Visage

 


When looking for more horror games, I kept reading that Visage is the absolute peak. "This is it, it wont get any scarier than this" they said.

Visage starts off with a short cutscene of what seems to be a man taking his family hostage in a basement, tied to a chair with blindfolds on, and systematically one by one shooting them all with a revolver, and then killing himself. Then you "wake up" in a house, and thats the only introduction you get. Kinda brilliant and really sets the tone, no fucking around, in your face shock value.

From here, you sort of just wander around this really highly detailed (albeit Unreal Engine) house,looking for any sort of objects or clues which  will eventually trigger one of the 4 'chapters' in the game. It's a good setup, albeit a bit confusing because you can really play any of the chapters (except the last one) in any order. I find it kind of strange that you can for example play Chapter 3 (as in when the chapters were released, because the game was originally early access) before Chapter 1. What will happen is you will wander around the house, and pickup some mundane object, like a Splint or a Doll, and once you pick it up the game will say 'Do you want to start X persons chapter?" Atleast it tells you you're about to start a chapter, I liked that. It's like the game has a sort of Hub world main house area, and once you lock into a chapter, then the house slowly starts changing and shifting into all sorts of supernatural new areas. Even while you're in the 'hub world' pre-chapter house area, the game still constantly fucks with you. Lights will randomly turn off behind you, doors will slam shut, radio will turn on, Tv will turn on or off, Light bulbs will break, random crying noises, you'll randomly hear thumps from above you in the attic. The game does a good job at trying to keep you on your toes and having that paranormal, poltergeist haunted house vibe, even when nothing is happening - it's just dynamic.

So the game has four chapters, they are as follows:
-Lucy
-Dolores
-Rakan
-Mirror mask

I did them in order of release date, the game was originally in Early Access for awhile and it released with Lucy chapter first, then they slowly rolled out the other chapters + ending until it left EA.

So, the game does kind of a really poor job at properly explaining the mechaincs to you. Yeah, maybe they want the player to feel that sense of absolute confusion and bewilderment, but, atleast at first, the mechanics are just a clusterfuck of awkward ideas and controls, and to be honest during the first episode I basically hated the game and almost threw my hands up and just uninstalled it and abandoned it.

Because for multiple reasons:
A big one is the games Sanity system. The way it actually works is in the bottom left theres a brain and red gradient. The brighter that red gradient / brain is, the more insane you go, and what this essentially means is when you are insane enough, the enemy of the chapter will randomly appear and instantly annihilate you. So this kept happening over, and over, and over, and over again. I would just walk around and BAM! just get a jump scare and instantly die, reload last save. I was so confused, like what the fuck how do I stop dying? Like okay, the game has a 'Tips' menu where it tries to describe the sanity system, it tells you to regain sanity you must be in Bright areas, look at lights etc. So naturally what I took this to mean is that I can use lighters to regain sanity. Nope, not how it works. The game lets you dual wield items, so I would equip 2 lighters and turn them both on to try to regain sanity, but it wasn't ever working. Other things I would try is to stare at bright TV screens, or random lights, but nothing seemed to really work. It just seemed so inconsistent and random in how I would die or not. Once I actually learned how the mechanics work, that lighters DO NOT in fact count towards fixing sanity, It all started to make sense and I pretty much completely stopped randomly dying, or really ever seeing any enemies anymore. I don't really think the confusion during episode 1 was my fault, its just a bad awkward transition phase into learning how the games mechanics actually work, and the game not doing a great job at introducing these mechanics to the player.

I'll briefly talk about the core mechanics some more, then talk about some broad details of each episode.

More on the mechanics side, so besides constantly dying during episode 1, this is where I got introduced to the inventory system. It's actually pretty terrible. Since you can dual wield any two items you want, you also cant really easily drop items, you have to hold a button then this menu shows up asking you which hand you want to drop and look at a tiny icon of what item you wanna drop, or you have to open the inventory menu and try to fumble with putting one of your 'hand' items away. It's such a mess, its actually like one of the most clunky and awkward item/dropping/inventory systems I've basically ever seen. Even after 10 hours of playing the game I was still fucking up doing basic actions like putting items away / picking up items / dropping items. It was always some stupid juggling game to figure out what button I had to press. That whole system didnt give me a good first impression either for sure.

