Pneumata is defined as “soul, spirit” and more specifically, “holy spirit”. It’s also the namesake of a game that’s seen release on Steam and is gearing up for a PlayStation 5 release on October 4th, 2024. With a premise of searching for your love that’s been lost in foreign territory, this sounds like the recipe of Resident Evil (more specifically, the excellent recent entries in VII and VIII). It’s a tall task to try to emulate a worldwide-phenomenon franchise, but the team at Deadbolt Interactive looks to do just that in this horror-action title. Can it hang with the best in the genre?

Pneumata does a lot in its opening proceedings to immerse the player and leave context clues as to what’s going on in the protagonist’s life as it eases you into the controls and setting of a suburban home, as your wife is lost at sea and search efforts have been for naught. It’s light on scares as it builds its premise, and you can even pet the dog in all its polygonal glory. The graphics are adequate, but the NPC animations are characteristically stiff and all the immersion that was built up disappears once you see a wooden enemy or an out-of-place piped-in sound effect.

Considering it takes a good 30 minutes before you encounter your first foe in Pneumata, the suspense is practically non-existent as the jumpscares it tries to throw at you carry no weight and wouldn’t frighten a toddler. Gunplay is fine enough and this fight works up some adrenaline as the bullet sponge boss requires some quick thinking to quell. The game throws a lot of ammunition your way, too. Players can expect to be using tons as they pick away at huge health bars from enemies.

It’s a shame that the majority of Pneumata is spent wondering where to go next. The puzzle-solving in the game it takes inspiration from, Resident Evil, is at least solvable, but the game doesn’t just not hold you hand, it leaves you to fend for answers and newcomers to the genre will be scratching their head more than once trying to comprehend how to get over its constant roadblocks. Throw in a nails-on-a-chalkboard voice performance from all fronts and it’s a game that’s not so-bad-it’s-good, but so-bad-it’s-painful experience that not even horror masochists will want to pick up.

In what is one of the worst modern games I’ve experienced in quite a long time, Pneumata can’t be salvaged and more than pales in comparison to the majority of horror games on the market now. I can put up with bad voice acting, same-y level design, and a plodding pace, but when the gameplay consists of walking around the same hallways praying for a solution to a puzzle instead of getting the heebie-jeebies from terrifying monsters, it’s less of a horror game in the sense of frights and more of a horror to sit down and play this instead of just about anything else that’s more deserving of your time.

A PS5 review copy of Pneumata was provided by Perp Games for this review.

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Pneumata

34.99

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• Well Optimized
• Fluid Controls

Cons

• More Bores than Scares
• Painful Voice Acting
• Perplexing Level Design
• Abysmal Puzzles