Trenches - World War 1 Horror Survival Game has a really cool premise: bringing the horrors of trench warfare in World War I to life with a dream-setting adventure where there's always something lurking to consume your soul. The game, however, struggles to create tension and a sense of urgency in its narrative due to an unclear premise and an environment that is supposed to be claustrophobic, but ends up being perceived as annoying due to its numerous technical problems.
Created by Ryan Portelli, the sole developer behind this. Estudio Steelkrill, Trenches is a psychological survival horror with gore and splatter elements but, unfortunately, it lacks the necessary immersion to worry and horrify those who play it. What should be climactic moments in the exploration of the claustrophobic trenches, instead of generating awe and surprise, take the form of a hilarious series of poorly executed animations that look more like the result of a bomb exploding in a deli than to the blind fury of an evil entity. Trenches - World War I horror survival game, the protagonist of this review, is a game that would have a lot of potential but, unfortunately, is plagued by technical problems and difficult foundations.
An excellent premise
If there is a moment in history when the human race was at its worst, it is this World War I. Steelkrill Studio decided to orient their game towards the more psychological side of the conflict, as not only were deep scars inflicted on the bodies of hundreds of thousands of people. Disconnection from family, daily contact with death, and the devastation of the surrounding landscape have caused considerable trauma for those sent to the front.
Trenches aims to explore a soldier's desperate need to escape from that labyrinth of tunnels and atrocities to be able to return to their loved ones. It's a pity that there chasing him is a demonic creature absolutely determined to kill him. The story also focuses on the loss of humanity of the soldiers on the front lines and the horrors of war. The most attentive players will soon understand that in the dreamlike and surreal world in which they will find themselves, something is wrong even when looking at the shadow that the protagonist projects on the ground: something is missing.
There is no noise in the trenches.
The trenches are the perfect place to set a psychological survival horror: tunnels, bunkers, mass graves and corpses were the order of the day in the mud of the hills on the border between France and Germany. The developer has done a good job, on a sensory level, to try to immerse the player in that dangerous situation. silence which, according to veterans, was one of the worst moments of the entire conflict, given that it was the moment before an assault. Even the simple act of moving creates tension and the game will often remind you how important it is not to make the slightest noise. There is a system to peek and check what is hidden behind a corner and you will have to be careful where you walk because, depending on the material of each surface, you can create more or less noise (wood, for example, makes a lot of noise) and the creature hunting you may hear your footsteps.
If you choose connect a microphone to your PC/console and enable the dedicated function in the menu, it will also force you to control the volume of your breathing while playing because this way the creature will be able to hear your noises. In particularly shocking moments (such as the discovery of a dead body or after an important story point), the protagonist will be left breathless by shock, something that will increase the chances of alerting the monster in the trenches.
Too many technical problems
Il progression system On paper, it's well thought out. The ultimate goal is to escape the trenches, but to do so you will first have to find nine clues, each of which triggers flashbacks about your past and what happened in the dream dimension in which you find yourself. These clues are linked to bloodied newborns who cry desperately and it is their cries that guide you through the tunnels of the Western Front. To know where the nearest damn baby is, you'll have a whistle that will increase the volume of its screams so you can understand which direction to explore. This is not an operation that should be undertaken lightly: by doing so, the creature chasing you will also hear you and be able to locate your position. It all sounds great, but in the game, unfortunately, this mechanic was translated in a way definitely disappointing.
The fog that the developers filled the trenches with to create tension has a very strange interaction with the walls, making them appear and disappear between frames. Leaning in front of a corner is usually sufficient Insert the camera into the wall. making you see through the walls and nullifying any fear. The monster chasing you, then, is not exactly a strategist, and the ease with which it is possible to escape its sight makes it a decidedly unlikely threat. Even some game mechanics work poorly and risk ruining the tension: scattered around the map, for example, there are glass bottles to throw to distract the wort, a shame that the latter often break in our hands before they can He threw them only because he passed too close to a wall. Thus attracting the monster to the exact place where we were.
Finally, if the music and sound effects manage to create a bit of tension while walking through the trenches, when you are faced with a moment of tension the audio sometimes arrives with a slight delay that, rather than scaring, confuses and annoys. It doesn't help that the quality of the resources used is quite low and that the English texts on the screen have quite a few syntax errors that sometimes prevent us from understanding what needs to be done. The result of all these technical problems is an inevitable detachment between the experience of the protagonist and the emotions of the player who, rather than being scared, feels frustrated by the impossibility of enjoying a setting with so much potential and a story that, despite its lacks, originality manages to capture attention.
Conclusions
Tested version Xbox Series X digital delivery Steam, Xbox Store Price 7,37 € Holygamerz.com 4.0 Readers (4) 5.9 your voteTrenches - World War 1 Horror Survival Game had all the potential to scare you and make you think with its setting and gameplay structure, but its developer failed in almost every area where failure was possible. The story does not attract attention for its originality, the environment is a labyrinth of technical problems and many of the things that should scare you, the fog, the music, the noises and above all the creature, lose their effectiveness partly due to bugs. and partly due to some level design choices that go against the horror component. In short, Trenches - World War 1 Horror Survival Game had all the potential to give some exciting nights to lovers of creepypasta and psychological horror and instead it turned out to be a series of errors that, unfortunately, waste the potential of the setting.
PRO
- The environment has a lot of potential.
- Interesting system that records the volume of respiration
AGAINST
- Endless technical problems
- Poor horror and splatter components.
- Bug-ridden localization