Besides the sanity system and inventory system, the rest of the mechanics are about carefully combing through the house, room by room, putting your dot cursor over anything that might stand out, inspecting it or interacting with it, picking up keys, puzzle items etc, then usually once you pickup something mandatory a script will trigger and something, somewhere else in the house will change. So it turns into this thing where the majority of the game takes place in this relatively small 3 story house, but every time you make any progress you need to recheck every single room, very carefully, over and over again. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but pretty soon I figured out the game loop and realized its about getting to know the house really well and carefully inspecting every room over and over again. In a way its kinda comfy because you get this feeling of really getting to know the house, almost as if you've actually lived there yourself, and then spiralling into this crazed, confused, psychotic mania where the house keeps changing and unfolding in new ways at you.  Unfortunately  though, its extremely easy to miss a very small important detail, and be running around in circles for possibly hours, making absolutely zero progress. Thankfully this never really happened too bad for me, and I never really had to look anything crucial up, but I think most people would get sick of running in circles making no progress and look things up to save time, but for me I just kinda pressed through it out of curiosity how far I could get without looking anything up.

The game has a generous autosave system, and also you can manually save almost whenever you want, except for a few crucial intense moments where it wont let you save.
Alright so thats the basic game-play loop and mechanics, now a brief overview of the individual chapters and its stories

So in the Lucy chapter, its roughly centred around a story about the daughter and the main item and mechanic you use is a camera to take photos and light up the area and reveal new areas. Its got some interesting locations like going outside into a tree house showcasing one of the few outdoors segments in the game. Its got another part where you get trapped inside a small room filled with furniture and bird cases where theres an enemy walking around  and you have to sneak past the enemy and find the key and open the door. This is actually probably one of the 'hardest' parts in the game, in terms of 'combat' or bypassing enemies. Rarely in the game do you actually have to sneak past enemies or do anything else like this, its kinda just this one segment. So I failed this part a few times until  I figured out the exact path, buts its a unique encounter that doesn't really show up in much of the later game. Other than that, there was one part that sort of tripped me up and it was the part where you had to open a random dresser and take a photo of the eyes on it to progress. I never opened the cabinet for awhile so I just ran around in circles missing progress, that sucked. After running around the house picking up this and that item and going through all the minor spooks and scares you jump in a bath tub, watch a creepy cutscene, and complete the chapter by picking up a 'Progress item' which is one of 4, one for each chapter.
There's a room in the house which is the Progress Room which acts as a way to check what chapters you have completed, which I really liked the idea of.

The next chapter I did, called Dolores, has you going through the house and uncovering the story of some elderly woman, maybe the previous tenant or something, im not sure, but you go around finding cassette tapes and playing back audio telling a tale of this woman riddled with dementia and delusional thinking. At first I couldn't find out what to do, but eventually realized you have to go up and interact with these big white sheet objects around the house, which then uncovers Mirrors. Eventually, you find a sledgehammer in the garage, and I realized you can use this to smash the mirrors which then open up portals to alternate realms. Theres 7 or so of these mirrors and it was always pretty exciting smashing them and seeing what sort of crazy place it would lead me to. Unfortunately, I think I got a bug with the sledgehammer where at first it wouldn't let me pick it up so I kind of just wandered around doing nothing for an hour or so. Later, the sledgehammer teleported to the basement storage room with a message 'The sledgehammer has been stored in the storage room' and then I could finally use it and realized what I had to do. So yeah, the game can be rough around the edges and a bit buggy from its early access days.  Still, I'd say this is maybe the best chapter in the game because of the amount of changes that the house goes through, the amount of crazy shit you see, everytime you smash these mirrors it takes you to more and more disturbing trials which you have to complete to progress. Some of these trials are things like using a baby monitor to navigate some almost Ocarina of Time lost woods puzzle, another trial is this gigantic womb where you carry a baby back to a crib, another one is this room of circular mirrors that you keep looking into until it finally spooks you with creatures looking back at you, and so on. Some of the puzzles here are clever and really head scratchers, like its not uncommon to find a puzzle but it be impossible to complete it until you later find a piece of paper telling you the solution, I thought that was kinda shitty but not really a big deal, its kind of obvious thats how it worked anyway.

