I will not lie, Sylvio 2's biggest weak point is the ending, but I will get into that later as I have a few colorful words for it. While I originally intended to ramble about how a story could fall apart, this whole experience taught me something much different than that. Not only did it make me appreciate what Sylvio did so much more, but it made me see that sometimes good things don't need sequels.
(Pictures used from Youtube)
Sylvio is a flawed game, but a good game nonetheless. In fact, the positives of Sylvio manage to push it just enough past said flaws that it is able to hold its own. Everything that Sylvio does wrong is counteracted by something it does right, and in a time where the indie market of horror games was in dismay, Sylvio had just enough love to make it something worth experiencing.
In case you don't know, Sylvio's story involved the main character, Juliette, investigating the haunting and mystery behind an old park that had been the site of a horrific accident. The island is covered in red fog and everyone on it is gone, but using EVP equipment Juliette is able to find out the truth, and figure out why so many spirits are trapped in the 'tunnel'.
As I said before, Sylvio counteracts itself well. While the graphics aren't the best, they do well enough for a sense of immersion. The locations are all somewhat different and the failing structures do bring around the sensation of being in a broken land. The red fog both helps the atmosphere and clouds the loss of finer details. While it is clear that some corners are cut, Sylvio took advantage of what it did have, and it did make an unnerving world.
There was also a mechanic where you could drive in a car to various locations, and control the car while you do it. While this seems unimportant now, this is very important in Sylvio 2's citique. The mini driving sections are just another part of the journey, but they do succeed in making the island feel at least a little more connected.
The EVP moments are brilliant. Finding voices is a fun mechanic and discovering some of the creepy things that can be said helps the experience. I remember I got chills when in one scene a ghost said, "Down the Hatch." I don't even remember why I found this so unsettling, but in the moment you will truly feel that connection. There's also seances, which allow you to learn about other characters who died in the park. There's a mix of sympathy and fear towards these beings. You don't need to find all recordings, but you might be interested enough to do so.
The gun and the black mass.
There's also a small combat system where you use a potato gun and nails to fight off these dark spheres and enormous spirits. The combat system is a little weak, but it's passable, and there is a sort of unnerving factor the first time a black blob comes through a wall and beelines towards you. Again, it's passable, but it is its replacement in the second game that makes it important- which I'll get into. Really, the combat and the car are just extra stuff, as are the collectibles, but it does give the game more meat.
The story of Sylvio does some things really well, but has a little bit of a confusing backstory and a somewhat cohesive ending. The ending isn't bad, you'll understand it when watching it, but it does do the usual thing of being somewhat vague. I won't spoil this game's ending, because Sylvio deserves that disclosure. It's one of those stories that if you take at face value and try not to decode the lore then you'll be better off, and has a more concrete feel than something like the usual lore bait games.
The most important part in Sylvio's story is that it knows what it is. You go in for mystery and for the paranormal, and that's exactly what you get back.
The only critique that I absolutely do not agree with is Juliette's voice. I've heard some people say that it breaks the game for them, but if you're willing to cast aside a game for
voice acting... Then I'd say only about 5% of games on the market are playable, because I've seen too many games where the voice acting is laughable. Or, in contrast, games like Sonic Boom where the voice acting is fine and the gameplay is laughable.
Inside an shack, recording a voice.
Mini rant aside there, Sylvio isn't the best horror game out there, but it does well considering what it is. It's enjoyable, it gets some spooks, it has a decent length, and the EVP mechanic is really fresh. Sylvio is a good game for what it is and does well on those merits.
Sylvio 2 ignores what made Sylvio such a creatively interesting game and tries too hard to cling to the modern horror game. Its identity starts to slip, its gameplay takes a hitch, some things are replaced with lesser versions of themselves, and while some of the creepiness is there... The ending suddenly loses all credibility.
I'm spoiling the ending at the end of this, so this is your only warning. Part of me does recommend that you watch the game's playthrough- it's only about half the length of Sylvio- and witness it for yourself. It's bad, but it's also so colorfully nonsensical, so poorly planned, that you may want to watch the game- you must watch the full game to get the real impact of it- that it's worth experiencing.
