As Forrest Gump once famously said in a movie I’ve not seen: “horror games are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get”. Of all genres I find myself most nervous when starting a horror game, and not for the reason you’d expect. There’s just so much variety in this spooky genre, and what makes a horror game scary is obviously different for everyone. Still I couldn’t contain my excitement as I saw more trailers for The Occultist, because there’s not a lot I enjoy more than a ghostly adventure.
The Occultist follows the story of Alan Rebels, a paranormal investigator on the hunt for his father. This gravely voiced fella is used to dealing with unexplained phenomenon, but when his journey takes him to Godstone he may have bitten off more than he can chew. While looking for daddy he ends up finding a whole lot of dead people, and discovers that shady rituals were taking place on this seemingly abandoned island. It’s a more than adequate setup for a spooky tale, and one that sees you visiting some interesting locations.
There are plenty of horror games that have you running and hiding from various nasties, but the core of The Occultist is first-person investigation. This adventure game sees you exploring environments for clues, as you try to uncover the truth and generally just progress past various locked doors. You’ll be finding notes, piecing together puzzles and taking in the eeriness above all else, all while listening to the frankly ridiculous tones of the protagonist.
Alan wouldn’t be much of a paranormal investigator without a spooky tool, and that’s where his pendulum comes in. This little skull shaped doodad has a transparent end, which you can look through to see ghostly antics. It’s a useful item you can use to follow invisible trails of blood, see spirits wandering about, and even make important clues appear from thin air. I love the idea of being able to see spine chilling things in otherwise normal locations, and as the game progresses it’s a shame that you use it less and less.
There are other uses for the pendulum though, which you find throughout your journey across Godstone. The first of these allows you to rewind time to discover useful items or information, which should probably be more shocking for Alan. The next, even more bizarrely, lets you summon a ghost crow to collect things out of reach. Most of the pendulum abilities are just a bit odd, and since you’re almost always told when to use the pendulum to progress thanks to vibration and a flashing symbol you never feel particularly clever for whipping it out to solve a puzzle.
There are plenty of puzzles standing in the way of the truth on the island, but they often end up being used again and again. Doors where you have to draw a symbol to break the seal are fairly common, and would be cool if the answer wasn’t essentially faintly drawn on them already. Padlocks that require a word to be entered to unlock them must have been on sale when Godstone was first built too, because everybody uses them to lock up their secrets. You’ve seen these sorts of puzzles in games countless times, and there aren’t a whole lot of creative twists on these familiar progress blockers.
While most of the time in The Occultist you’ll be fairly safe as you investigate, there are sometimes aggressive spirits standing in your way. You’ll generally just need to run away from them or hide until they leave, and without much in the way of stealth mechanics to fall back on there’s not really an elegant way to manage this.
On top of everything else, the biggest issue with The Occultist is I just didn’t find it scary in the slightest. There are a few jump scares that made me react accordingly, but for the most part this abandoned island didn’t fill me with dread. Part of the reason for this is Alan, who just doesn’t ever react to the dangerous situation he finds himself in. Nothing shakes his manly voice and gruff demeanour, and it really takes away from the atmosphere.
I don’t want to entirely just talk about what makes me dislike The Occultist though, because it’s really not all bad. I had a totally adequate time wandering around everywhere from abandoned orphanages to derelict carnivals, and the visuals throughout are rather impressive. It’s a shame the performance on PS5 suffers alongside this though, with some serious framerate dips in places.
The Occultist isn’t a bad horror game, it’s just a fairly unremarkable one. There’s not a whole lot you won’t have seen done before, and its painfully grizzled protagonist really drags it down. That being said the setting and visuals are stellar, and others might get more spooked by this abandoned island than I did.
