About The Game

The narrative unfolds in a dystopian near-future, plunging players into a tech-noir British city long ago sealed off and abandoned as a decayed exclusion zone. Players control Mica, a black-market shipper desperately searching for her missing partner, Sasha, who vanished inside the walled-off ruins. When Mica's hovercar suffers a catastrophic failure, she crashes directly into the heart of the zone. Stranded, isolated, and stalked by grotesque anomalies, Mica must navigate the crumbling urban architecture, uncover hidden transmissions from the city's final hours, and piece together the tragic history of the zone in a desperate bid to escape.  

Mechanically, the game introduces a modern twist to classic survival-horror progression, requiring careful exploration, environmental puzzle-solving, and strict resource management. Players must scrounge for scarce ammunition, health supplies, and key items like train tickets to bypass obstacles while deciding whether to engage or entirely avoid the slow-moving creatures blocking narrow hallways. Combat features a mix of firearms and melee weapons, such as a spiked bat or a makeshift road-sign axe, allowing players to retain full movement while aiming. The experience is heavily customized by user preference, offering options for classic tank controls or modern 3D movement, alongside the choice between dynamic fixed camera angles and a traditional over-the-shoulder third-person camera.  

History and Inspiration

Hollowbody functions as an explicit, highly focused love letter to the turn-of-the-century golden era of survival horror. Developed entirely by a solo creator, Nathan Hamley under the Headware Games banner, its design architecture is directly pulled from the early 2000s PlayStation 2 aesthetic. The oppressive gloom, thick psychological tension, and heavy focus on puzzle-solving are heavily inspired by classic Silent Hill titles, while the restricted resource loops and sudden jump scares when backtracking draw clear lineage from the original Resident Evil entries. By marrying these nostalgic, grainy PS2-era low-poly graphics with a dystopian cyberpunk setting, the developer effectively bridges vintage mechanical friction with a fresh, distinct near-future identity.  

Critical Discourse and Player Feedback

The critical and community conversation has been strongly positive, especially surrounding the game's recent jump to current-gen consoles. On aggregator platforms like OpenCritic and Steam, reviewers have widely celebrated the title as a phenomenal achievement for a solo developer, frequently matching it with recent high-profile retro throwbacks like Signalis and Crow Country. The community discourse heavily praises the game's suffocating audio design and the incredible narrative atmosphere built through environmental clues. 

However, some critical friction exists regarding the game's combat variety and uneven puzzle difficulty, with several reviewers noting that the enemies present a relatively low threat on default settings once players master the melee weapon mechanics. Additionally, a minor debate persists regarding the dual camera options, with some players feeling that the transition between fixed angles and the over-the-shoulder mode can occasionally obscure interactive items or complicate aiming configurations.  

Hollow Body released a few years ago on Steam (Sep 2024), and it is currently 84% recommended across more than 1,400 ratings. On the PS Store it has a 4.24/5 average score across 148 ratings.

Hands-on Impressions

Going into Hollowbody I didn't know much. From the description in the PS Store and the screenshots I could tell it was a classic-styled survival horror game set somewhere in England. It has a tech-noir style, and while elements of it are certainly sci-fi, like flying cars and such, most of the game takes place in modern looking cities and environments that have long been abandoned. Your weapons and items are all rooted in modern day items as well. So it's an interesting mix of a futuristic setting, but playing in modern era environments. Good excuse to sprinkle in some futuristic elements but keep most of its horror grounded.

Since I was playing for the first time I started by playing the prologue as Sasha. You find out that she and a team are investigating an area and she becomes lost while there. Your main character, Mica, is trying to find Sasha after the disappeared. She crash lands in the exclusion area, and then sets out to find Sasha. As you might expect, everything is run down and abandoned, a la Silent Hill albeit without the fog. Everyone you come across at first is already deceased, and generally found in a variety of gruesome poses.

As the story proceeds, of course you find out not all is as it seems. You receive a creepy phone call early on from a weird sounding stranger who says "this is my home, this was always my home" and generally sounds threatening. It mentions "watching out for 'the strays' they haven't eaten in weeks", which you find out are all the creepy nasties you encounter. Of course you keep following the breadcrumbs leading to where Sasha is, finding items, solving puzzles and unlocking the way to the next area. All very Silent Hill-like. The combat is also very similar to Silent Hill 2, meaning you suck at it, and that's what creates a lot of the danger you will face, and some enemies hit hard.

When you beat the game, you unlock New Game+, Punished difficulty (which makes the enemies harder AND they have to be burned to prevent reanimation - really cool), first person mode and big head mode, all very much classic 90s and early 00s. I did start the game again in first person mode on Punished and it's pretty badass. The game wasn't designed for first person, so some things don't look exactly the way they should in a game designed around fixed camera angles, but for the most part its great. Just keep in mind that it's a sort of hack and not an intended way to play, and the few issues you run into shouldn't be a big deal. 

The only drawback is the game is quite short, but since it only retails for $16.99, it's about what you would expect. It took me about 5 hours the first time I beat it, and I kept getting lost a lot (which is just part of the experience). HowLongtoBeat puts the Main Story at about 5 hours with Completionists at 9 hours.

You can watch my beginning gameplay in the video below: