic graphics. It's also one of the best horror games you'll ever play.

Had perhaps the coin landed on its other side, I would have begrudgingly given Sylvio a positive rather than a negative review. For nearly every negative aspect the game unfortunately sports, a feeble, and occasionally justifiable, positive one can be provided in return; Sylvio gets all-so-close to giving as much as it takes. And had I been somewhat more charitable I would have tipped the other way, but in review of all I just played I can't rightly recommend what is in effect more a chore than a pleasance.

Sylvio boasts the unique gameplay mechanic of audio-record investigation, as you'll be collecting scraps of audio to review and investigate, only to eventually further parse and evaluate. Doing this is essential to forwarding the game as it's the sole means of progression; the audio investigation is the fulcrum by which the game depends. In addition there is a paltry smattering of puzzle-solving, some flimsy and awkward gunplay, and a whole lot of nauseous exploration. It needn't be said that considering the nature of the game, graphical shortcomings can be forgiven, but the length of Sylvio (a game which boasts 10-odd hours) and its murky, crimson-fogged environments make for quite the ugly picture. Add to this a lack of diversity for just about everything (environment, enemies, items, collectibles, objectives, etc.) and you get a game that has exhausted all its positive, and in one case unique, attributes within the first few levels--and by the later levels completely ruined by its merciless repetitiveness and tediousness.

The audio investigation, and associated creepy, ghostly voices and nocturnal seances, is an element of the game that is truly off-putting the first times it's executed. And in the game's defence I cannot think of another game that manipulates audio with this much efficaciousness: it's the core mechanic driving the game, and it functionally and emotionally works. But then you do it again. And again. And again. This action you do ad nauseam. By the third or so level the game has completely revealed what it is; the game quickly reveals just how bereft it is. By attempting to develop a long game, with an unnecessarily large environment, too much time was spent on blandly lengthening the already parchment-thin novelty present, where instead a shorter and sharper experience would have been endlessly preferable. It's understandable that featuring a longer play-time makes for an appealing Store Page bullet point, and undoubtedly appeals to many gamers, but the length of a game should always be in balance with the resources available. A confusing story and unengaging audio clips do not adequately recompense a mechanically poor game with a whopping two enemy types and a whole lot of frustrating, insipid levels.

If it seems that the previous two paragraphs aren't commensurate with the ambivalent preface, it's because I am actually disappointed that a game that so perfectly nails the horror movie creepiness of distorted audio and its manipulation, also happens to be a game that is whelmingly tedious. It's clear that developers cared about their product: evinced by the dedication to its core idea; the plethora of secrets and collectibles; and a dedication to their story (whether it's confusing and poorly communicated or not). But sometimes that's not enough. For me it wasn't. It may be for you. Make your own choice and don't feel poorly about it either way.

I can't recommend a title that has had a major game breaking bug since release(Summer 2015).

I envy the people who were able to play and complete the game since I really enjoyed the parts that weren't broken. It's a really neat game with great concepts and I would have really loved to actually be able to play it.

Unfortunately, I am stuck in the beginning of the game because I have the invisible orb/human form bug. I've reinstalled several times and nothing seems to fix it.

All I wanted to do was play through the first game so that I could buy and play the sequel but that is no longer a possibility. I refuse to buy another game from these Devs when they won't even fix the first.

Maybe they would have more than 46 reviews if they didn't release a broken product. Just saying.

I had very high hopes for this game because it was very well received by RPS and Killscreen which I highly admire. Unfortunately the game didn't live up to my expectations. While it has some interesting mechanics with ghost voice recordings and is very polished it is not scary at all and the story is quite vague, fragmented and develops rather slowly. There is not enough content to keep players engaged given the range of possible actions. I can't say it's a bad game per se, but I would highly recommend trying out the demo first to see if it clicks with you. If you don't find the atmosphere that engaging from the get go don't expect to see anything radically new later on. Just drop it.

