Upcoming horror favorite Holstin has had several demos since it was first announced in late 2022, which the Steam Next Fest demo can easily be bundled into a single download, breaking them down into puzzle and combat sequences. Admittedly, I got stuck halfway through the puzzle, so I started the Steam forums to lose some guide writer credibility in my search for a solution – but I was surprised to see so much negative feedback. There were harsh words for the combat demo in particular, and I was hit with a wave of disappointment at the thought of another survival horror game with poor combat. I then played the combat demo and came to an important conclusion. Namely, your enjoyment of Holstin will almost certainly depend on how much you still enjoy the classic survival horror design, rather than how much think you still like the classic survival horror design.
Holstin
- Developer: Sonka
- Publisher: Sonka
- Release: TBA
- Download the demo version at: Couple
This shouldn’t be a lofty statement like “You just don’t get it,” but a general indication of whether Holstin is the right survival horror setting for you. I completely understand why some might not like its finicky combat, but after a short learning curve (mostly spent dying), it worked for me in spectacular fashion. Holstin doesn’t want to add modern conveniences that would make for an easy win in this homage to a PS1-era ’90s survival horror game. Instead, it threw a lot of inconvenience at you to remind you how stressful combat was in the early days of the genre – whether you like it or not.
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Admittedly, this is a bit irritating compared to the first demo, whose puzzles were pretty standard puzzles you’d find in any survival horror game on Steam. The mustachioed hero Tomasz stays on a rainy night in the Janowski family’s house in an eerie, isolated Polish town in search of his missing friend, Bartek. Tomasz searches for hidden plans for his new ally, Anita, to reluctantly help Tomasz in his search. This is made even more difficult by the fact that some pesky pseudo-like tentacles invade the ruined house, blocking important paths. So you need to find light sources and manipulate where and when they shine on the pseudopods to create a path to the planes.
Image source: Sonka
Holstin’s creativity comes from a gorgeous pixel art style, terrifying character portraits, and a rotating isometric view. If you want to complete the puzzle, rotating the camera is a must as there are hidden items throughout the house. It’s easy enough to get mildly annoyed by the amount of hints, but hard enough that you’ll become even more annoyed if you’re still confused after the hint. It all feels like another love letter to survival horror, with some nice stylistic touches. The rest of Holstin could have been a pretty good game if it had followed suit… but the combat demo is here to tear up that love letter and remind us that survival horror never loved us anyway.
In Holstin you really have to be precise and calculate what you are going to do during each enemy encounter. Or who you are NO I’m going to do this because sometimes the best solution is to run for the exit (even if it’s more difficult in Holstin’s tight corridors). If you choose to engage in combat, aiming takes you from an isometric perspective to an almost first-person, over-the-shoulder view, and anything other than quick, expert shooting is basically a one-way ticket to the on-screen game. Not bad when there’s one enemy in the distance, but a recipe for total panic when there’s more than one humanoid monster running towards you.
Image source: Sonka
You also can’t rely solely on headshots, as if the enemy had a visible mutation somewhere, you’d need much more ammunition to injure that part of the body. Perhaps a better idea would be to shoot them in the legs and run past the collapsing corpses, or shoot off their arms to stop them from grabbing you. However, sometimes even with mutations, you have to deal with the head first, otherwise an alarming amount of spikes can pop out of it, sometimes blocking the entire room.
This can be brutal. For the better part of the 90 minutes I spent in the combat demo, I died almost immediately after reaching an enemy. Then I would die again. It may sound like a terrible time, but as any Soulsborne fan can tell you, there’s something sickly enjoyable about the game that reminds you how much you suck until you shake your brain and solve the unique enemy encounter puzzle.
Image source: Sonka
In many cases, the action can feel like it’s been added to a survival horror game, giving you something to do between solving puzzles and escaping the latest terrifying creature. Or, in recent remakes and sequels, it often feels like a way to give you a little more power, resulting in much less fear. For example, when you know exactly how to defeat each enemy type with ease, not to mention the need to have enough supplies, it saves you the stress of constantly managing your ammo and health supplies.
In Holstin, even with piles of ammo and plenty of healing items, combat can be punishing if you’re not careful, but it never feels cheap. I’m not a huge fan of the combat in most survival horror games, but I am a fan of the combat in Holstin. It’s intentional. It brings back the stressful feeling of ’90s survival horror combat without the hassle of tank controls, fixed camera angles, and dodgy aiming. An impressive feat when most other modern homages instead make combat easier, opting to replicate exploration and puzzles to bring back that nostalgic feeling.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Holstin is a better game than these modern tributes, but it does make it more rare. I’m much more excited to get the full game after experiencing Holstin’s murderous fight than after solving its excellent puzzle presentation. Something I never thought I’d say about a survival horror game.
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