Hollowbody's familiar magic lies not in otherworldly places, but in the rubble of the ordinary.
Although ostensibly set in a future of flying cars and holographic IDs, the world of Hollowbody is one most of us would recognise – and I’m not just talking about the damp, dark British climate. I could walk out of my house right now and take you to half a dozen housing estates in my immediate neighbourhood that feature the same 1960s terraced houses seen in Hollowbody. The same block of flats you explore here is found on the skyline of every city in the country.
Is that why Hollowbody unsettles me more than I'd like to admit? Is that why poking around abandoned flats and wandering empty streets leaves me so nervous? I've always had a penchant for horror as opposed to monotony. Put me in an HR Giger-inspired world and I'm grossed out, sure, but it's such a, ahem, alien environment to me that it's hard to feel any real fear because I just can't imagine something like that. be there.
But leaving me in a haunted townhouse? Making me rummage through a kitchen where last night's dinner dishes are still piled in the sink, or forcing me to rummage through someone's bedroom where a body is melting between the sheets and the book I was reading is exactly where they left it, rotting on the nightstand? Those things. terrifies me.
The Britishness of Hollowbody's scenes also further intensifies this situation. It is a world wounded and torn apart by anguish and agony, little vignettes that offer voyeuristic glimpses into people's final moments. As People talk and the accent they have shouldn't make any difference. I know that. And yet, listening to two sisters talk about their suicide pact in a regional accent so, so close to where I'm sitting here, writing these words, is absolutely does Make a difference.
It makes it much worse.
The more you explore, the bleaker everything becomes. Searching through the remains of another person’s life is desperately sad, but every now and then you’ll stumble upon their remains, too. Some people are alone. Some people lie side by side. Some died slowly and painfully. Some hastened death. Others gathered together and sought refuge in the church, but death came to them anyway. They’re still sitting in the pews they died in, their faces obscured by dirty sheets.
Of course, world-building like this isn’t new to video games. Plenty of games of all sizes and scopes have done it before. And this brings us to Hollowbody’s main problem. Stripping away that more unique layer of British flair, we’re left with a game that does a lot of things that have been done plenty of times before elsewhere. Its fixed camera angles, dark soundtrack, and polygonal graphics are a dead ringer for the survival horror games we grew up with, and Silent Hill in particular.
Because without Silent Hill, I don't think we would have had Hollowbody.
In its defense, Hollowbody doesn't attempt to emulate Silent Hill 2's oft-imitated story in any way, and for that we can only be grateful. It does, however, adopt many of the series' core features and lean into established genre tropes. Fans will find plenty of familiar things here, from the Hollowbody-like sounding soundtrack, the use of a pocket flashlight and its inventory screen, to the sounds you make as you move between your items.
Some moments in the story are vaguely reminiscent of those that came before, while others seem to be directly inspired. One particularly striking segment seems to have been lifted directly from the (unfortunately much-maligned) Silent Hill 4. It made me question where the line between inspiration ends and imitation begins.
It may not be original, but I'm damn glad Hollowbody exists. Despite looking a lot like the more well-known horror games that came before it, Headware has created something that, despite its familiarity, still stands on its own. This is a deliciously atmospheric, slow-burning horror game that ultimately does enough to carve out its own story and place itself amongst other entries in the genre it's clearly been inspired by.