Sylvio is almost completely unique in gaming horror-- the use of EVP and audio manipulation as a central theme is brilliant if only because it is so obvious as a gameplay mechanic and yet (to my knowledge) rarely employed in other games. As to the world built around this mechanic: between great synth music, unexplained and bizarre plot elements, (sometimes) backwards voices, and other unsettling elements and settings, Sylvio is quirky to a fault and has a Lynchian feel... or maybe Euro-Lynchian (since Lynch tends to be much more distinctly American in his weirdness). This isn't a horror game in the same sense as most entries in the genre; it's hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck eerieness rather than breathless, visceral suspense and terror. And it works well; but only when indie clunkiness and other frustrating aspects of the game stay out of the way.

My primary frustrations include:

--Combat: combat in Sylvio is usually a chore, especially because most of the threats are invisible when they first materialize (and often stay so for far longer than would be needed to instill confusion and panic in the player). This problem becomes most frustrating in interior environments. I never did figure out what triggered the enemies to become visible, instead resorting to "kiting" them until they deigned to make themselves vulnerable to my attacks.

--Insuffient introduction to mechanics: closely-related to combat, there is far to little in the way of tutorial. Even after reading the in-game help/instructions, it took me quite a long time and many frustrating deaths trying to understand the logic of the game world. I realize that mystery is an important ingredient of Sylvio's spell, but a tiny bit of mystery in gameplay mechanics goes a LONG way.

--Closed world: in a game so focused on collectibles, the inability to return to previous areas (with the exception of the Main Park area) is unnecessarily restrictive, especially given the relatively long total running time and the lack of narrative-related reasons preventing Juliette from re-exploring areas. For completionist-minded players (such as myself), awareness of this limitation creates tension that pulls the player out of the gameworld and narrative.

--Lack of gameplay variety: although I generally disliked the combat in Sylvio, I could still see that without it there would have been too few mechanics to sustain the experience. And even with combat included, I found that repeating the same basic steps as I entered each new area became a bit tedious by the final few sections. Perhaps the audio manipulation could have featured even more prominently, with more variety, and been introduced more gradually as Juliette 'learns' how to use her new equipment?

Sylvio is a welcome and unique addition to the horror genre, without a doubt. But this makes it all the more disappointing that it can be so unenjoyable to play. Still, I have high hopes that Sylvio 2 (which I understand is in development) can overcome some of these shortcomings. Give Sylvio a chance if you crave a case of the creeps... and you've got a bit of patience to spare.

What an underrated little gem of a horror story. With some soft spoken scares and a slow burning horror, this is something to lose some sleep over for me. Sylvio is probably going to go down as my favorite horror game. It's a little early yet, but I'm already in love with it. It's odd...and that's why it's so great. Sometimes, Sylvio is trying to do different things at once because it knows it doesn't have to be just one thing. Horror doesn't have to be about making a player constantly piss themselves. And I think that's what makes it great. The fact it's juggling a few things at once? Sure. Let's embrace it.

Sure, collecting EVPs and hearing those ghostly voices from "beyond the grave" is enough of a horror premise, but it's the story that you slowly put together from the ravaged land around you and these little voices whispering about the trees and these mysterious deaths they suffered. That makes this game all the more spooky.

Sylvio is also throwing in a few things that aren't exactly needed, but do give the game some charm and force it to stand out compared to other generic horror games. There's some basic shooting. Nothing you need to headshot with, but enough to keep the angry spirits away. I wonder why they don't like shards of glass and nails, considering they don't have a body. I mean...eh. No spoilers. No spoilers, I actually know what happens even if I'm not there yet. Anyway, rather than add on something that makes this clunky and unneeded, it's sort of nice. There's a bit of anxiety while you're wielding your microphone and you're ganked by an angry orb. You do have to figure out the best ammo to help you while managing collecting recordings. It's a pretty interesting combo. Sort of the whole "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter" sensation that we all can't live without.

