Asylum Review

For any game in development longer than a decade, there’s always a question as to whether the interest and excitement can sustain such a long timeframe, especially for indie titles. So now that Asylum is out, 15 years since it was first announced (and 13 years since its Kickstarter), I’m wondering just how many people have been hanging onto hope over the years that the point-and-click horror adventure would see the light of day. A cursory glance online finds a lot of people who thought the game was dead and just another failed Kickstarter project. But somewhat surprisingly, not only did it survive the test of time, it’s come out the other side better than I thought it would.

Asylum sees a nameless protagonist return to the Hanwell Mental Institute, where he was a patient years ago, to try and uncover the truth behind his time there. This desire to return has been fueled by nightmares and visions that give him a glimpse of the memories he’s got locked away.

Our character returns on the assumption that the facility is abandoned, however, not only are there people inside, but we learn that there are plans to reopen the institute under new leadership. A quick chat with Hanwell’s receptionist, Julia, where we loosely explain our situation, ends with us having permission to explore the facility, but on the condition that we don’t go into the restricted areas upstairs. Rules are meant to be broken though.

The left behind wheelchair, a necessity for every abandoned mental asylum

Using a first-person perspective, Asylum feels like a mixture of point-and-click and walking simulator mechanics – it plays a lot like Cyan’s early adventure games Myst and Riven. With a 360-degree turning circle, players simply click on where they want to go and interact with the items in that area, should they choose to. Unlike most adventure games, rather than an inventory that you can choose items from, whenever a hotspot requires an item, you’ll need to cycle through the items in your hand and pick the one you want to use. It’s an odd design, but thankfully you’ll never have more than a handful of items at any given moment.

One of the first things you’ll notice is that with its somewhat modern yet dated visuals, Asylum looks like you’re playing a VHS movie. It’s a design choice that works well and one that helps capture the vibe that Senscape is going for here. It’s not the best looking game you’ll see, but it does a tremendous job in the atmosphere department. Asylum’s horror DNA stems from its perception of fear rather than being outright scary. Trekking through the halls and rooms of the decaying institute where patients were once tortured and put through horrifying treatments can be foreboding. Even hearing the screams of the current patients can be chilling, especially with the brooding soundtrack playing in the background.

During our character’s search for answers, he will spend a lot of time chatting with Hanwell’s new employees and even some of its patients to glean as much information as possible. This info will offer clues for your objectives, open up new dialogue options or provide insight into the history and future of the institute. These conversations are all fully voiced, with the vocal talent doing a commendable job given the mixed writing quality. It’s worth noting that although cutscenes and conversations are fully voiced, our character’s commentary when inspecting an item is given via text.

Would you like a bath?

As with any point-and-click adventure, there’s often a fair amount of backtracking involved, and it can be quite easy to get frustrated if you don’t know what you’re doing. This is probably Asylum’s biggest crime, as the Hanwell Mental Institute is a big place, and it can feel a little too big at times, backtracking is a drag when you have so many rooms and areas to visit trying to figure out what your next move is. To its credit, the design of the Hanwell Institute feels very authentic to the Kirkbride Plan (an architectural system it talks about a lot) and is well detailed, but the lack of meaningful interactivity results in the intrigue fizzling out quickly.

It should come as no surprise that Asylum makes the player’s noggin work hard at times, but for the most part it’s fairly straightforward. There is no hint system here though, so if you get stuck you’ll need to either read the notes in your journal or simply try every possible combination of items until it works. Puzzles themselves feel logical and part of the story, while others are simply door opening mechanisms, and the time spent on achieving the latter means that there’s little payoff.

After going through Asylum’s 10–12ish-hour campaign, I thought the narrative held up pretty well and helped carry the simple nature of the gameplay. There are a couple of neat twists, even if the main one is a little predictable. That doesn’t mean that all of your questions will be answered, in fact, I came away with plenty unanswered – I would have liked a bit more clarity on the final moments. But I guess that was Senscape’s plan – with enough ambiguity it creates a divisive discourse online.

Bruno, the security guard

Final Thoughts 

There are definitely moments that feel like you’re playing a game that could have come out 10 or more years ago, but the point-and-click genre is one that can accommodate such design choices if the narrative is good enough. In the end, Asylum’s narrative is solid with some great atmosphere that makes it a point-and-click adventure worth checking out if you like games with horror elements.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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