Kriophobia, in case you’re wondering, is the (presumably) Russian form of the word Cryophobia. Fear of the cold. Given one of the first things we do is chisel out a frozen sensor pole in the middle of an icy wasteland, it’s an unfortunate phobia to have. I’ll be damned if it isn’t an appropriate name for the game though. For all its big monsters and limited health items, the thing that was always kicking the back of my brain was the temperature system.
I’ll elaborate on that in a bit, but I like it because it makes me feel like the devs get it. The parts of horror that stick with me are not the in-your-face scares, it’s the anticipation leading up to it. It’s the feeling right before you open a door, when you have no idea what’s going to be on the other side. In fact, I didn’t count a single jumpscare here. Instead, Kriophobia is emulating older survival horror titles, in the vein of the early Silent Hill games. Thing is, I never played those, but I like Kriophobia. So it’s clearly elevated itself above nostalgia, which is something I’m keen to unpack.
Baby It’s Cold Outside
Kriophobia centres around an expedition to the remote Zhokhov island to investigate some strange geomagnetic anomalies. Geophysicist Anna sets out to calibrate some sensors, but is caught up in a blizzard and ends up falling down into a disused underground Soviet bunker. As you might expect from the phrase ‘Soviet underground bunker’, it’s a place where a lot of bad things happened and are continuing to happen. Anna needs to find the rest of the team and then leave, post haste.
I don’t want to delve too much into the plot, as it’s hard to avoid spoilers, but I will say that the central plot is fairly routine. An occupational hazard of horror games, perhaps, but it’s established early on that experiments were being conducted on children in this bunker. That’s probably all you need, if you’re familiar with the genre at all. You know that at some point, an evil adult is going to either be thrown into something or their brain is going to start leaking out of their ears. So the whole thing is dripping in cliché, but it works as a serviceable framework.
What Kriophobia builds on that framework is an excellent atmosphere. While the plot is predictable, a large portion of the worldbuilding is told through scraps of notes, and visions of past events. So while you know where it’s going, piecing it together is still creepy. Aiding the atmosphere is an excellent art style, giving everything a sort of ‘shaded in with pencil’ effect, which I love. Things outside of your torch beam are visible but only just meaning that you can still navigate in the dark, but there could be anything waiting for you. Sound design is on point too, especially if you have a penchant for weird hissing noises.
Shivving Slugs
So I was already pretty tense, even before Kriophobia‘s gameplay started ratchetting it up. The first thing you’ll notice is the fixed camera, reminiscent of something like Resident Evil. It even encourages using tank controls, though as chairman of the ‘I Hate Tank Controls’ club, I did not partake. Still, this is a good use of the camera. It’s disorientating enough that you never feel safe, but not so much so that it becomes hard to control. It also lends a feeling of being constantly watched. In fact, I’d say Kriophobia is great at finding the right line for its mechanics.
Melee combat, for example, is sticky and slow. But not so much so that it becomes unviable, it’s just the last resort. Weapons degrade, and healing and warmth items are finite, and I was always close to running out. But there are just enough about that I never actually did, I just felt tense the whole time. The puzzles can be quite obtuse, but the solution is always there if you explore enough. You can tell that Fira Soft spent ten years on Kriophobia. It feels like the core gameplay has been pretty fine tuned, and they’re clued into what the community are saying. Long paragraph short: Kriophobia‘s gameplay feels perfectly paired with its atmosphere.
Not that I don’t have nitpicks. Basic enemy design is a bit bland, for one. The two main enemy types are slugs and shadow monsters. The two bosses have nicer designs, though. But they are of the type that are unkillable and will constantly chase you. It looks like patches have reigned them in a bit, but I do wish they’d stay out of puzzle rooms. Lastly, I wish Kriophobia wasn’t so coy with its prompts. Key details are often not highlighted, which can be frustrating. At one point I had to escape a room through a hole in a morgue drawer (don’t ask). Only, the camera angle didn’t show the hole and no prompts appeared, so I spent ages running in circles.
Kriophobia – Old Style, New Polish
Lastly, I want to talk about that heat system, because I think it encapsulates why I was absorbed by Kriophobia. It’s nice and simple. Every room has a heat rating, from warm to freezing, and Anna will rapidly get colder based on room. Too cold and she gets hypothermia, and dies. You can use items to warm her up, or run back to a safe room. I like it because it adds a perfect ticking clock. The heat is manageable, but is always there in the back of your mind. You can get cocky and press forward, but if you can’t get back in time, you’re dead. It’s a constant source of anxiety.
And that’s what elevates Kriophobia as a horror game, for me. It goes for anxiety over just startling the player. The feeling that I was one bad move away from dying was always there. Anna isn’t a fighter; she can’t even dodge without doing a pathetic little leap on to the floor. She’s a fish out of frozen water and brings in what you need for horror to land: vulnerability. Kriophobia might have a few areas to tighten up (and is in need of voice acting), but nothing that hurts the experience. It’s a great little horror game, which takes the trappings of the older titles in the genre and gives them a good old polishing.
