It’s no secret that fans of horror games tend to also be fans of puzzle games, especially seeing how most horror games are littered with puzzles of all kinds for players to solve in order to proceed. One form of puzzle-solving that is used in horror games is something I have always referred to as a “full map puzzle,” meaning that the items you need to proceed can be found all over the map and will have to be collected in order to solve a puzzle. This is the exact style that Suzaku went with for Sense - A Cyberpunk Horror Story. But did they manage to balance the horror, puzzles, and player engagement well enough for their game to be entertaining?

Story

After making a possible wrong turn, if not guided by fate itself, Mei-Lin Mak finds herself having to abandon her plans of meeting up with a blind date and must focus on escaping the ruins of the Chong Sing Apartments. Her only hope to escape these haunted and rundown apartments is to explore the complex, piece together the stories of 14 lost souls, and discover the truth of her own family curse. This century-old mystery is going to force her to question her perception of reality and whether she trusts her cybernetic eyes.

Gameplay

Starting off with some ghost-free areas you get to learn all about your PDA, inventory, how to interact with both objects and people, along with all the general controls you will need to know and how to solve puzzles in this game. This isn’t done through a tutorial though, but rather a kind of story introduction sequence where you have to complete a few tasks just to get to the start of the actual game.

Once you are in the apartments, it isn’t long before you have your first encounters with the spirits. These spirits will be instant death if they run into you, so you will have to avoid them, but you can find green bracelets that act as a scapegoat for these hits. While it seems like they will be easy to stockpile at first, they become much more useful when you complete the majority of the third floor, and the game switches from being defenseless to combat-included type horror.

You will spend most of the game collecting notes, triggering ghost-related events, and walking around the map to grab the item you need to proceed with whatever task you are currently working on. It won’t directly tell you what you need and you don’t just collect every useful item you come across, but it does change the color in the dialogue for key items so you know to make a note of its location because it will be needed in the future. However, collecting items isn’t the only way to solve puzzles and proceed in the game because sometimes you will have to read through notes, be it in your inventory or some details you can find in the game itself, in order to find the answer you need. This could be a pin code, a specific date, or other details, all depending on the current task at hand.

Your inventory does seem endless, but it doesn’t let you collect all key items as you come across them. At least it does let you stockpile the items you need in order to purify a soul when the opportunity is found. This is a major part of the game as well, so make sure you stay mindful of where cleansing items are located so you can get more if you start to run low. Once a spirit is purified, it will no longer haunt the apartment which will clear the way for you to go around safely from then on.

Visual

I really enjoyed the dystopian cyberpunk style that they went with. It isn’t often that you get to see an environment that fits a run-down and abandoned area that is encompassed by the neon glow of a cyberpunk world. While it had the quality of a dark cartoon, they did a great job with all the short cutscenes, ghost encounters, little demons, and general environment.

Sounds

Being left in pure silence isn’t something uncommon in this game and I can’t say that I thought it helped the environment. I would have liked to have heard more creaking, random footsteps, breathing noises, and general dark exploration music themes throughout the game to keep me feeling like I wasn’t alone, but I wish I was.

Replayability

Being a puzzle-focused game, I can’t say that there is much reason to go back through the game. The fear moments, the puzzle answers, and just about everything would be the same as the first playthrough.

What Could Be Better

If the inventory system isn’t going to show signs of being filled up, why not let players collect key items as they pass by them? Or possibly just let the player organize their inventory themselves so they can choose what it is they want to bring with them or not? This way, when we get to the puzzle-solving or key interaction moment where we need certain puzzle pieces, it would be our fault that we didn’t have it and had to go get it rather than that being the design of the game… to go back and get puzzle pieces after confirming you need it at the key interaction moment.

There should have been more random scares throughout the game. It’s a giant haunted apartment that our task is to purify the souls within it. How are there not more ghost moments that don’t require me to just run away from them? I would say the haunting aspect was under-utilized.

I would highly recommend the developers adding a taskbar or a spot in the journal where the current objective is listed for the player. Coming back to the game after even one day becomes difficult because I had to try and remember what it is I was doing. Plus, there are countless times I was just wondering what it is I was supposed to be doing and wished there was an objective taskbar to let me know what I should be focusing on.

Conclusion

Sense - A Cyberpunk Ghost Story has an awesome environment, story setup, and gameplay concept, but it fails to really hit the mark for me. I felt like I wasted so much time just wandering around the apartments looking for key items I didn’t need yet or a hint in some obscene area, all without running into any ghost interactions because they seem to be scripted. The game mainly got interesting when I got my weapon and had to fight through, but other than those moments of combat, the gameplay was generally the same. I liked it for the most part, but have to admit that I feel they could have done better.