The Occultist Review

The Occultist

The Occultist is a Horror Adventure game from the Developers at DALOAR and Pentakill Studios S.L. You play as the protagonist Alan Rebel, a paranormal investigator who has gone to a British island called Godstone in search of your missing father. The game incorporates supernatural and dark magic like elements to create an original take on a horror adventure game.

Overview

The game starts off like a Batman and Spider-Man reboot. They do not give you a lot of backstory to what is going on, and I only learned my character’s name because I always have subtitles on for everything. This made me question whether this was an ongoing series, but this is not necessarily a bad thing either. You do not go through another repetitive origin story filled with the same tropes and boring lore a lot of other games have, so I was completely fine with the superhero reboot treatment of the story. Thirty seconds into the opening cut scene and I was already playing the actual game. One thing I realized early on that I was hoping would change but it didn’t. I personally hated Alan’s voice. It made me think of Christian Bale’s Batman recovering from a bad cold.

Gameplay

When it comes to horror games, I have personally played quite a few and if I had to compare it to anything I would compare this to Outlast, with a survival mechanic or two missing. The thing I loved about Outlast is the thing I hated about it and that was the fact that I could not fight back, and the same thing applies here in The Occultist but the hate isn’t as bad as it was for Outlast.

I always have the mindset of nothing is too scary as long as I can distribute reciprocity accordingly to anybody who has wronged me in the game. My face dropped when I played for fifteen minutes and realized they never introduced an attack button, a jump button, or any mechanics on how to hide. I knew I was in for a long ride, but luckily the enemies in The Occultist are not as aggressive as other horror games and they have a pretty heavy emphasis on solving various (and I do mean various) puzzles throughout the game. I almost would say this could almost fall in the category of a puzzle game with horror elements.

Alan uses four main abilities from his pendulum that you unlock as you progress through the game, and all the abilities are tied to the paranormal nature of the game and are used to help your progress and solve the puzzles in the game. The puzzles felt rewarding as you solved them because you can tell the developers thought them out thoroughly. He utilizes a diary to log his journey and any clues to any puzzles you might come across which is very handy.

He also has a skill where he looks at his hand, and you can see as his hand gets more decrepit, he is getting closer to death. It was rare when I needed to use it, but the few instances I did it felt as though it should be an option to toggle the visibility on and off instead of it being an ability that you start off with in the game. As mentioned previously, the enemies in The Occultist are not that aggressive, and I would probably say I died more failing the balancing mechanic. The balancing mechanic uses the Dualsense controller’s motion controls to keep Alan’s balance as he traverses different obstacles, which I think is cool because most games I play do not utilize the feature much and I tend to forget it is there. Even better you can cut it off and use the left stick to balance as well.

Story & World

There are 8 different areas for you to play in, and each area has its own enemies that are pertinent to that area and feel like they are naturally supposed to be there from how the story is unfolding. Across the 8 different areas you come across a host of characters that help expand the lore of the story and you tend to forget you did not really get much from the backstory because you find notes around that fill in the holes of what is going on.

With the game having no attack mechanic, you feel a heavy emphasis to explore the world. I would say 80-90% of the world is important to either the story or progressing the task at hand. They even have three different collectibles for you to search for through the game as well. I did find all the hidden altars in the game. You learn to look everywhere and at everything for clues or prompts to use your pendulum that when you come across something that is not important and maybe just the developers fleshing out the world you may find yourself disappointed because you look to find meaning in everything.

Graphics, Performance & Sound

I think the audio of the game did really well. I played with a SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Pro with 3D audio enabled. Hearing the enemies and various other sounds elevated the feel of the horror experience. It did enough to keep you on your toes and not get too comfortable. One thing I did see consistently throughout the game, and it might become patched by the time you read this, certain items in the game that you interact with had either shader or texture issues so you could not read them accurately which can be an issue when I described how detailed you have to be when exploring the world to solve the different puzzles you have. Again, it may just be me but I was not a fan of Alan’s voice.

Things I like, that you might not care about (Pros)
• Refreshing take on skills and abilities for a paranormal horror game
• Well thought out puzzles
• Well designed Audio
• Nice lore to the story
• Not a long game, so not a lot of time commitment

Things I did not like, that you might not care about (Cons)
• Protagonist’s voice
• Lack of a jump mechanic, and hide mechanic (feels like a missed opportunity)
• Sometimes dialogue did seem repetitive or a little stale
• Puzzles could take some time if you miss something and can take you out the experience of the game
• Little to no replayability

Conclusion

The Occultist in my opinion receives a recommendation and a thumbs up. While it is a game I can recommend and it definitely does some things right – I do not think it is for everybody. There are some flaws and things I wish they would have fleshed out more to improve the experience. Maybe adding a difficulty mode that could have made enemies more aggressive and added those jump and hiding mechanics to make the stakes feel higher when they are in pursuit of Alan.

This is not a bad horror game for people looking to jump into the horror genre or looking for a new horror experience. There are a few jump scares but nothing too outrageous for those gamers who find horror games to be overwhelming. But big horror fans may feel a little underwhelmed.