We’re living in a great era for old school survival horror games. While we don’t see as many big budget AAA projects in the genre as we used to, the indie scene has picked up the slack. What’s more refreshing about it is that now that we’ve had a lot of titles playing around in this genre space, we’re seeing more ways that games differentiate themselves, using the language of survival horror to tell tales that are more personal and unique. Sorry We’re Closed, the debut title from à la mode games, uses a lot of the genre trappings, but feels completely different from anything else I’ve seen recently.
Right from the jump, Sorry We’re Closed doesn’t begin like a standard horror game. Instead of waking up in an abandoned hospital or finding yourself in the middle of a zombie outbreak, the main character Michelle goes home from her boring job at the local convenience store and has a bad dream that kicks off a story of angels and demons hidden among us in the everyday world. Still getting over her ex-girlfriend, Michelle finds herself cursed by a powerful demon named the Duchess who is hoping that Michelle will be finally the person that loves them, by any means necessary.
This unique focus on love extends to the many side characters you’ll run into in the London neighborhood you work in. Everyone there, whether angel or demon or human, seems to be looking for romance in one way or another. It might not sound like the setup for a horror game, but as the narrative unfolds you find the truly horrific lengths the Duchess goes on their quest for your affection. The strange and macabre inner workings of angels and demons provide a great backdrop for the tale, with fantastic creature designs that can range from horrifyingly grotesque to monstrously sexy.
The visuals of the many areas are reminiscent of something like Silent Hill, but everything is seen through an eye-popping visual style that combines PSX-style low-poly graphics with neon-colored anime influences, creating a vibe that’s close to the Persona series. This outstanding style sets it apart from others in the subgenre, creating a unique look that compliments the thematic tone of the story. The character models of the game are particularly striking, all communicating loads of personality at a quick glance. Some of the enemies that you run into can be a bit “generic demon” in their design, but the main characters and boss monsters are all universally great.
Environments range from real world locations, like city streets and neighborhood shops, to areas twisted by the demon world. It’s a nice juxtaposition that provides variety while still feeling part of the same world. Michelle is also given an ability called the Third Eye, which allows her to reveal the hidden world within a radius of her. This ability can show the decay beneath the surface or the true face of the person standing on the street corner. Not only does this create some neat thematic moments, but it’s also used for solving puzzles throughout the levels.
There’s a good rhythm to the structure of the game, which alternates between interacting with people in your neighborhood and diving into discrete levels where you’re tracking down old victims of the Duchess. This is another way that this game feels like Persona, with each portion feeling as important as the other. There are several subplots throughout that will give you options to help guide the narrative in different directions, giving the game replay value in the social sections. The dungeons themselves are a bit more linear, mixing combat and puzzles as you progress. The puzzle and level design weren’t quite as complex as I would have hoped for, but there are some neat little brain teasers later in the game that cleverly utilize the mechanics.
Another way that Sorry We’re Closed sets itself apart is its surprising focus on combat. I’m used to old school survival horror games downplaying the encounters by making the mechanics simple and focusing on resource management, but Sorry We’re Closed is a fairly combat-heavy game that adds several wrinkles to the fights. Normally, you’ll navigate the world from a semi-fixed camera perspective, but when you draw your weapon you shift into a first person viewpoint. Attacking an enemy like this will do a minimal amount of damage, but if you use your Third Eye, you can see their heart-shaped weak points. If you hit a weak point, it moves elsewhere and does massive damage. String together several successive weak point hits and you’ll charge up a meter for a super weapon that can be used for an instant kill. But there’s a catch to using your Third Eye, those weak points are the only place they can be hit while using it, providing a great element of risk-reward that forces you to be precise in order to finish encounters quickly and conserve ammo.
It’s a fun system, and the game finds ways to mix it up in clever ways throughout, always throwing something new your way as you refine your skill with the core mechanics, but there are some rough edges. The transition between third person and first person takes a beat longer than maybe it should, and that delay can be a bit disorienting when you’re trying to lock in your aim in that first, crucial moment. On a controller, it feels like it’s a little harder to get a bead on those weak points, making it a little overwhelming when you’re facing larger numbers. It’s much easier to aim with a mouse and keyboard, but I personally didn’t like the feeling of WASD with the fixed-camera angle perspective navigation. I actually found myself bouncing back and forth, using the mouse when I had big encounters and the controller when I was wandering the levels.
There’s also something missing with the player feedback, causing a bit of frustration when you die. A red outline appears over the enemies when you can hit them, but it’s a bit harder to tell when the player is being damaged. When you’re hit, there’s not enough of an indication, whether it’s through sound effects or animation, to make it obvious just how much you’ve been damaged. There are some knockdown animations that play from big hits, but those feel a bit clunky and kill the combat pacing a bit for me. While there are some neat wrinkles they throw into the encounters late in the game, sometimes it feels a bit too much like they rely on overwhelming you with sheer numbers, which makes the quirks of the mechanics stumble over themselves a bit more. Overall, I’m really glad they took big swings in trying to make a compelling combat system for a genre that traditionally makes it clunky on purpose, but it feels like it could be just a little tighter given what it asks of the player.
Some of my favorite encounters in the game are the well designed boss fights, which shine on both visual and mechanical levels. They’re a spectacle to behold, with massive monsters taking up most of the screen as you run around charging up your super weapon by pulling off weak point combos as you dodge their well-telegraphed attacks. It’s classic boss design with a wonderful visual flair, and many of them are enhanced by a voiced hip-hop song that plays out as you fight. Instead of dreading boss fights, I was excited to see how they would play out, and none of them felt like they were overlong, ending before they outstayed their welcome.
Horror games often give the player choices that result in different endings, but this game felt unique in the way that it focused these choices on the side characters. All of them are so compellingly written, mixing over the top personalities with relatable themes, that you really feel the weight of the choices. Depending on the path you choose through the game, you’re asked to manipulate their love lives in various ways, and the strength of their relationships makes you think twice about possibly sabotaging them for your benefit. There were a couple times where I think I misunderstood the choice I was making and locked myself out of an ending I was looking for, but these choices are compelling enough that it makes me want to replay the seven hour campaign to see how differently other paths can play out.
It’s really refreshing to see a game that explores themes of relationships and love, especially with such a unique and diverse cast of characters, without losing focus on the horror aspects. Everyone is a great combination of sexy and punk, with great representation in race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. None of them fall into stereotypes, and the fully fleshed out characters make the story decisions that much more complex to make.
I’m always looking for an old school horror game that provides a fresh perspective, and Sorry We’re Closed delivered that in spades. It’s a refreshingly modern story that uses classic mechanics with great twists, making for a memorable and unique experience. The clever combat has some rough edges both in execution and encounter design, but it definitely hits more than it misses. The fact that à la mode games debuted with such a vibrant game that’s mechanically sound and full of personality is a great sign for their future, and I can’t wait to see what they’re up to next.
Review code provided by publisher.
Sorry We’re Closed is out now on PC via Steam and GOG.com.