Sorry We're Closed review: old school survival horror with plenty of heart

6 days ago 37

A screenshot from Sorry We're Closed showing Michelle with a third eye

Sorry We're Closed is a retro survival horror-inspired game about escaping the clutches of an excessively horny demon who desperately wants your heart. As someone who isn't often into the 'lore' behind things and prefers to just shoot and ask questions later, I found myself actually asking the questions. I wanted to know why I was targeted by such carnal eroticism. I wanted to know more about my character's own relationships. How angels fit into the picture. And why lots of the demons seem quite chill, really.

But when it came to the actual survival - the bit I thought I'd enjoy the most - I came away a bit disappointed. Exploration is fine, it's just the combat is often too frequent and too frequently irritating. I came to dread the action more than the atmosphere, in the end.

You play as Michelle, a shop assistant who has little time for the arsehats (mainly a guy called Darrel) who frequent the store in what's a gloomy, dead end part of town. She's having a rough time of it, having broken up with her girlfriend whom she's definitely still in love with. Just as she's about to settle into sleep one evening, she's visited by the equivalent of a sleep paralysis demon, if the sleep paralysis demon was a Victoria's Secret model dipped in glowstick juice, or a pink balloon smeared in Sharpy. They know you're lonely and they really like that about you. It's your first warning sign that something's not right.

Michelle spins tubes in a top-down puzzle.

Darrel, a topless buffoon, talks to Michelle, a cool dancer, next to a stairwell.

The Duchess, a slender, tall pink demon lies across your bed seductively and says, "Care to join me?"

Later, you're visited by a plump crow who shuffles you through a bizarre library. You get a sense of how exploration works as you move through a space that can helpfully be described as Place That's A Bit Deathy, with the game's camera observing you from fixed angles. In those classic Resident Evil ways, it's like you're travelling through rooms rigged with tonnes of CCTV cameras. Sometimes it's top-down, sometimes it's far away, sometimes it follows you like an aerial drone. So as you inspect some books and talk to the weird crow, it's terrifying when he reveals he eats dreams and wants you dead and you have to run down some corridors and you can't see what's ahead. It's a second warning sign that something's not right.

As the great Alice O (RPS in peace) once said: "[Sorry We're Closed] is like Silent Hill by way of Persona and Paradise Killer", and I couldn't agree more. As the story 'settles', it's broken into a loose Persona-like cycle, where you'll explore a bit of the town, chat with folks, and build connections (these connections don't help you in fights like Persona, though). Then once you're done chatting, you'll head into a dungeon that plunges you into the Resi-meets-Paradise Killer corridor-diving and demon-expunging. Beat the dungeon and another day turns over, refreshing the town, moving the story forwards, and setting you up for another fresh dungeon run.

I'm a big fan of the game's social side, as you get to know the insufferable meathead that is Darrel and his outlawing of Clarissa, a dancer who used to work at his bar but is no longer allowed to. Lucy doesn't say too much and seems a bit suspect. And then you've got the dependable Robyn, who seems very on board with the occult. They're all well written and touch on believable romantic issues. Certain conversations are surprisingly nuanced, with intertwining demands that steer you towards different endings depending on the decisions you make.

Michelle and Robyn ride in an open topped car, with Michelle asking Robyn whether that's how demons are made.

For instance, Clarissa pines for Darrel's downfall and asks you to help her out. Say yes and you'll want to strike when the opportunity arises, ie, when Darrel asks you to deliver a rat that he thinks is a pet hamster to his boyfriend Oakley. It just so happens that Oakley is having his restaurant inspected by cleanliness officials - bingo. Given the option between waiting for the officials to go, or presenting the rodent in front of the officials, you show off the rat, knowing Clarissa's desires. Oakley is immediately in the shit, Darrel's also in the shit with Oakley, and Clarissa's happy with you. All of it feels natural to find and initiate, with plenty of humour thrown in, too.

What's serious, though, is your third eye, given to you by The Duchess (the pink demon who it turns out is uber powerful and desperate for human hearts, because, well, she wants to love again and heartbroken demon hearts aren't capable of change). With the snap of your fingers, this extra eye splashes a radius around you that reveals the parallel demon world in real-time. And on the social front, it adds a really fun extra layer to things, letting you interact with quirky demons and the demonic selves of the folks you thought you knew. Like the quiet Lucy who oozes confidence as a two-headed operator who cuts you a deal: bring an end to The Duchess.

To do that, you'll need to hunt down the Duchess' victims and collect their third eyes. You'll do this by heading into dungeons and using your own third eye to witness the memories of folks who've not quite got as lucky as you. It's here where chatter is dropped and you're to explore eerie aquariums and spiralling crypts, all festering with demons and little puzzles where you've got to rotate stuff and gather keys to open locked doors.

I quite like the retro exploration, in how it's quite unsettling when the camera robs you of vision, so you've got to tentatively peruse hallways without knowing what's coming. And in how paths are laid out, which requires some real-time realm-switching to, like, pass through a path covered in vines.

The let down lies in actually fighting the demons, which makes me sad, because the idea is good. Basically, you've got three weapons: an axe, a pistol, and a shotgun. But all of them function in an identical way. Enemies will shamble up to you and you'll right click, bringing you into first-person mode (very cool). It's here where you have two options: either shoot them and do some damage until they keel over and die, or activate your third eye, highlighting a shiny heart embedded in their bodies. Shoot the heart and the demon will take lots of damage, either dying, or reproducing a sequence of hearts you'll need to shoot in succession - until they, too, eventually die. It's neat! And adds a kind of rhythmic layer to fights, where accuracy and speed makes for a satisfying blam blam blam sequence.

Shooting a pterodactyl-looking demon in the heart with a pistol.

The disappointment comes in how fiddly combat is. I get that fiddliness plays a part in retro-horror's scare factor, in the ballache that is setting yourself up to actually shoot something and then making each shot count. It's just that Sorry We're Closed develops a tendency to chuck a lot of demons at you, where the whole setup routine (third to first person, the third eye, the shooting of hearts) is a surefire way to get thumped by bystanders. Sometimes these little grubs will skitter so close to you that their revealed heart is impossible to hit. So you have to awkwardly backtrack, reposition, and do the whole third eye thing again and take some hits and god it's annoying.

To be totally frank, I came to resent most fights. Then again, I imagine some of you will have more patience than me and be fine with them. That's also not to say I wouldn't recommend Sorry We're Closed as a whole, because I think its odd universe, its cast of oddballs, and its rich relationships are well worth chasing. There's a lot of depth beyond the bizarre, happy-go-lucky surface and I genuinely relished extracting delicate human strands from seemingly knotty, impenetrable evil. The emotions fuelling the Duchess. The reason demons exist. The explanation for how an angel and a demon might strive for love but never attain it. And how Michelle learned to grow past her complacency and comfort, all represented by that bastard crow demon. Grit your teeth, accept the combat for what it is, and you've got a wonderful story here.