There's also a bit of wonky platforming going on. You feel like a weird sort of Mario or Sly Cooper, except you're Juliette...and you're trying to help some ghosts pass on...and uncover one creeptastic mystery of a family "fun" park. Hah. Fun. Yeah real fun. This platforming may cause you to think you've broken the game, but chances are you didn't. You were supposed to hop that fence. You were supposed to find that hole. It's all intended and part of the design... And through hopping around, you'll actually progress the plot. So feel free to climb on things! Admittedly, it's an odd feeling. If you've stood in the middle of Stormwind (or any major city/town) in World of Warcraft and just attempted to jump on everything, that's sort of the feeling you're going to get. This isn't bad. You're just going to feel really weird and like you're breaking the rules.

The story is haunting. The bloody reds of the land make you think about just how tainted that soil must be with all of the people who died in the disaster and other things that the "helpful" ghostly voices suggest to you. It's a pretty beautiful picture. A pretty spooky picture, if I might say. Places are decaying and have proper technology for the time period (yay 70s tech). Everything is researched correctly. Do you smell that? It's the smell of someone who got it right. Ahhhh. Someone who cared enough to do a good job. I've noticed some mention our leading lady's voice, but... I like it. I'm really not looking for someone hyperactive and peppy when she talks to herself. A mumble and a soft musing to herself in passing while she's doing her work? That sounds about accurate when someone is talking to themselves. She sounds authentic as a person to me. For this, I find most of the game very appealing and even worth mentioning because it's better than what I was expecting. Please. Don't feel "inspired". Do what you're doing. You feel more real to me.

When you play this game, it's not going to tell you anything. At least, that's my experience. Read the instructions, scrub. Get lost? Pull them up in game. Lost in game? Hold out your microphone and let the spirits guide you. Creepy but effective. I would have liked some instruction. I don't need a lot! I'm an independent gamer who don't need no tutorial level! Just...some sort of instruction. Something small. A blurb. Though I have to admit, just flashing use buttons in front of me did give me the right idea since I had bothered to read the instructions a few times. A minor gripe. It's just me.

A more major gripe is the car. I hate the car. I understand it's useful considering some maps are huge, but the controls for the car are absolute garbage. Considering the area isn't flat and you'll constantly run into trees or you're stuck trying to figure out if the car is in reverse mode or forward mode (yeah left and right will get switched if you're in one or the other, I've found!). That's something I would personally remove from the game entirely. It's not helpful. It's frustrating. It added on so much extra time and most of that was spent flipping my car over constantly. I've played similar portions to that in my driver's ed class when I was about fifteen years old. Listen, I'm over it. If I wanted to play that, I still have the link TEN YEARS LATER. I'm over it. Really. If the controls could be a little more polished, awesome. But honestly? Juliette runs better on foot and I find more EVPs that way, so the car is garbage. It was great for the purpose, and it's just garbage otherwise. You can just get out of the car and run. This is allowed. I feel like this choice makes up for it, but you gave us a pretty car... I'd like to use the pretty thing without it not working.

That rant out of the way? Please don't let that deter you from the game. I'm quite a fan of a slow burn horror that doesn't rely on jump scares. There are few in the game, if any. This story disturbs and upsets me, yet I want to keep playing not only to see it through, but because the EVP function is so unique and fun. It's delightfully creepy and I also feel heartbroken because you can hear the sadness from some of the named souls you're communicating with. It's a wonderful experience. Repeat after me. WE CAN DITCH THE CAR. This is not Thelma and Louise. It doesn't have to go over the cliff with us!

So...it's not Outlast. It's not a jumpscare fest of "OOOH RUN FROM THE SILLY-FACED MONSTER!" like Amnesia. This is a thinking horror game. You have to really take in the details and just sit there while realizing, my god they did this in a game! This is something you'd find in your worst nightmares or played out in some sort of horror series on tv! It's good! I mean, hey, it's not perfect! But it's certainly better than what I'm watching on tv right now!

