Visage

Visage is a first-person psychological horror game, and the debut project of SadSquare – a Canadian developer. The game received strong financial support on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform – the amount of money gathered turned out to be three times larger than expected.

Plot

Visage is set in a gloomy household, which has witnessed many frightening events throughout centuries. People have murdered their entire families here. Falling into madness (often followed by a suicide) used to be commonplace in the areas belonging to the mansion. The place is extremely notorious for terrifying occurrences, thus memories holding nightmares from the past can be found in almost every corner of the house. What is not surprising, the main character is trapped inside the estate. Although the protagonist suspects they should run away from here as fast as possible, they will first have to solve a dark mystery behind the estate in order to be free again.

Mechanics

As suggested by the genre the game belongs to, Visage requires the player mainly to explore subsequent chambers and corridors of an extensive estate, as well as to discover its secrets gradually. The player can pick up different items relevant for the plot, as well as manipulate certain environmental objects. Instead of emphasizing action, the game builds up the atmosphere and intensifies feelings of fear. Although death is an inherent part of the game and the protagonist's life is endangered by ghosts, the game does not feature combat mechanics – avoiding contact with foes and running away if necessary is the only way success here.

Interestingly, the plot in Visage is non-linear to a certain extent and the course of the story gets affected by the choices the player makes throughout the adventure. Additionally, a large part of the in-game events are randomly generated once the game begins – as a result, each playthrough is unique here to a certain degree.

Technical aspects

Visage offers detailed, high-quality visuals utilizing the advanced Unreal Engine 4. Each of the chamber the player visits is filled with details and items of interest. When exploring the mansion, the player can feel the overwhelming atmosphere present, which is additionally intensified by a meaningful soundtrack and mysterious sounds reaching the protagonist's ears from all directions. What is definitely a great advantage of the game, is the support for Virtual Reality goggles included. Using those, one has an opportunity to take this experience to a whole new level.

Visage Enhanced Edition

Visage Enhanced Edition does not change the game's content, but offers a number of graphical improvements: support for 4K resolution with smooth 60FPS animation, faster load times and haptic vibrations (in the case of DualSense controllers). Notably, owners of the game on older consoles received the Visage Enhanced Edition as a free update.

Last updated on November 7, 2016