Evil Below

Evil Below is a first-person horror adventure game where you play as a mother searching for her missing child in a dark, medieval fantasy world. Combining elements of horror, puzzle-solving, and stealth, the game features a semi-open world filled with eerie forests and abandoned ruins, where you must navigate through treacherous environments, solve puzzles, and evade or combat grotesque creatures driven by faith and greed.

Evil Below: Review

Introduction

In the saturated landscape of contemporary horror games, few debuts carry the weight of innovation and thematic ambition as Evil Below. From the untested Spanish studio Fire Raven Studios, this first-person odyssey arrives not merely as another survivalist fright, but as a bold experiment in immersive mechanics, tethered to a primal narrative of maternal desperation. Released in February 2023 across PlayStation 4/5, Windows, and Linux, Evil Below thrusts players into a purgatorial realm where faith curdles into monstrosity and silence becomes a weapon. Yet, beneath its intriguing premise lies a title fraught with dichotomies: it delivers moments of chilling atmospheric mastery while shackled by technical inconsistencies and gameplay miscalculations. This review dissects Evil Below not just as a product of its time, but as a flawed artifact in the lineage of psychological horror—a game that days to transcend the genre’s tropes but remains haunted by its own execution.

Development History & Context

Evil Below emerges from the fertile ground of Madrid’s indie scene, nurtured by Fire Raven Studios’ debut ambition and Sony’s PlayStation Talents program, an initiative designed to cultivate Spanish developers. Partnering with the established publisher Gammera Nest—whose portfolio includes collaborations with cultural institutions like the Prado and Thyssen-Bornemisza Museums—the project aimed to blend indie ingenuity with AAA polish. Built on the Unity engine, it developed within the technological constraints of mid-range hardware, targeting a semi-open world without loading screens—a feat requiring careful optimization for seamless area transitions. The 2023 release window placed Evil Below amid a horror renaissance, where titles like It Lurks Below and Below Zero had already mined similar subterranean terror. Yet, Fire Raven Studios staked their claim on uniqueness: a mechanic requiring players to use their voice for puzzle-solving and combat, a novelty both praised as immersive and criticized as gimmicky. This decision reflected a vision to prioritize psychological unease over jump scares, leveraging the inherent vulnerability of vocalization in a silent, predatory world. The result was a game that felt both pioneering and product of its era—a testament to the promise and peril of indie development.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The narrative unfolds as a descent into existential anguish, framed by the archetypal quest of a mother searching for her child. Post-car crash, the protagonist awakens in a decaying church, disoriented and alone, her only guide being cryptic whispers: “The Wolf will not let you leave and your only way is down.” This purgatorial setting—never-ending forests, ghostly villages, and suffocating caverns—serves as a character in its own right, a realm where reality frays at the edges. The plot, while formulaic on the surface—rescuing a son from hellish creatures—unfolds through environmental storytelling: handwritten notes reveal the land’s history of faith corrupted by greed, while fleeting encounters with other survivors (or their remnants) hint at broader cosmic hierarchies. Dialogue is sparse and atmospheric, relying on guttural growls and spectral murmurs over exposition. Thematically, Evil Below excavates primal fears: maternal love versus primal terror, faith perverted into fanaticism, and the cyclical nature of damnation. The creatures—blinded by faith and greed—are not mere monsters but manifestations of societal decay, their designs (as noted by critics) grotesque and surreal. The narrative’s strength lies in its ambiguity; it avoids easy answers, leaving players to parse whether the world is literal hell or a psychological manifestation of guilt. This ambiguity, however, is undercut by a lack of deeper character development, reducing NPCs to lore dispensers and the protagonist to a determined cipher. The mother-son bond, though emotionally resonant, remains underexplored, relegated to background whispers rather than interactive moments that could elevate the tragedy.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

Evil Below’s core loop—a trinity of exploration, stealth, and combat—is where its ambition and flaws collide most sharply. The semi-open world comprises seven interconnected zones, traversed without loading screens, encouraging organic discovery. Yet, this freedom is illusory; pathfinding is confusing, and the absence of a minimap or guidance system often leaves players adrift, smashing barrels and crates for resources in tedious loops. Stealth is the game’s most refined element, requiring players to evade sightless creatures by using darkness and hiding spots. Success here is tense and rewarding, but inconsistent enemy AI—sometimes detecting players through walls, other times ignoring them up close—undermines the tension.