Let's start our overview of Sylvio 2. I will leave out my thoughts on the prototype on everything except the metal detector, which I will get into later.
In Sylvio 2, Juliette travels from island to island and climbs down into this black, hardened substance that looks like hardened lava to find the houses underneath. There, she does EVPs to communicate with ghosts, trying to get coordinates to continue on her quest to find her boyfriend Jonathan and Captain Walter, whose been messaging her and whose boat she's using.
The EVP is still there and is still good enough. There are a few good scares in the game and some unnerving statements from ghosts. There was even a good 'Down the Hatch' moment: "That's not Ruth." There's also a video aspect as well that is sometimes used and occasionally works well, but seems massively underutilized.
The seances have been changed so that you come back repeatedly to question a ghost. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's padding. This is extremely obvious in the hotel level when many of the ghosts say variations of the same thing, dragging out the story in the wrong way. The stories of the people almost seem more cohesive, but some of them towards the end falter massively.
...Okay, I knew I said that I wouldn't address the prototype, but the fully fleshed out story section in the prototype is leveled to a footnote, but is shortened so much that it doesn't make much sense. If not for the prototype, I wouldn't have any idea what is supposed to be going on.
Also, the metal detector is used wonderfully in the demo. In the full game it's used once, in a house, and the animation is missing... In fact, a full functioning inventory is also missing in comparison to the first game. This isn't too problematic... But that's because Juliette no longer picks up items to solve puzzles with. That aspect of the game is also gone and, while not a big piece, it does make the game feel moderately more barren.
Sometimes in the game, you'll get hallucinations of a tunnel in these recordings. I won't address it just yet, but these tunnel visions are the best evidence that Sylvio's ending was changed.
So, back to the game. Instead of a car, you have a ship this time around, which allows you to move from island to island, but you can't control it once you take off. You can skip the moments of sailing, which I recommend, because there's no reason to be invested in watching the sea. The game never hides anything for you to sightsee on the way. There's other islands to stop at, but they're mostly for collecting keys.
The combat is gone and because of it, Sylvio feels unnaturally short compared to the first game. Even though you can call the combat padding, the combat was interesting enough and rewarded you with pieces of the story and collectables. The lack of it makes you feel like you're zipping through the game way too fast, because nothing breaks up the pace at all. This... Isn't really a good thing.
Juliette's voice is fine. That is not the reason to avoid this game.
All in all, Sylvio 2 feels shorter, feels rushed towards the end, and comes off as a less cohesive story. There isn't one over-arcing storyline... Or, at least, not an obvious one until the end. It doesn't really build to the game's ending, which is a trainwreck... So, let's get into it.
Juliette finally finds the lighthouse where she finds Walter and Jonathan's bodies. They point her to the lighthouse and she climbs it and gets out of the black rock again. This would've been a big revelation if not, you know, Juliette climbing out of the mass repeatedly in the game, meaning that this isn't much of a reveal.
Then she walks up on the answer to everything in the game. The truth surrounding all of this struggle.
(No, Juliette. It's an absolute nightmare.)
Aliens.
This game about ghosts and EVP ends with
aliens taking Juliette into
outer space to live on a colony with other humans. Revealing that Juliette's entire journey was to help free an
alien and give it coordinates to find her and take her into
outer space.
See, the Earth was cocooned when the balance of light and dark was shifted- a light leak as it were, and Juliette's been living on Earth for 175 years since the cocooning, and is the last living human. The alien, Celene, has come to take her away, to save the rest of the human species.
...Does this make
any sense? Short answer, no. It's like a bad leap in assumptions forced together to make an incomplete story sound finished. (Lore bait.) The game suggests that Juliette's actions in the first game caused the light leak, but it doesn't really make sense.
Why did the aliens cocoon the world to save the human race when cocooning killed many humans?
How was Juliette able to live 175 years sleeping? Even if the gas from the first game gave her a longer life, how did it keep her alive without food and water, without anyone finding her, without her body getting crushed, or suffocating, and without waking up? Why on Earth would aliens and ghosts be shoved together so clumsily?
