Horror games are such a unique genre that ranges into a number of different play styles. Will you be defenseless or will you be able to fight back? Will it even be worth fighting back, even if you can? Are you solving puzzles or just watching your surroundings? Perhaps there is something you need to find in order to escape the horror.

When I played the initial demo for Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel, it originally gave off the impression that it would be more focused on paranormal entities and defenseless searching through a destroyed hotel that you’re trapped within. Somewhere along the lines, Pulsatrix Studios switched it up and what Maximum Games published was not quite what I expected. Even so, it was quite an entertaining adventure to fight through!

Story

What starts out as an investigation into what has happened to a number of people who went missing while staying in the area turns into an escape attempt from unworldly powers! Unknown as to what happened while staying in the hotel, a quick event that led to your loss of consciousness leads you to awaken in a nightmare. Now you must solve your way through a maze of debris, monsters, and confusion if you wish to ever check out of the St. Dinfna Hotel.

Gameplay

What starts out as a defenseless, puzzle-filled experience quickly becomes a fight for your life while still having to solve puzzles. There is a wide variety of puzzles to be found and solves throughout the adventure, but it turns out that a lot of them are secondary, or optional, puzzles. Even so, I felt like I solved a lot during my first playthrough only to find out I only managed to get in the 20 percentile range of secondary puzzles, so definitely be sure to explore when things are clear to do so.

As you make progress through the game, you will need to make sure you are getting a good feel for the map layout of the game. You won’t be given one to check as you wish and instead will have to use maps that are placed on various walls throughout the hotel - which honestly was a hotel aesthetic I came to appreciate they included.

After opening pathways, finding keys, and gathering notes with passcodes and lore bits on them you will end up getting a pistol which leads you right into your first enemy encounter. From this moment on, the danger and scares are no longer metaphorical but a real threat you’ll have to fight against! I never did find a melee weapon, but I did find more guns. It did feel like the ammo was incredibly scarce, and I don’t mean that in the usual survival horror sense. When I say the ammo was scarce, I mean that I had to restart boss fights because I missed one too many times and there is no melee option.

You’ll find yourself running around the hotel a lot as this game does present the ‘full map puzzle’ style that isn’t used often enough these days. By this, I mean that you will find key items in parts of the map that correlate to a literal opposite side of the map, but the only note that tells you where it goes is either a room name or a clue on the item itself. This means memory and observation play a role in progressing through the game as well.

Part of what makes the puzzles difficult is in part due to the full map puzzle aspect. It is also thanks to your limited inventory space as well. With weapons and ammo taking up slots, you’ll have to use your storage box to store items you don’t believe you’ll need until you reach another box. All of the boxes are connected, so there is a silver lining there, but you’ll want to make sure you look around for bag pockets that will increase the amount of slots you have available in your inventory.

There is a mixture of paranormal and sci-fi style experiences throughout the game as well. For the most part, they are well separated based on what segment of the game you are in, but they still blend together decently as well. This is likely why my initial impression from when I played the demo was that this was going to be more of a paranormal, defenseless horror experience as they may not have added the combat and sci-fi elements at that time.

While you make your way through the game, aside from ammo, weapons, and notes, you will also be able to find and collect level-up points. These items glow and will either be in a sharp cube or in a more spherical casing. A cube only provides one point while the sphere provides more than one point when collected. These points can be used to improve your weapons.

Audio and Visual

The overall aesthetic of this game gives off a dilapidated haunted hotel atmosphere while bringing in threats you’d expect from a more sci-fi background. It was an interesting mix that was pulled off with great graphical quality. Mix that with the more often-than-not silence that is only filled with the sound of decrepit hotel ambiance and you have a solid horror atmosphere. Even when they did add music to the game, it just brought out the experience of the moment and heightened the scene to provide an unnerving experience.

Replayability

After you beat the game, there is a New Game Plus mode that might be enticing enough to get players to play through it again. The main thing that drew me back into another playthrough is the number of puzzles I missed and I wanted to try to solve more of them. Other than those two things, the two endings are available by simply picking one of two choices at the very end, so you wouldn’t need to do a full playthrough for that.

What It Could Have Done Better

While the lack of ammo for my guns made sense, not giving me a melee weapon option did not. I found a crowbar that I couldn’t use as a weapon, which was disappointing. Running out of ammo during one of the bosses is the most frustrating reason to have to restart the fight and turned it into a high-skill fight. While I did manage to get through it on my second try, I should have had to restart fully and I would worry about other players of lower skill level than myself for that section of the game.

The story was incredibly hard to follow and I honestly couldn’t really explain what all was going on if I tried. Sure, I get the overall point of the story, but what was with the sphere thing? Who were the people in that segment that I was putting the sphere together? I have a bunch of other questions, but simply asking them would provide a spoiler, which the sphere aspect alone sort of does. I wish there was more detail on these aspects in another cutscene or two because I didn’t see it in the notes I found.

Verdict

Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel really is a great horror game that provides an entertaining experience in its playthrough! There are some things I wish they would have gone deeper into and was hoping for more focus on the paranormal aspects, but still happy with the route they took with the game. The variety of puzzle styles and options was a pleasant surprise to see so diversified too. Truly a great horror game that just needed a little bit more to feel like a classic. Something that I can see these developers being able to pull off with a sequel title that I will be hoping to see them make.

Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel is now available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.