Done WIth #18: Post Trauma

5 Years in the Wait

If you’re a huge fan of indie survival horror, then Post Trauma should not be a name that’s unfamiliar to you. For quite some time, five years to be exact, RED SOUL GAMES has been working relentlessly on this game. When the studio released an announcement that Autumn Ivy, a body builder and a talented voice actor, was joining the project, the hype was through the roof for the queer community who are a huge fan of them. What made these fans stay though was the intriguing premise of the game; a horror story heavily inspired by Silent Hill 2 with early Resident Evil gameplay.

As a huge fan of survival horror games myself and since I’ve been waiting for quite a few years, there was no chance that I’d miss Post Trauma this year. Despite having to travel in real life and having to catch up on other video games, nothing was going to stop me from playing it.

With this hype and anticipation in mind, it’s a big regret having to inform you that Post Trauma is an undercooked mess.

Post Game

I audibly yelled “that’s fucking it?!” when the credit started rolling. It was quite loud, definitely loud enough to wake my sister up.

Post Trauma’s story started incredibly strong. It had such an impressive start with shifting perspectives and a very tense train station section that slowly drip feeds you with more and more mysteries as we take the role of Roman, an old ordinary train conductor. When the game shifts perspective to first person mode and introduces another playable character, Carlos, it really signifies this team’s ambition. You’ll get to play three main protagonists across five chapters, and their idea is to tie each protagonists’ plot into one cohesive narrative.

As for the theme of the story itself, it’s essentially the good old reliable “guilt” and “shame” that’s heavily associated with games that are inspired by Silent Hill. I think RED SOUL did a good job deviating from the plot with these. There are still moments that are heavily borrowed, but overall it does feel original enough.

However, due to its low budget and its short length, it’s not hard to think that there’s a lot of fat to be trimmed down. Narratively speaking, the game can cut one character’s plotline entirely and focus on another two and it would feel more “completed”. Act 4 and 5 are way too short and end up leaving me scratching my head, as the game doesn’t give you any answers to the set up from the strong opening. Towards the end, I kept thinking there has to be something more in the oven. At the same time, it already took them five years and it’s not a secret that they want to release the game. It’s one of those stories that you can tell the writers don’t know what to write anymore, throw hands, and then throw in random things to see if it lands. The issue is that this undermines the first 20 minutes quite a lot, as they feel like wasted potential.

A Respite

Taking a break from the negativity to give it some praise. RED SOUL GAMES did an amazing job making this game feel unique compared to its contemporaries. It’s no secret that this genre is quite oversaturated at this point, so designing characters that look like ordinary everyday people, and monsters that are in the style of Masahiro Ito but doesn’t feel like they were plagiarised; I think that’s quite a feat to accomplish.

Sucks that this is all there is to this game for me as everything else really failed to impress.

The Real Nightmare: The Gameplay Itself

Once again, the team’s ambition takes its toll as they attempt to implement both first person horror and tank controls into the game. Depending on the sections you are playing, the game will shift between these two. However, it feels like something that they thought would be cool doing, but not giving it a lot of thought on the implementations. The tank control is piss-poor; the character would sometimes walk backward when you “cross” the camera, but it’s inconsistent as it doesn’t happen all the time. Whereas the first person mode struggles to cater to people who have motion sickness as there’s no FOV slider and no turning off head bobbing, resulting in some motion sickness inducing gameplay.

The puzzles in this game look convoluted, but ends up being “walk to point B, walk back to point A and look for solutions on the wall”. It was way too easy and it definitely wasn’t given too much thought aside from one in the mid game. If you’ve played other survival horror games, this is going to be a breeze to get through.

The combat is also way too easy and has an incredible imbalance. There’s no point in using ranged weapons, as the guns' behaviours are inconsistent and will result in you missing most of your shots. However, with the autolock dodging and attacking with any melee weapons by pressing Circle (or B on Xbox Controller) and R2, you will beat this game with ease. Enemies never feel like real threats, making the game very dull to get through.

Five Years of Grief

Incredibly disappointed.

What to blame on this one though? Budget? Delays? Should I feel bad because they’re a small team? Should I not feel bad because smaller teams have done much more with less time as recently as last year with Mouthwashing or Sorry We’re Closed.

The five years wait really hurt this game experience for me, I suppose. At the same time, I don’t think it’s because of unrealistic hype and expectations. The game is just not really well thought out overall. I can’t deny that I can feel the love and passion put into Post Trauma, but dang it’s a pretty rough game.

My first bad game of the year. Really didn’t expect it to be this one.