2024 has been an uncommonly good year for horror gaming, with releases like Still Wakes the Deep, The Casting of Frank Stone, Crow Country, Withering Rooms, Pacific Drive, and the forthcoming Silent Hill 2 and Slitterhead. Now there’s also Hollowbody, an indie survival horror adventure from the one-person British studio Headware Games (Chasing Static), which released on September 12. Here’s what you might want to know before you check it out.
What Is Hollowbody About?
In the 22nd century, Mica Holloway is a smuggler in the North Atlantic island city of Aeonis. Her partner Sasha went on a research expedition to the long-abandoned British Isles 12 days ago, and Sasha and her team have since disappeared.
Mica calls in some favors to break through the quarantine perimeter around the UK so she can travel to Sasha’s last known location, when a sudden engine failure knocks her out of the sky. Mica’s left stranded in what’s left of a small British town, where she quickly discovers the ruins are inhabited by strange hostile mutants, and must fight through them to find out what happened to Sasha.
What Kind of Horror Are We Talking About Here?
Hollowbody is a deliberate homage to late ‘90s survival horror, particularly the original version of Silent Hill 2. It’s a dark, atmospheric game set in a procession of ruined streets and abandoned buildings, where your flashlight is often the only source of illumination.
If you like exploring old buildings and abandoned neighborhoods, interspersed with the occasional puzzle or zombie brawl, you’re set for Hollowbody.
What Should I Know About Hollowbody Before I Start?
First off: Hollowbody’s resources are more scarce than those of the Silent Hill games that inspired it. If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to run yourself out of ammunition right around the same time that some tougher enemies start showing up. But worry not, you’ve got access to some good melee weapons, such as a spiked bat and an improvised ax, but they don’t work equally well on everything you’ll encounter.
So go into Hollowbody with an eye toward conserving your health and ammo, the same way you would in a Resident Evil game. Don’t get into any fights if you don’t have to, and when you do need to take out an enemy, try to use your bat or ax whenever possible.
Second: if you’re a serious arachnophobe, steer clear of this one. Trust us.
One final thing that I wish I’d known before I started: you don’t hit a real point of no return in Hollowbody until right near its end. You’ll probably know it when you see it.
Before then, you can backtrack all the way to Mica’s starting point, although it takes a while and you might have to dodge a few new enemies. There are a couple of big secrets and one useful weapon that can only be secured by returning to the first area with some of the later key items.
How Long Is Hollowbody?
My first blind run on Intended (normal) difficulty took about six-and-a-half hours. At the time of writing, you can’t skip all the way through cinematics, so Hollowbody isn’t very speedrun-friendly.
Once you know the routes and puzzle solutions, you could probably clear Hollowbody in well under three hours, especially if you skipped as many fights as possible. In order to unlock 100 percent of its achievements, you’ll need to run through it at least three times, one of which has to be on its hardest difficulty.
How Many Endings Does Hollowbody have?
On a fresh save, you can get one of two endings. Which one you get appears to be triggered by the results of a plot-mandatory conversation near the end of the first area, with no other influencing factors.
A third ending is available if you manage a zero- to low-damage run through the game on the unlockable Punished difficulty.
What Kinds of Collectibles Are There In Hollowbody?
There are a total of 34 collectibles in Hollowbody.
Eight are “lost signals,” where you can use Mica’s pocket radio to tune into old broadcasts in specific areas throughout the game. All eight of these signals have unique achievements tied to them, such as State Regulations and Occupational Hazard, and you’ll unlock the Walkie-Talkie achievement for finding all eight.
You can also find a total of 26 documents throughout the game, only one of which is ever put permanently off-limits. If you can find the other 25 in a single run, you unlock the achievement Logomaniac.
Hollowbody is available now via Steam and GOG for a starting price of $US16.99.
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