Cool things about this chapter and game in general is all the amount of little random events you get. Like in Dolores chapter, out of the corner of your eye you can see the old lady peering her head out from a door at you randomly, the doorbell will randomly ring and try to fuck with you to come to the front door, stuff like that. Since its Unreal Engine, the graphics are automatically pretty high fidelity, but the assets as well are really well made and everything is carefully hand placed and it makes it feel like a real house thats been lived in with some character to it.

Theres a bunch more of these trials and puzzles in Dolores chapter that kept the game exciting and fresh, this crazy trial with a bunch of hanging guys and using a crank to shine sunlight at correct places, this place with a dead guy with a bunch of knives stabbed into him that you have to find a knife and insert into him, at one point you even get to sit down at a table with the old lady and she asks to bring some tea to her. This chapter has a lot of backtracking and running in circles and repeating cutscenes, like most of the doors are rearranged or locked with big chains, so to get back and forth to the basement you have to take some portal which plays a cutscene of you going through some tunnel and vice versa to get back upstairs from a bathroom hole. Theres a lady that tells you "bring me my child" so thats the general theme of the chapter, to do all these weird mirror trials to bring some old lady her child.

The puzzles are clever but also mildly frustrating at times, things like figuring out what to do with the baby monitor, or you find a Compass but it seems completely useless until you realize the only place that it works is from the mirror that leads you to some outside world, that part was cool though.

While the game is essentially set in one house, it still has lots of variety in that these chapters keep changing the house up and unlocking these crazy schizophrenic alternate realms you go to. Like towards the end of Dolores chapter its just this gigantic labyrinth of stairways and you have to figure out the path to the other side, its totally bizarre but  fascinating.

The game isn't totally without humour, either. It's disturbing dark humour, but nonetheless there. For instance theres a part where you hear talking through the walls, only to realize its coming from the kitchen. When you get to the kitchen, all the appliances start swinging open/turning on and talking to eachother. Like your character is having a psychotic break or schizophrenia and the appliances start talking to him, mocking him, taunting him etc. Its both hilarious but also disturbing , because some people in real life really do experience similar things as this.

By the end of Dolores chapter, you basically find out she was a mental patient and maybe her child died or something like this, and she just hung herself, which you get to see, then it plops you back into the default 'hubworld' house for you to find the next chapter. Pretty good, although after I figured out the sanity mechanic, I never actually felt like I was in much danger for the rest of the game, because as soon as the red sanity warning shows up, I kinda just sprinted to the nearest lightbulb and stared at it until it went away. If you do this, the game mostly has no threat to give you. Sometimes I'd still randomly die by some enemy somehow, but for the most part I felt like I had it figured out.

It's pretty funny/grim to imagine some schizophrenic crazed guy living alone in his house for weeks after killing his whole family, having insane delusions and hallucinations, and in order to prevent them sprinting up to nearby lightbulbs and staring at them until he calms down.


The next chapter I did was Rakan
which tells the tale of a mental patient who uses crutches to slowly hobble around, he always appears angry or frustrated and it has you going around the house, this time with these creepy eyeball doors blocking the path. Then you go around and realize some of the paintings on the walls have eyeballs that you can crush, it then unlocks these eye doors. The graphics for this stuff is awesome, the eyes track the player as they walk around and gives this really disturbing feeling of being watched, obviously. The bulk of this chapter is much more straight forward than the others, it has you sitting down in wheelchairs randomly placed around the house, then these teleport the player to alternate realms inside mental hospitals. There, you go through these mental hospital scenarios mostly walking around in a linear path, picking up keys and progressing to the next door. It's mostly standard fare horror game mental hospital stuff, but its well done, and I appreciated the change of pace especially with less emphasis on puzzle solving and more linear gameplay without as much backtracking and running in circles. The mental hospital sections have heavy usage of lighting and darkness, where the game introduces a flashlight you can equip, however theres a few moments in this chapter I thought were kind of bullshit mechanically, in terms of consistency with the rest of the game. For example theres a part with a dead end, with a table up against a door, and it turns out you have to just walk into the table and use physics to push it around. But unlike the rest of the game, you usually just walk up to an object and get a button prompt, but this time, you have to physically just keep walking into it. So that caused some confusion for awhile. This happens again at another point with a bookshelf up against a wall. It's just a bit  inconsistency in the mechanics here which make you unnecessarily walk in circles for a bit.