Nothing badly flashy so far. I compared this to the original Sylvio that had a great deal of distortion during the fighting sequence with the uh, "mean orbs" and that would probably give you more health issues than this. But so far, I've been able to play this without any major problems. It's a pretty nice game...and they didn't force me to play the car part, so that felt awfully nice!

Please play. I'd honestly say this is something to offer to people who love ghost hunting shows, horror games that are not what everyone else is clamoring for, and people who may not be used to heavy horror jump scares but might want to try out a horror game. It's got a bit of mystery to it, so mystery lovers may also enjoy if they're willing to embrace a paranormal element.

A very nice game. Again, probably going to be my favorite horror game...and I'll just...ditch that car in the clay somewhere and ride on an overgrown raven to somewhere nice. Just lemme know when the sequel comes out because I'll be waiting...

Straight up, let's just say that the graphics of this game aren't much shakes. It's a good thing, then, that the makers of Sylvio understand the importance of SOUND in a horror game. In fact, with the exception of the trifling fact that they forgot to include the noise of your character's own FOOTSTEPS, they've pretty much based their entire game around it. That's the good news.

But before we get too far into the positive stuff, let's just concentrate on some early negative impressions. Along with the whole "silent footsteps" thing, you'd be forgiven for thinking that your character possesses full-blown powers of LEVITATION, as she seems to almost "float" above the ground rather than travel about on terra firma like the rest of us. She furthermore doesn't need her hands to hold flashlights and other objects in front of her.

Now, I know that such - let us say somewhat "abstracted" - interactive mechanics have hardly been uncommon since Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but when it's coupled with virtually nothing else which seems to "ground" your character in the real world...well, she almost might as well be one of the ghosts that she's chasing. She also seems able to jump or fall down enormous distances without, say, breaking both her legs like any of us regular mortals would.

Luckily for the game, though, it soon becomes interesting and unusual enough that I mostly - MOSTLY - managed to get past these reservations, at least until I quit the game altogether about four hours in. One way or another, there's certainly no denying that for all its ambition and relative innovation, it could have used quite a bit more polish before being unleashed on an unsuspecting public (especially at that price).

Another thing which made it a tad hard for me to get into - something which all you staunchly anti-"handholding" people are gonna chalk up as a pro, so what would I know? - is that it takes a while to get the gist of what exactly it is that the game wants you to "do". I mean, there's a lot of things in this game which are hardly intuitive: Not the controls (un-remappable; C for flashlight?), not the story ("I'm just sorta, kinda, gonna go in this big spooky park place and, I dunno, maybe talk to some ghosts, I guess"), and not the part where you use your microphone and tape player to decipher words or short phrases which the dead offer up to you, then get on-screen "distance metres" to tell you where you're supposed to go next as your "reward" for the information uncovered in the messages.

A few of the puzzles are admittedly quite clever, so there's definitely some good ideas here, and the actual "tape-decoding" bits are suitably spooky and novel in execution...helped in no small part by the fact that the ghostly voices are, to begin with, Euros speaking in what is clearly not their first language - i.e. English - so by the time that you slow down and speed up the voices, or play them in reverse, they ARE quite genuinely eerie-sounding!

Oh, and speaking of which, the voice acting is on the whole fairly decent - not great, but decent - and fuck it, the GAME on the whole is pretty decent, if by no means perfect or astonishing. There's still a few other reservations that I have - some part of me isn't entirely sure that they shouldn't have passed on the infrequent and borderline-pointless "combat" elements of the game, for example, and just opted for an out-and-out "walking simulator" - but in the end, it was the extreme repetition and overall TEDIUM of the gaming experience which did in the patience of this particular player. I mean, I like a moody, snail-like pace as much as the next guy, but this game takes such "tasteful aesthetics" to new and frankly trying extremes.

