True Fear: Forsaken Souls – Part 1

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Horror

Players: 1

.

Review:

True Fear is a Graphic Adventure and Horror series about a woman searching for answers about her missing sister. The franchise was planned as a trilogy, with this first installment following protagonist Holly Stonehouse as she gets a mysterious message calling her to what appears to be an abandoned house.

This game was first released on PC in 2014, with a remastered release on PC in 2016, with this version being ported to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2018, and then to Xbox One in 2022.

In any case, this game makes use of 2D visuals that work well enough for the game, but aren’t anything special, along with pre-rendered cutscenes that similarly get the job done. These visuals are backed by sound design that… well, I suppose it works well enough for a Horror game.

True Fear is a bit predictable with its scares. It has occasional jump scares, and you can generally see these coming a mile away. And the formulaic sound design trying to emphasize these is so lacking in subtlety, these moments are often more adorable than scary. It’s a shame too, because beyond these moments, the game itself generally does a good job of being creepy enough to be unsettling, so by comparison these moments bring the game down a notch.

The controls here are straightforward, and not great but not bad – you’re moving a cursor around the screen, with a few common commands tied to button presses. Or, if you prefer, you can play the game in handheld mode and use the touchscreen instead, which will probably provide a more natural experience.

As a Graphic Adventure, True Fear is a fairly typical exercise in picking up various objects and finding the right place to use them, with occasional puzzles to solve as well. While this is nothing special, the game does have a few mechanics that are laudable for the genre. There’s a customizable hint system here that can either help point out hot spots and even what you need to do next… or it can not, or it can have a timer to show you the way only every once in a while, if you’re struggling. The game also doesn’t make you navigate through its labyrinthine map, letting you fast-travel to any location you’ve visited before. These mechanics make it easier for novice players to enjoy the game, while still giving more skilled Graphic Adventure players an option to tackle the game without help.

I think that overall this is a solid entry in the Graphic Adventure genre, even if it misses the mark in a few places. And the mystery behind its story is genuinely interesting. I do think the second installment in this ongoing trilogy is better than the first, but this isn’t a bad place to start. If you’re looking for a creepy Graphic Adventure, this is a decent choice.

tl;dr – True Fear: Forsaken Souls – Part 1 follows the story of a woman investigating an abandoned house searching for information about her long-lost sister. The jump scares are too predictable, but this is otherwise a decent Graphic Adventure and Horror game with an interesting story and some well-crafted mechanics. Not a bad start for this series.

Grade: B-

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