After the mental hospital section, you get put back in the house, and have to just walk around and look for another wheelchair to sit in, where it teleports you back to the mental hospital again and do something similar again. This time, you're going through the mental hospital but its much darker, and theres these creepy humanoid monsters standing around or lurking in the shadows, they dont really pose much of a threat unless you touch them though. Theres a few parts where youre being chased by Rakim but hes pretty slow so hes easy to avoid, but it is thrilling nonetheless. Theres kind of a shitty annoying part in the basement of the hospital with some laundry you have to figure out how to turn the power on for, but its not really obvious how you do that so I kinda just ran in circles for 40 minutes trying to figure out what to do, it was something stupid like just missing a door or button somewhere but the room design down in that basement was just annoying.

It's a lot of that kind of stuff in this chapter, it uses the same formula of finding a hospital chair, going through a hospital section, get teleported back to house, kill the eye paintings, repeat. But again, I kinda liked how it was more straight forward and more formulaic than the other chapters, it was a brief respite from constantly running in circles and puzzle solving. It's more of a just a keyhunt than anything else, with a bunch of cool cutscene events. Towards the end of the chapter youre locked in a arena with Rakim chasing you, you have to find a knife somewhere and destroy a giant eye to progress. Was pretty fun but it seems like when you die it maybe randomly respawns the knife somewhere? the game is really generous with savepoints so it wasnt that frustrating, and atleast the game introduced some forced threat for once again so I had fun with that section.

The voice acting and cinematics on the chapter is good, it puts across the feeling of confusion , frustration, and dread that such a disabled mental hospital patient might have, I'm not realy sure all the details of the relationship these characters have to the main character, Dwayne, so I guess theres some more 'lore' you can dig into if you're curious which is nice.
After the chapter ends, it gives you a eyeball trophy which goes into the progress room.

The last 'chapter' (which isn't really a chapter) is a series of collecting about 7 pieces of a Mirror Mask. In the Progress room, you see 3 trophies for the chapters, and then you see a stand for a mask with 7 individual pieces. So it lets you know that theres still something left to be done. So at this point in the game, its much more subtle and ambiguous for how you have to progress. I wouldn't blame most people for looking up a walkthrough at this point, but I soldiered on. So what happens is after every chapter, it usually also gives you a VHS tape. So at the end of 3 chapters, you have 3 VHS tapes at bare minimum. Theres  TV in the living room you can watch these tapes on. When you watch the tapes, it plays a random grainy old family home clips, interspliced with footage from the game showing various locations around the house. So what this means is you should watch these tapes, and try to find the locations the VHS is showing you. Besides these 3 tapes, theres also a bunch of tapes scattered around the hub-house as well. In total I think theres also 7 tapes, so at this point I had 4 or 5 or something. So what ends up happening is you kind of just running in circles checking every room in the house over and over once again, looking for either these tapes, or ways to trigger the events to find more of these mirror mask shards. Luckily, for me, after I beat all 3 chapters and explored the house a bit, I easily had all the VHS tapes. So it just became a matter of constantly watching all of these tapes and seeing what I possibly missed and going to the locations.

Actually obtaining the mask shards is just a matter of finding various event triggers in the house. Some of these are very short and simplistic and take no thought at all.
For example, one of them just involves going down a ladder and sitting in a big chair and watching a TV with a bird talking to you, and drinking some alcohol. After this 'cutscene' ends it gives you a shard.