Remember I said that I thought the ending was changed? Well, I have evidence of this. Throughout most of the game, Juliette gets these visions of a tunnel. Towards the end, when everything gets rushed and shortened, these tunnel images suddenly change to the image of a door. The door appears later, as does a short tunnel, but it just leads to what is technically a lever to activate progression.
I believe that the UFO ending came late into development. The tunnel, the blame from the ghosts, the inability to escape; it seems obvious that the original ending was going to have Juliette trapped in the 'tunnel'. I.E. the tunnel in the first game, the throat, which trapped the spirits in limbo. What I think happened is one of two things. Either he ran out of time and rushed together whatever ending he could, or he thought the ending was too predictable and changed it.
Either way, it's jarring, and not in a good way. It takes you out of the immersion of the game and drags you back onto Earth, where you just played through one of the worst Shyamalan twists in existence. It's just bad.
It's the twist in Dropsy, and yet that game pulled it off. The ending to the first game was somewhat confusing, but this- this thing deserves a medal. This is royally screwed.
Before you say, "And you can do better?"
Yes. Anyone can do better, but I'm going to do better
right now.
Sylvio 2: Rewritten Ending/Story
Prologue happens as before, except that Jonathan's coming first to wait for her. We're suddenly in Juliette's body as she's going through the apartments that are surrounded by rocks. Eventually, she leaves the apartments, but the world is dark and the sky is thick with clouds. She travels around the area going into other buried buildings.
It's unclear at the time what the black stuff is, but multiple ghosts mention a loud 'bang'. Some of the ghosts mercilessly blame Juliette for something she did, but she presses on to find Jonathan because she's been talking with Captain Walter.
Finally, she makes it to the the lighthouse where she finds Jonathan and Walter. She begs Jonathan for forgiveness, who says that there's nothing to be sorry for and that she must use the lighthouse to escape, and to never come back here. Juliette agrees and climbs the lighthouse, coming out above the 'clouds'.
Turns out, she's been underneath hardened lava the entire game. Her boyfriend came to the island and she was supposed to arrive on a second ferry. However, the volcano on the island erupted and covered the island in this quick hardening substance. (Maybe even mention that the unnatural practices on the island, referencing Sylvio 1, caused the nature on the island to run amuck.)
Those who didn't die instantly lived under the flows shortly, but then died soon afterwards. Juliette found a way underneath the cocoon and has been searching, hoping that Jonathan was still alive, and blaming herself for not being there when the volcano erupted.
In the end, Juliette steps out on the flows and brings out her radio, finally able to contact help to come get her. She now knows she must continue trying to help spirits to make up for what she's done, and the game ends on a hopeful note and a possible sequel.
I wrote that in about five minutes. It's not perfect, but it's cohesive. It may be a little more predictable, but it's logical. It isn't hard to give a game a twist, but I truly believe that you have to go out of your way to give a game like Sylvio 2 a twist this laughably bad.
In the end though, Sylvio's story is only one part of its issues. The fact that the game has been stripped down to bear minimum is also problematic. The original Sylvio was quirky, but it was this quirkiness that gave it enough character to stand out from the menagerie of horror games where a character walks around and learns stuff through short notes- or in this case, voices.
Sylvio 2 has lost all of that character. The graphics are updated, but look so much more bland. The muted color of the first game, which held a rust hue, now has been muted further, with a grey hue. The fleshed out nature of the ghosts is alright in the beginning, but starts to taper off later in the game, and the last section in the farm is a completely unfinished mess. Ironic, since it was basically finished in the prototype.
While there are some brief edits to explain aliens, the story structure suffers from that letdown ending. With the gameplay simplified to support the story alone, there's not much else to hold up the game, and virtually no replay-ability from what I can see at first glance.
What a shame! I was so excited to see Sylvio 2, especially after how much I loved the first game, but I feel like the sequel relied too heavily on what was easy and standard in current indie horror games. That caused it to plummet into something much more unfortunate; a stiff retread with a bad ending.
Before I go, it's time to rehash an old joke and refuse creativity. Just like this game did.
"Who are the Allens, and why are they out of spice?"
I swear if there's a 9 sequel and it ends with aliens, then I'm giving up on sanity forever.
