As I wandered through darkened halls, gazing into the lifeless eyes of maniac robots aboard a derelict space ship, I could not shake the feeling that something profound - and terrible - was waiting patiently outside the airlock. Worse still: I think it was already inside.
Such was my experience with Spirts of Xanadu, a new sci-fi mystery/horror FPS game from Night Dive Studios, the team responsible for bringing back several similar titles like System Shock 2, The 7th Guest and Strife. In it, you arrive on a seemingly abandoned spaceship orbiting a distant planet. The crew is missing, the robots are hostile, and ever so slowly you begin to lose your own mind.
There is something unnerving and timeless about the abandoned spaceship trope in science fiction. The dark is just a little darker, the corridors just a bit narrower, and the unknown is as vast and as infinite as the emptiness that surrounds you. The game plays on your primal fears of darkness and the eternal, unshakeable unknown to unnerve you to the core. What starts out as a simple repair job quickly becomes something far more dangerous and sinister, and whose stakes - as previously mentioned - are never higher.
You have been dispatched to the E.R.A research vessel Xanadu to aid in its repairs and voyage back to earth. The ship is crewed by a three man team - a captain, an engineer and a science officer - along with a contingent of robot helpers who were sent to the planet Demhe (a reference to the King in Yellow play by Robert Chambers) to investigate.
But the real horror comes from the scant audiologs you pick up along the way. The dark and random thoughts each member begins to ramble, the cold confessions of murder...the cries for help and the messages home. Whatever happened to them is never fully explained - a virus, an alien, a demon - and perhaps it is best left to the imagination. A chill ran up my spine whenever I played an audio log as if I were hearing words not from distant friends, but ghosts themselves.
SPOILER ALERT- Skip this next paragraph if you're spoiler-phobic.
The game has three endings. On my initial playthrough, I fixed the ship, set coordinates home and was treated to a huge 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED' sign, followed quickly by a casualty count that numbered in the BILLIONS (the entire population of Earth in 1983). My helpful advice to people who are stuck: you need the coordinates to a star. But you have to piece it together...somehow. It's the only way to destroy whatever is infesting the ship.
---END SPOILERS
I've spent a lot of time with Spirits of Xanadu, hours upon hours, but have not fully unlocked everything. For those wishing to simply complete the story, you can run through the game in roughly fifteen minutes - if not less - gathering up the necessary items to fix the ship. But this is an experience to be savored, even if at times it is a frustrating one. The game is proof that you don't need Unreal Engine 4 visuals or graphic violence to be scary and immersive, all you need is a character, a ship and the endless void where all your dreams - and all your nightmares - can exist.
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Spirits of Xanadu was reviewed using a Steam code provided by the publisher. The full game releases on March 26 for PC, Mac, and Linux. Check spiritsofxanadu.com for more.
