Sylvio: Black Waters [Review]
Sylvio: Black Waters is an excellent atmospheric horror exploration game.
Sylvio: Black Waters. Credit: Stroboskop / Dread XP
Boutique horror publisher Dread XP and Stroboskop, developer of Sylvio and Sylvio 2, bring us first-person exploration horror game Sylvio: Black Waters, the latest in the series. It’s an atmospheric, haunting experience, and though I didn’t fully understand the story, I loved the game.
Juliette wakes up in a strange place by a lake and quickly discovers it’s another planet and that astronauts have been there before her. Speaking over the radio with another survivor she doesn’t know she can fully trust, she sets off to find a way out. It becomes clear that the world's creator is alien and has haphazardly built what it perceives as an Earth-like environment. As you explore, you navigate past industrial machinery, statues, furniture, and more. You’ll find and capture phrases left by others before you and audio fragments from crank-driven televisions you find. As you unscramble the phrases into coherent prose, you’ll learn the place's true nature and gain clues for escaping. Black Waters is a direct sequel to Sylvio 2, which I haven’t played, so it’s unclear how protagonist Juliette got into her predicament.
Sylvio: Black Waters. Credit: Stroboskop / Dread XP
The things that shine in Sylvio: Black Waters are its atmosphere and ambiance. The world is always covered in the darkness of a deep dirt haze, lit by the few beacons that mark your trail. Most of the time, you see things around the environment in silhouette, creating a beautiful atmospheric perspective shadowbox effect that is haunting and unsettling to traverse. Previous visitors to the world are frozen in glowing, human-shaped statues; there are no jumpscares, but as you walk around, these can burst into ghostly apparitions that will attack, so I found myself moving very carefully. The sound design adds a lot to the mood, so the game is best played with headphones.
Sylvio: Black Waters. Credit: Stroboskop / Dread XP
You fight the ghosts by shooting various air canister-powered weapons that fire marbles. You can pre-emptively destroy the statues, but you’ll quickly find yourself short on ammo. Despite the weapons resembling guns typically found in games—handgun, shotgun, rifle, etc.—I didn’t feel a clear difference between any of them and used the most basic weapon most of the time.
Sylvio: Black Waters. Credit: Stroboskop / Dread XP
The areas you explore, called “the lungs,” are maze-like but linear, with your path clearly delineated by lights on the ground. The spaces are folded in on themselves in an Escheresque fashion; gravity will shift as you climb ladders. You’ll often see parts of the level in other orientations above you or on what is the wall, relatively speaking, but it is actually more ground. Once I understood navigation, I never got lost. If a place is unlit, you aren’t where you’re supposed to be.
I highly recommend Sylvio: Black Waters to anyone who enjoys creepy, atmospheric horror. I finished the game in around 8 hours, so it’s perfect for spending a couple of afternoons playing.
Sylvio: Black Waters is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: Steam Deck
