I would say that Tormented Souls II protagonist Caroline Walker had horrible luck if she didn’t so conveniently bring it on herself. In the opening moments, we see her sporting a black eyepatch that, the last time we helped her survive the night, started with her getting a picture that proper her going to a terrifying place to investigate, and five minutes of set up lead to her getting chocked outr and waking up sans an eye. It’s good to know that in the time between then and now, her decision-making has not in any way, shape, or form improved, but hey, then we might not be getting this sequel.
The thing about Tormented Souls from developer Dual Effect is it is hard to quantify this franchise, especially if you look at a trailer with no context. It took me 3 years to eventually play it because I made the critical mistake of judging a book by its cover. The character models, for instance, remain ugly in cutscenes or while you clumsily move around the world. Based on the graphical choice and design of the entire aesthetic, I don’t really think this was a design choice to harken back to a bygone era. While much of the game is meant to throw you back, the artistic design feels firmly planted in the idea that this is a modern, albeit indie game. If you look at the graphics, it is possible to look right past this franchise, which is a shame, since on the converse side, it offered one of the best raw horror experiences I have had. The 2025 Sequel looks poised to do the same.
In the preview, available as part of Steam Next Fest, Caroline and her sister, who only take two in-game seconds to come across the missing component in a ritual to revive an ancient demon, are traveling by train to a monastery that they describe as a spa at one point. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to the words as Sister Satan Worship arrived to greet us, and we were treated to just a raw three minutes of nope moments and visuals before falling asleep in our room. What could go wrong? You wake up in bed to find your sister missing, and shocker, she is the missing component in a ritual being held by these nuns, who are now in metal masks to let you know you should really be afraid of them. If you are thinking at this point, well, hey, at least I wasn’t choked out and left in a makeshift spooky hospital with my eye stolen, you are promptly choked out and awaken in a makeshift hospital with very sharp needles in your entire body. It’s only about 10 minutes of setup for the nightmare to come.
Some people might be tempted to compare Tormented Souls to the Resident Evil series. The experience consists of fixed camera angles and the option of using the directional pad for tank controls if you are a masochist. You also wander through a once-grand abandoned building, solving puzzles as you progress, because using the front door would be too easy. You also eventually get weapons to defend yourself against the monsters you encounter. If I had to make the comparison, though, I would be more apt to say games like Eternal Darkness from 2002, one of many horror titles that felt in some ways similar but had just enough to draw its own distinction. It feels like a series that will inevitably get lost in the shuffle despite having an experience all its own.
The demo took me around 3 hours total to beat, though I’m sure if you know where you’re going, this would take a far shorter amount of time. The game pads on their runtime by constantly adding rooms to the mix, similar to the Raccoon City Police Station. Searching three rooms until you find a key that unlocks a fourth room, which might only have one thing, like a piece of a tool that needs to be used on the opposite side of the play environment. Most of the Demo covers what I assume will be the first area of the monastery. I only clarified it that way because the puzzles felt organic rather than remixed for a streamlined Demo playthrough. Despite the opening going from zero to a hundred in terms of the messed-up factor, in exploration, the game does believe in the slow-burning buildup. This isn’t to say you aren’t using a wire cutter to open a corpse’s chest plate and grab a key, or seeing a spooky figure vanish around the bend, but you get breathing room before you are fighting for your life against abominations against good.
One specific puzzle required me to find a cloth napkin with writing on the back, then find a body in the freezer of the kitchen, and know instinctively to cut its hand off to gain a frozen hand holding a puzzle box. Of course, this being a horror game, you can’t just throw that frozen hand on the ground and shatter it; you need to use the oven to thaw it so it opens, something that took me an embarrassingly long time to piece together. Then, using the code on the cloth, which relates to chess moves, pick the right chess pieces in the code on the box to open it. This was arguably the hardest puzzle in the game as it was multistep and required some thought. Most everything else involved exploring the new room you unlocked for something to interact with, or affecting something, then navigating to where it was affected. This was a welcome moment to throwback puzzle solving that Tormented Souls doesn’t bank its entire experience on.
One of my favorite elements from the first game also makes a return here in the need for the light. Entering darkness without something to illuminate it starts turning the screen fuzzy until, presumably, Caroline is dragged off to her death. While not a puzzle per se, many areas revolve first around finding a way to turn on a light source before you even get too far into them. Once you start actually needing to defend yourself, the game only allows for one equippable at a time, the lighter and nailgun, for instance, meaning you need to lose your manual light to actually fight, which puts some emphasis on this.
Combat feels like an old-school title till you realize that at least they modernized it slightly. Caroline can move around, even dodge, all while looking down sights in the classic, arms fully extended, feet planted position of Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. Most enemies lumber at you, giving you the ability to back up and slowly plant them full of nails till death animation. In the Demo, you only get three weapons in the form of a nail gun that acts as a pistol, a shotgun that is a one-shot weapon, and a hammer that you CAN use to attack enemies, though I wouldn’t recommend it unless you down them first. This title boasts a much longer story than its predecessor, so I am sure there is a lot more I haven’t seen in that regard.
Upon beating the demo, you are given a trailer showcasing various settings you will get to explore, which makes this game look more of an undertaking than the first. With many of them feeling much lighter than where the demo left our plucky protagonist, in an underground facility, about to claim a book before a glyph appears on the ground around Caroline. There were a few puzzles in the monastery I did not complete, and we were grabbing this book for the only other human we met back there (never a great sign,) so it is possible that more of the location the demo is set in is yet to be seen. That remains to be seen, though.
My takeaway here is that, like the first, Tormented Souls II is a horror title that should be on every single horror fan’s list. If you remove the issues the game series always had, like the character models that only serve to turn you away as a barely sufficient first impression, or the story, which can border on non-existent, as a horror game, it nails the vibe and oppressively grim atmosphere. As a throwback title, it works well as well, never nothing me with its fixed camera angles that could easily go ary, or its classic combat that feels clunky in all the ways you want it to be. I really can’t wait to jump back in when the Tormented Souls II finally releases, having no intention to make the same mistake I did with the first game.
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