Theres even this sort of secret little hidden painted wall you can break down and climb down into a room with a gun on the table, shoot yourself in the head, and 'respawn'.
At first its really bizarre and I couldnt figure out the point of it, but it turns out if youre actually missing any of these VHS tapes, upon shooting yourself it will play a little cutscene showing you where a missed tape is, I thought that was neat and clever way to help the player.

Another shard is obtained by getting a stool from the storage room, and using it to climb up into the vent. Luckily, the game tells you "Maybe I can find a step ladder somewhere" if you try to go into the vent, so its not like the game is completely without direction. After you climb into the vent, you find a room with a contract saying "I dont give a fuck" then you sign it and go into a room with a bunch of those weird humanoid monsters standing still and a dead bird in the middle. The bird has a piece of the mask. Very easy and short, its hardly a real 'chapter'

Another mask shard is by picking up a vinyl off the wall and putting it on the player, then it takes you to a grocery store, then a couch with a tv where you once again sit down and drink more beer and watch TV and it plays some more disturbing family drama, and thats another mask piece.

I found all of these without a walkthrough just by watching the VHS tapes, I think maybe once or twice I looked up a tiny detail I missed but nothing major. a VHS tape shows a hatch in the basement, and I found the handle for a hatch from some box in a garage, so this was just a matter of unlocking the hatch and dropping down into some crazy underground laboratory area where a gas leak springs out and you have to find a way to escape before you die. Pretty cool section. You have to just get the fire axe and break through the wall, then you get a mask piece. Takes like 5 mins.

Sometimes, you can only trigger these events by watching the vhs tapes, which is thankfully something I never seemed to struggle with. For example the 'Prison' tape shows you an area that looks like the basement hallways, and upon returning you there it takes you to this alternate realm where youre in a pitch black hallway and you need to keep reusing the light bulbs to create a path for yourself, get a sledgehammer and burst down some walls to progress. This was one of the scariest parts of the game because youre being stalked by some monster guy, but it seemed like if you just ignore him he wont kill you. Then you break the walls and get another mask piece.


Almost done with the game now, another piece is found by a tape showing you a room with a busted floorboard, I knew what room it was because it does a good job showcasing it, so I just went to the room and took the floorboard up and you drop inside some big factory area. This part kinda sucked because the factory was huge and you walk so slow, it was just a matter of walking around and finding a key, like needle in a haystack, using the key to progress and press a button doing a few more things and you get a mask piece.

Now, the last mask piece was pretty bullshit and kinda sucked. It involves picking up these paintings, 'Strange frames' and trying to find some place to put them. Well theres like 6 of these damn things, and theyre tucked in the most obscure places in the house. You gotta place all of these frames on some striped wall in the basement, which the VHS tape shows, but actually finding these damn things is more annoying than anything else. Constantly rewatch the upstairs TV, run around every room in the house looking for the frame you missed over and over. It was kinda shitty but I guess sorta satisfying when you finally figure it out. From here it takes you to this a new realm where youre locked in a room with a bunch of pills infront of you, like What pill do you want to take? Red pill , blue pill, pink pill etc. Turns out you have to take them all and then you open up a bunch of doors with little jumpscares and oddities, then to some really nice looking outdoors area, like purgatory scenery or something, then of course theres a little rowboat section (because every horror game needs one), then a big light tower you go through where at the end you get a disturbing cutscene of your family telling you how much you suck and you should die etc, then you get the mask piece.

Once you have all the pieces and return to the progress room and press the mask, the game suddenly ends very quickly, brief cutscene showing your family smiling at you in a white light and then end credits. Not really sure what to make of it, but its impactful atleast.
Is Visage one of the scariest games ever? Probably not, I was kinda stonefaced for most of the game, but I did really appreciate the atmosphere and attention to detail, I played the whole game in the dark with the lights off to really add to the mood. It's not really a short game, took me like 20 hours to beat it, most of it is just returning to previous rooms and double, triple checking, but I didnt mind much because you start to feel like you're actually this guy living in the house falling into madness, its an immersive game for sure, despite its quirks and flaws around the edges like the inventory and general controls and confusing mechanics at first.

8/10