I'm actually looking forward to the announced sequel to this game, because I think they got quite a lot "right" this time out, but also quite a bit "wrong". Undeniably interesting devs, in any case. I'm not gonna go so far as to say they've done something truly "original" here - I've already gotten in trouble for such bold claims in Steam reviews of late - but yes, definitely "different", and definitely worth a look to anyone who considers themselves genuinely interested in the numerous possibilities which the horror genre currently presents to game designers (maybe best to wait for a significant sale, though, just to be on the safe side).

Verdict: 7.5/10.

Sylvio is one of those "don't judge a book by its cover" type games. At first glance its very obvious that it’s a first person Unity horror game, what with its very unpolished appearance, and the game is bit buggy and janky with some uneven and unfocused gameplay elements like awkward platforming, driving, and combat, but what really elevates the game to make it far superior to most of its indie horror brethren is the ghost recording mechanic and its atmosphere. Recording and deciphering the voices of the dead using an old reel to reel really sets up a creepy atmosphere, that while it won’t keep you up at night, it still really sets an unsettling tone. There are no jump scares here, just pure atmosphere. The soundtrack also really helps and other reviews have said it’s got this synthy John Carpenter movie vibe to it which is neat.

Sadly the penultimate level is bad, with convoluted design and gimmicks and the ending is just super abrupt and vague, even if you get all the piano sheets. The game itself could have had smaller levels in general like the cellar and the old house areas were, because sometimes there can be a little to much wandering around. Overall though considering this was pretty much a one man job it still is a neat game worth checking out. Sadly I don’t think the Kickstarter campaign for the sequel will make it, even though it looks like it would be an improvement over this one.

Sylvio has an amazing atmosphere and an intriguing story, but I found myself beating my head against the desk more often than not while playing.

The gameplay was not intuitive--I was often doing the opposite of what I was suppose to be doing. This lead to me being stuck for an obscene amount of time on certain levels.

The atmosphere is incredibly well done in Slyvio. The game gave me the chills and was able to instill fear in me whenever static came through--who knew black blobs could be so terrifying?

I loved the premise of Sylvio, but I found the execution of the story to be lacking and the ending to be incredibly anti-climactic. All of this amazing buildup with no pay off in the end. With that said, I still would recommend Sylvio as it is a game worth playing--especially if you like indie horror games.

Honestly one of the best games I've played this year. Rather than the horror being based on monsters that chase you or pop scares, the horror in this game comes from your own discoveries as you take an old audio recorder and use it to recording the messages from the dead. Scrubbing the audio backwards and forwards and different speeds not only reveals clues to solving the puzzles that lie before you, but they also slowly help put together the story of what happened in Saginaw park piece-by-piece. Assumptions made early about what to the expect eventually become trumped by the recordings of people who were once there to experience the disaster and horrors that followed. Combat is rare and simply executed, with emphasis on the story.

I'd also like to add a note about the soundtrack to this game. With a feel that brings to mind the early works of John Carpenter's films from the 70's and 80's, the music in this game is absolutely phenomonal and it's practically worth owning the soundtrack on it's own. It sets the mood for the game perfectly and can set the mood for a foggy, eerie day just the same.

This game is unlike any other first person horror game I've ever played. It has so much intrigue and atmosphere, that you want to keep playing and finding clues and recordings. The voice acting is very well done, and in my opinion really adds to the game. Graphically speaking, it is not the best looking game out there, but the gameplay and the attention to the audio and recording device is really what drives the narrative of this game.

The audio recorder and its place in the game are really well done. When you come across a recording with your mic out, the machine will automatically record it for you. You then can play it back and analyse it to your hearts content. Hear something strange? Play it backwards....still doesn't sound quite right play it backwards at super-slow speed. The recording device Is really the star of this game and you can tell alot of work and effort has gone into perfecting it.

I really recommend this one if you are into horror/mystery type games, there have been a few jumpscares but nothing that scary so far. I also feel like I should mention the soundtrack, as it is reminiscent of old John Carpenter films like "The Thing", very synth heavy and really adds to the game. I honestly hope it is added as DLC, I would like to buy it as well.