PSYCHROMA
- Hubert Spala
- May 16
- 3 min read
I like adventure games. But sometimes I lose my patience when I get stuck for several minutes because I can't figure out the right combination of objects to solve a highly abstract yet hyper-specific puzzle, and I try to guess what the designer wants me to do.
You could make a case that PSYCHROMA is as simple and linear as adventure games can get. You have no inventory, no journal, no puzzles, no choices, and with that, no diverging paths, no time limits, or urgency. You cannot make the wrong choices, and you basically can't fail. The main game mechanics of this title are interacting with objects and characters, and the ability to enter your own and other characters' memories to unlock new parts of the story and the house. In this sense, this title is more of an immersive psychological horror experience than a game. You just sit back and get yourself immersed.
Once you enter this haunted cyberpunk space, you find yourself in a dystopian future, where your past follows you every step. And you are constantly uncertain if what you see is really there. Below a thin veneer of the character's everyday life with buzzing electricity in the rooms and acidic rain pouring outside, everything is rotting away and decomposing, mouldy spores fill the air of the barely lit rooms. You can feel the mental decay of the inhabitants of this house.
Saying too much about the story would ruin the whole experience. But I will say this: I found the central themes and the characters' struggles of this story to be interesting and plausible. And I found especially the central mystery at its core to be extremely fascinating.
It's a very tightly packed experience, even if I feel that the game could have benefited from having a few more elements with clues or lore elements sprinkled in the environment to interact with. Similar to how some of the rooms felt sparsely used, some of the themes could have been fleshed out more. I noticed that for a story revolving around memories, you barely find any personal remnants of the house's past inhabitants in the environment to interact with. And so the world and characters stay flat besides their main characteristics. Which might be exactly what the devs wanted.
The other visible caveat in retrospect is in one aspect of the art style and presentation.
Mainly with the non-emoting, blank-stared character portraits, which convey no emotions or reactions to the events at hand. In combination with the robotic dialogue audio SFX, it made it harder for me to empathise with the characters' emotions. Which also might be exactly what the devs wanted, but I am not so sure on this one. CLOCK TOWER, as another pixel art horror game, leaves a completely different impression in conveying the events to the player by showing the different characters' reactions with their current emotion on the left of the screen at all times.
On the other hand, this title has some pretty strong audio and visual effects. You feel the atmosphere of dread and decay on every screen, which, I would say, is the strongest point of this game.
All of this being said, I do recommend PSYCHROMA a lot, and it deserves a lot more attention. It is a very personal and abstract horror experience, with body horror and psychological scares, and I believe every player will take something different out of this after the end credits roll.
Written by Börbo.
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