It isn’t often that a new horror game comes out with only the intention to take the player through a scary, unsettling experience leaving them only the actual tasks of puzzle-solving and exploration. It weirdly doesn’t truly fall under the Survival nor Defenseless horror category, but rather provides an Experience. The most popular title to do this is Layers of Fear, which it does seem that Indigo Studios and SOEDESCO took inspiration from while developing Charon’s Staircase.

While they do a good job presenting the story and with the overall level design, there are some graphical complaints to be had. The problem with this factor is that the puzzles sometimes rely on what you can see and how well you can make out a graphical detail, but overall, it isn’t an actual hindrance to the experience. Let’s dive into more detail.

Story

In the 1970s, a totalitarian regime known as The Ministry ruled with an iron fist. They committed numerous inhumane and sinister acts during their reign, but those days are over, as they now aspire to join the European Union.

Take on the role of an agent, code name ‘Desmond,’ who is sent by The Ministry with the task of retrieving and destroying classified documents from the Oack Grove estate, that reveal the horrifying activities that happened in the past. Your journey leads you to bite off more than you expected as you come face-to-face with an unpleasant and gruesome discovery – Project Alpha.

Gameplay

As I mentioned above, this is an Experience horror game. That means you will be doing a lot of exploring the area, interacting with different parts of the environment, finding key items, and solving puzzles. The game takes place in a mixture of indoor and outdoor locations, but the layouts are pretty well set to keep you on path with where you need to go.

The first cabin acts as a tutorial to the gameplay style as it introduces the basic puzzle setup, finding a 4-digit code, and gathering an official document. Meanwhile, your exploration will be topped with a narrated telling of the story from the agent’s memory.

Puzzles consist of a variety of things, but they aren’t all purely visual. Some have to do with riddles being your clue. You will also find some obvious hints, such as a board with items circled on it, so be ready to write down a few numbers here and there so you don’t find yourself backtracking. Once you solve the puzzle, a quick scene will play to show what you just unlocked, so it is very obvious when you get it right.

When it comes to keeping up with the lore, you will see a notification that your Journal updates every so often. You won’t be able to read past notes from the journal, but if you read the description of it when it is updated you will be able to keep up as you move through the game. Other than that, you will only be collecting documents for the mission, which are kept pretty vague sadly, and pictures of those who were at Oack Grove. You will also find plenty of notes and such to read, but you can’t take them with you.

As for finding keys and key cards, you simply have to right-click when you reach the location to use these key items. Once a key item is used, it goes away. However, for pin pads, punching in the numbers is as you are looking at it. Most games have you interact with the pad and then push the buttons from a zoomed-in, locked screen but in this game, you have to physically get close to press the right numbers yourself.

Audio and Visual

When it comes to the voice work and music in this game, it is all pretty well done. While I do feel it leaves you in silence a few times too long, I like the way they used the sound effects and music to build tension - even if it was a bit cheesy at times.

As I mentioned before, this game does have some graphical complaints to be had. While a lot of the things they put in the game were pretty neat, their settings menu could have been more generous with options. Not only that, but it doesn’t hold the settings you put in so you have to update that when you get back on the game each time. I personally played with the settings on their highest values and found some visual moments of the game a bit hard to make out, so I hope they prioritize well when playing on lower settings.

Replayability

I don’t see this game holding any replayability. The puzzles and everything are the same given how linear and Experience-based this game is made out to be. I didn’t notice any sections with RNG to mix up the puzzle answer, but if there are any, figuring out the answer again wouldn’t be hard simply due to the direct level design.

What It Could Have Done Better

The settings menu should never be skimped out on. Players come with a wide variety of preferences and allowing them these options will always be better. It was a bit too simplistic in the settings menu.

Graphical quality is everything for games like these. While I could appreciate the art style, character designs, and the majority of the environment, some key aspects could have been a little more touched up on. My main example is the statue puzzle after the main house as they didn’t have enough detail on them to confidently say which matched best to the one-line riddle clue.

Hit boxes for your keys, and some other items, could be better. There really isn’t a reason to make my cursor land on a very small item to grab it. Item hit boxes can be a little more lenient, giving a larger radius to grab the item to not give players an unnecessary hassle.

Verdict

Charon’s Staircase is an intriguing horror experience that does well with lore and building moments. If more focus would have went into the graphical quality of the game, it would be an amazing title to playthrough. The voice-over, puzzle style, and environment were all well set up to present a story that deserved to be a bit more fleshed out (mostly in the introduction) than we got. It is a very solid game that is worth checking out if you get the chance.

Charon’s Staircase is now available on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, and it’s available both physically and digitally on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.