Survival Horror games have a unique aspect about them, one that allows for different styles of innovation. These days, we are getting all these big horror games, but it turns out, it is the little ones like Lone Survivor or now Claire that truly hit it out the ball park with their careful dedication to ambiance and atmosphere.

Claire follows our titular protagonist through a darkly demented world where danger lurks around every corner. The game consists of us controlling her in her teenage years, similar to Heather in Silent Hill 3. However, every once in a while we will be taken through her flashbacks of when she was a kid, going through important events of her life.

Without a doubt, once you load up the game you’ll notice the undeniable influence of Silent Hill, especially due to the menu based sound effects, which are eerily similar to that of Silent Hill’s. The gameplay also is pretty much a 2D version of Silent Hill like  Lone Survivor was, but at times you will notice a huge influence of the classic Clocktower. In fact, with the way the game plays, and is particularly reserved about combat, the game is more similar to Clocktower than it is to Silent Hill.

The game plays a lot like Lone Survivor where you control your character in a 2D setting. Unlike it however, the game doesn’t encourage combat at all and advises you to instead seek safety from the enemies, who by the way, are absolutely relentless. What I really love about the game is how polished it is, as there are various levels of detail to everything from the sound to the animations of the sprites.  Not to mention, the controls are silky smooth and nicely thought out, so you won’t be getting cluttered or frustrated due to controls as far as I am aware.

In this game you get to have two different light sources, a Zippo and a flashlight. The flashlight requires you to scavenge for batteries and can be further controlled by moving your mouse, only if you are not moving yourself. Restricting advanced flashlight movement to standing idle really helps the game, and keeps it from getting frustrating control wise. This way, you get the path in front of you illuminated and you don’t have to continuously worry about your mouse movement every single time. This helps to keep you immersed.

There isn’t really any combat in this game, and you have to hide from your enemies. The way you do that is by either finding a hiding spot, or running through different parts of the corridor, leaving whatever it is on your tail far behind. However, be warned, entering a new area won’t mean that the enemy pursuing you will stop or anything and instead they start breaking through the doors, leaving a brooding dark gap in them.  I really love the main gameplay design, but a part of me keeps feeling like there could’ve been either more variety or more gameplay mechanics as you are doing the same thing over and over may seem a bit tedious.

Still though this game does have unique twist, as throughout the game you will get to meet these different characters, who seem to be stuck here. It is up to you to determine who to save and who to condemn. Be warned, your choices do have consequences.

If you are playing for the first time, be sure to save often as you can, as it is a good while into the game where you will get used to the idea of scavenging for items like food or batteries for survival, and it would be a pain to lose your progress. Throughout key points of the game, there are also butterfly collectibles that serve as pieces of memoir to Claire’s sad memory.

The way saving in this game works is, you have to find the lantern rooms in which there is (surprise surprise) a ghostly white lantern. If you interact with it, you get the option to either save your game or create a new save file. It is a smartly implemented feature that helps with the game flow. This way, you won’t have to choose what file to save in like other games, and can instead, at a press of a button either overwrite your save or start a new one. No extra menus, no hassle.

Story wise, the game is really hard hitting. I won’t go into detail to prevent spoilers, but be prepared to get really depressed as Claire’s upbringing was rather sad. I also like how the dialogue doesn’t try to be overly dramatic or anything. It is to the point and relatable. So, no overly cheesiness here.

The animations as I have mentioned before, are absolutely outstanding. Whenever you are idle for a while, Claire will sit down on the floor, put up her hoodie and start dozing off. It is a very nice throwback to the classic games which had very creative idle animations. Same thing with the dog, which just lies down after a while. In my opinion, this extra level of detail to the sprite animations really brings the characters out as relatable human beings rather than generic controllable bots.

The graphics are dark and disturbing as they should be, and depending on where you are in-game, you will see different decorations or decay to the environment around you. Even the character models are really detailed and react with the light sources around them. It is pixelated, but not as heavily as Lone Survivor, as the outlines and details of the character models are sharper. The monsters are as abstract as they should be, both creepy and unsettling.

The sound is perhaps the best part of this game, as it is amazingly well polished, and features tons of scary and crispy sound-effects. You will be hard-pressed to say that this is an indie game due to it, as it looks like they have gone the extra mile with the sound effects and the eerie music.

Overall, you can see that Claire has a special amount of hard work and dedication put to it. I know for a fact that a lot of indie devs get too lazy by the end of the game to put any extra polish, but not the guys at Hailstorm. Lastly, I understand that some people have had bug problems, but so far there hasn’t been any serious game breaking bugs for me. I would definitely recommend this game to any horror fan that has grown up playing Clocktower or Silent Hill, especially if they loved the recent Lone Survivor. It isn’t as deep as Lone Survivor, but it is nevertheless, a solid horror game, with multiple endings that will keep you playing more than once.

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