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One of the best things on Summer game festival Discover games that mix some of your favorite classics in something completely new. Crisol: Theater of Idols is a game with a clear influence of Bioshock in its first -person shooting exploration, but merges a cult horror of games like Resident Evil 4 in the mixture. In addition to all this, to recharge your weapon, you must sacrifice your own blood – and take a piece of your own health bar.
It is a new mechanic who combines with the Gothic and nautical framework for a promising approach to horror action games. Crisol is developed by Vermila Studios, which was acquired by Group Kiss in 2020, but the game is published by Blumhouse Games. After playing a 20 -minute demo from his new game, the CEO of the studio, David Carrasco, explained how his game is a course correction for horror games.
Each pistol has its own blood download animation – for this pistol, it passes the handle and pierces in Palm to pull their tithe to recharge.
“We have long thought that the horror of survival arrived where you did not have this survival element so much,” said Carrasco. “We wanted to give it an additional layer of tension using your blood, your sacred blood, to defeat these unhappy monsters.”
I certainly felt it in the demo. While I tracked up the paved streets on the moon of an island teetting with impious and frightening puppet creatures, knowing that each missed shot was a little lost. Survival horror games give players to extinguish fear (or in their absence, amplifying it, as with the AMNESIA series), but to attach the effectiveness of my weapons to my health made me slow down and choose my gunshots, amplifying fear while enemies closed – “keeping this tension constantly at the back of your head”, “as Carrasco said.
Although I feel the slightest concern for players with a bad goal, there are health catering syringes sitting in the corners of abandoned stores and buildings. Crisol also has a mechanic where players can harvest blood (and therefore, pieces of life) of dead animals lying around. Linking weapons to health is a twist on another trope of horror of survival of the safeguard of heavy weapons ammunition for the dangerous bosses later, noted Carrasco – in Crisol, you can always use your big guns … for a price.
In Crisol, the players assume the role of Gabriel, captain of Tercios del Sol, a command of soldiers under a religious religion of the sun which takes sacred missions. He receives a divine order to go to an old island which turns into his own maritime religion, Tormentosa and deals with idols who came to life and started to unleash.
When I asked what inspired Crisol, Carrasco was initial that Bioshock and a certain number of Resident Evil games (4, 7 and 8 specifically) had the right mixture of artistic design and Gameplay Vermila studios. Dishonored was another source for his insistence to art.
“Sprinkle in Spanish folklore, religious nuances and, in the end, with all these fantastic and crazy and brutal inspirations will make something that will be unique and memorable,” said Carrasco.
Enemies of puppet type idols that have come to life on the island.
Spanish folklore is underused compared to Japanese, Nordic and American mythology that appears in many games, said Carrasco. Vermila Studios, based in the Spanish city of Madrid, relied on the history and culture of its country of origin – and although the island players visit Crisol do not take place explicitly in Spain, players will be able to link the points to cathedrals, the old architecture, polychromatic statues and stained glass windows that constitute the visual language of the game.
This mixture also applies to religion: the players will come up against a faith that follows the island of Crisol which follows the religions of the sea and the sun, which I saw a little in the demo, with the deification of the sirens and other pseudo-spagan effects. But Carrasco also recognizes the Catholic influence in the game.
“We have taken a lot of religious inspiration from different religious, such as the Catholic Church, which has many components deeply rooted in Spanish culture, but [also] Some other older religions, even cults of very old history, “said Carrasco, saying that there is no explicit link with the Catholic Church or Christianity.” We have sacred blood, but it is not like a Christ or a link with the reality of religions these days. “”
By browsing the cobbled streets of the demo, I see how all these elements are based in the visual language of Crisol. Vermila Studio has a larger than usual art department, noted Carrasco, with around twenty people working for five years to scribble enemy and place to give the game a look and a feeling that felt familiar, fantastic and plausible at the same time – that it could really be on an island at sea.
While players explore the game from 10 to 2 p.m., they will experience the creeping horror of the presence of worship, but Vermila do not count on many jump crèches, said Carrasco, which can lose their impact if it is overused. On the contrary, the game will be based on the tension of the enemies behind and will continue, those you lack of blood (and health) bullets to overcome, to those who are not affected by your weapons.
In the second half of the demo, I came across what Carrasco was talking about: a large puppet monster that pushed with an incredibly wide smile that called me, raised my balls while I was doing in buildings to escape its pursuit. Like other invulnerable prosecution bosses (Mr. X in Resident Evil 2, Jack Baker in Resident Evil 7), I had to sneak while finding cutters to cut the chained doors. I also had to wrap a scary door slowly, expecting my harasser to close me at any second.
I escaped in a restaurant on the theme of the siren and the demo ended, but the vibrations of the game remained with me. They clearly called on Blumhouse, who was also interested in the dramatic artistic style of Crisol and its blood mechanics. For Vermila Studios, Blumhouse was a good adjustment for its history to bring new artists and projects that can be smaller but bring something new to the table.
“For us, being part of this range of Blumhouse is like a partnership made in paradise – or hell, perhaps – where they understand the horror and what tickles,” said Carrasco.
Crisol: Theater of Idols arrives on PC, PS5 and Xbox later in 2025.
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