PAX EAST 2020 | "SKYHILL: Black Mist"
Top-down horror can be a tricky thing to pull off, but it’s not within the realm of impossibility. In the case of SKYHILL: Black Mist, the upcoming sequel to the side-scroller horror title, tension can be pulled off in the right sorts of ways. At PAX East, I was able to go hands-on with the upcoming horror title, where you play a man searching for his daughter amongst multiple interconnected buildings.
The demo for SKYHILL: Black Mist starts off with you hiding from the police, as they’re looking to hunt you down for reasons unknown. As you roam around your apartment, you discover that everything has been destroyed, making even the most homely of rooms a maze of destruction. Besides the cops, another entity is roaming about: dark black beasts of mist. As you sneak around, you must search for ways out and allies that could help you with your situation.
There’s a good amount of mystery thrown around as you walk, hide, and run through your surroundings. Strange black tendrils cover doorways, rooms look like they’re ready to crumble under your feet, and threats don’t come into focus until you’re close enough to feel jolted. As you play, you learn to craft weapons and health items (AKA sedatives), using them to keep yourself alive from the cops and creatures that fill the screen. Since your weaponry is temporary, using them becomes a fight-and-flight situation where you’ll need to decide when to go for a kill or when to try to evade the enemies as best as you can.
In some cases, there will be some explosive hazards that you can use against your enemies. This will lead to you trying to figure out multiple solutions to figure out how to get out of many freaky, sticky situations. A lot of times, you’ll be forced to use a trial-and-error style to figure out how to get away. With my time with the demo, I watched multiple times as my character kept getting attacked and killed because I was a bit too slow to react or attempted to run and found myself cornered.
Because of this, there’s a lot of strategy that’s needed in your thought process as you play SKYHILL: Black Mist. With its scarier elements mixed in, it has the potential of standing out within its genre. As there are more mysteries that are within the game that have yet to be revealed, one can hope that Mandragora and Klabater’s latest will leave a scar-like impression on future players.
SKYHILL: Black Mist is set for release this year on PC and consoles.