The voice-controlled mechanic, the game’s selling point, divides players. Puzzles demand vocal commands (e.g., whispering to activate mechanisms or shouting to startle enemies), leveraging the microphone for genuine immersion. When it works, it’s innovative; a whispered incantation to open a sealed door feels like wielding a tangible, albeit abstract, tool. Combat, however, becomes the system’s Achilles’ heel. Voice commands for attacking are imprecise, often registering late or not at all, forcing a reliance on traditional controls. The 13 weapons—from makeshift blades to emission swords—offer variety, with each enhancing health, stamina, or inventory space when upgraded. But the combat itself is clunky: stamina depletes rapidly during swings, physics glitches send barrels careening wildly, and camera angles during fights become disorienting. Aiming floaty and hit detection inconsistent, turning confrontations into frustrating slogs rather than cathartic clashes.

Progression is rudimentary: health and stamina upgrades are scattered sparingly, while inventory expansions are critical but poorly implemented. The storage system is chaotic, with weapons dropping unpredictably, and UI elements lack clarity. Difficulty settings (Easy, Normal, Hard) offer accessibility tweaks like reusable resting spots and infinite posture breaks, yet they don’t rectify fundamental issues like the inability to rebind controls or adjust the field of view—a glaring oversight that induces motion sickness for many. Ultimately, Evil Below’s systems feel like a collection of ideas rather than a cohesive whole: the voice mechanic shines in isolation, but it’s not integrated enough to salvage the overarching gameplay experience.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Evil Below’s world is its greatest triumph, a masterclass in oppressive atmosphere. The semi-open landscape—foreets that stretch into infinity, villages reclaimed by nature, and caverns that coil like entrails—is a testament to environmental storytelling. Each of the seven areas is distinct yet thematically unified, their decay echoing the game’s core themes. The art direction leans into medieval Gothic horror, with crumbling churches, overgrown tombstones, and grotesque architecture that evokes the works of H.R. Giger. Lighting is crucial: flickering candlelight casts elongating shadows, while fog and darkness obscure threats, forcing players to peer into the abyss. Enemy designs are a mixed bag—some, like the hulking, blind “Wolves,” are terrifyingly visceral, while others appear generic. Character models, however, are inconsistent; the protagonist and key NPCs look serviceable, but minor NPCs lack detail, breaking immersion.

Sound design elevates the experience, transforming whispers into tangible threats. The controller speaker emits eerie murmurs that seem to emanate from within the player’s hands, enhancing the sense of isolation. The soundtrack, a blend of dissonant strings and ambient drones, swells during tense moments, then recedes to amplify silence—a key horror element. Voice commands utilize the microphone to full effect, with environmental responses to shouts or whispers creating dynamic tension. Yet, the audio is not flawless; inconsistent sound mixing sometimes mutes crucial cues, and the voice-acting for NPCs is minimal, relying on text to convey lore. Despite these hiccups, Evil Below succeeds in crafting a world that feels both alien and hauntingly familiar, where every creak of wood and rustle of leaves feels like a prelude to terror.

Reception & Legacy

At launch, Evil Below polarized critics and players. Portuguese publications like Sabado and Publico lauded it as “innovative” and “genre-defining,” while Sapo praised its “terrifying atmospheres.” However, Western outlets highlighted its technical flaws; Press Play Media noted its “lackluster combat” and “performance hiccups,” while Gertlush Gaming criticized the “messy inventory” and “nauseating” lack of comfort settings. Commercially, it achieved moderate success, priced at $19.99 on Steam, but failed to chart as a blockbuster. Its legacy is already bifurcated: lauded for its voice mechanic and atmosphere, yet derided for its execution. Influentially, it stands as a cautionary tale for indie developers—bold ideas without polish can stifle potential. Evil Below will likely be remembered as a cult curiosity rather than a classic, but its voice-controlled puzzles may inspire future horror games to explore unconventional inputs. For Fire Raven Studios, it’s a foundation to build upon; for players, it’s a testament to the genre’s ability to horrify even when imperfect.

Conclusion

Evil Below is a game of two souls: one yearning for transcendence, the other shackled by earthly imperfections. It is a debut that days to innovate, weaving a mother’s grief into a tapestry of cosmic horror and embedding voice control as a narrative device. Its world is hauntingly realized, its atmosphere thick with dread, and its mechanics occasionally brilliant. Yet, these strengths are perpetually undermined by technical gremlins—physics that rage like wild beasts, combat that clunks like a relic, and a UI that confuses more than clarifies. For horror enthusiasts seeking something raw and experimental, Evil Below offers pockets of brilliance, particularly in its stealth sequences and environmental storytelling. But for those seeking polish or a cohesive experience, it will likely induce frustration. In the pantheon of horror games, Evil Below occupies a liminal space: a flawed artifact that, like its purgatorial setting, hints at redemption without ever quite achieving it. It is, in the end, a voice worth hearing, even if it speaks in fits and starts.