Review – Post Trauma – Gamerview

Post Trauma, from the Spanish studio, hits consoles and PC by Raw Fury to revisit the 90s Survival Horror classics, such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil. An indie made by a small team, but in love with the genre and full of good intentions. Facing production and schedule problems, the game was postponed twice. And unfortunately, the end result is much lower than what was originally shown in its revelation in.

I do not like to work out Indie Games due to the circumstances in which they are produced, usually with limited budget, sometimes inexperienced team, among other reasons. But since there was a certain hype on the trauma post, because of the old-school appeal of the genre, I need to be transparent with readers. This is a game that had a lot of potential, but was full of technical problems and lack of inspiration.

Of good intentions hell is full

Before listing everything that went wrong in trauma post, let’s go to what worked. The game definitely hits the atmosphere and especially in its puzzles. They are all very well thought out, some quiet and some very complicated – as happened in the Survival horror of PlayStation 1 and 2 times. If you prefer more action than puzzle, I already recommend ignoring this indie. The focus is almost 100% in the solution of the puzzles, including preventing you from moving into history if you don’t pay attention to the tracks, something that can thwart the unsuspecting.

While the atmosphere works well, I cannot say the same of the scenarios. Although it has been done at Unreal Engine 5, there are many lighting errors (inconsistent, burst), flashing textures, animation failures everywhere, repetition of materials, and technical problems that break the performance even on a powerful PC. Equipped with a GeForce RTX 4070 Super video card, I couldn’t get over the 65 FPS. For such a game, it makes no sense.

Missed a lot of polishing, especially in gameplay. Facing enemies is so bad that it pays to ignore them completely, as they are all very slow and dumb. You can kill general with a white weapon, to save pistol and shotgun ammunition. Or just keep turning around an object of the scenario, like a table, which will never be able to catch you. There is not much variety of enemies, but some of them are interesting and create a certain tension in the first contact. Still there was a lack of presentation, an impact, as it happens when seeing the first zombie in the original Resident Evil mansion. And the scarcity of notes and audio tapes makes the story too shallow, always at the expense of the player’s imagination.

Three points of view, the same melancholy

You play with Roman, an older man who wakes up stuck in a subway car without knowing what’s going on. It is up to the player to unravel several puzzles until finally leaving the station. In act 2 we are then presented to another character, the policeman Carlos, who wakes up in the interrogation room of a police station. The game then changes perspective, from third to first-person. That is, with Roman we have fixed cameras and crazy angles as in the original Silent Hill. And with Carlos the angle is broader and more free to look around, but without combat. Later we control Freya, a girl who communicates by her cell phone, returning to the perspective in third-practical and also without combat.

This dynamic between the three characters could add a lot to the story, but that’s not quite what happens. There was a good screenwriter behind the project, to intrigue the player with more impactful revelations when unfolding the plot. Everything follows shallow, with few dialogues, the minimum information about melancholy (the parallel world of the game) and the great part of the gambling is dedicated to puzzles. At least they didn’t put more enemies, forcing tedious fighting because of the smooth gameplay. By the way, Roman’s attack (whether of coup or shooting) is so slow that the recovery of the movement gives the enemy openness to attack you without any chance of dodging. On the other hand, the challenge is so low that even bosses have no challenge.

Gameplay problems extend to the fixed camera at bad angles, preventing you from seeing an enemy approaching or even understanding the way you need to go. There are also no useless environments, to get in and out empty hands; absence of map in the inventory (existing only in the scenario, fixed on the wall, for consultation); Interaction with items has no weight, all without animation; Lip synchrony in dialogues is terrible; The subtitle wages sometimes, nothing appearing; Even the hair and Roman mustache suffer problems with lighting (looking false) and buggy physics.

In the sound part, Post Trauma is too inspired by, to the point of sounding too similar to the compositions of Akira Yamaoka. There is not even a song that sounds different, authorial, with some signature of its own. It’s not bad, it’s just not original or even memorable. Safe rooms, in turn, are inspired by Resident Evil and also play similar music. And there’s a chest, of course! If you are going to use it at some point, I doubt it. I didn’t use it once.

Post trauma in the post game

I didn’t finish trauma post. I played for 10 hours, obviously crashing into several puzzles, and now everything seems to be walking to the outcome. I keep in doubt, of course, but with a theory in the head. Although my curiosity is great, I got tired of the challenges. I fried my neurons so much in some of the puzzles that the effect was opposite to fun, taking my desire to continue. And it’s a pity, really. I wanted my post trauma to be another: the game was over and I want more, I liked horrors.

In the end what remains is the feeling of a problem with problematic production, which could have worked very well but, for various reasons, goes far from the acceptable in the current market. Post trauma deserved a good writer, a better protagonist, more neat animations, round gameplay and a general polishing. Things that patches will not solve over time. Perhaps it had been worth postponing the release for a while. As it didn’t, what we have is a mediocre game: entertains with puzzles and nothing more.