Preview | Crisol: Theater of Idols - The Blood of Fascism Runs Lukewarm
One of the most interesting courses I took during university was focused on the role horror movies play in a nation’s culture. The best horror movies, my professor argued, reflect the political anxieties of the moment. For example, last year’s Companion inelegantly but enjoyably touched on the dangers of artificial intelligence, the toxicity of male loneliness, and the increased misogyny coming from male incels. (Are there any other kind?) Some of my favourite films I watched during the course came from Spain which, under the three-and-a-half decade long reign of Franco, would purposefully allow movies critical of the fascist regime to be released internationally, as if to prove Franco wasn’t that controlling. The fact that these films rarely screened in Spanish cinemas wasn’t discussed.
I had never heard of Crisol: Theater of Idols, the upcoming horror game from Madrid-based Vermila Studios, before being asked to preview it. Being published by Blumhouse Games and receiving an Epic MegaGrant aren’t small feats, but until I sat on the couch with a PR rep at my side, I didn’t know what to expect. My cursory preliminary research highlighted the use of Spanish folklore, the “twisted” nature of the setting of Hispania, and the fact that it’s a first-person shooter. After my private demo, I found myself fixated on the one thing that no one else seemed to be talking about: the game is steeped in the shadow of fascism.
Over the past decade, the slow creep of fascism engulfing Europe and the United States has broken into a full-blown sprint. One need only look at the ICE Raids, executions, and flagrant constitutional disregard occurring right now in Minnesota. There is also the rise of the far-right throughout multiple European countries, the proliferation of anti-immigration sentiment across the continent, and governmental meddling in populist protest. Perhaps the event of most interest to Vermila Studios is the attempted secession of Catalan from Spain. After a successful vote to create their own independent republic, the Spanish government stormed Barcelona, dissolved their government, and set up a new one for “free, clean and legal” elections.
My introduction to the island of Tormentosa was filled with propaganda posters reminiscent of Francoist Spain. The preview, which starts at the second chapter of the game, was set within a factory that, regardless of its original intention, was retrofitted into making bombs to protect the workers within from the demonic forces of animated life-size porcelain dolls that have besieged the island. The hour-long demo contained no real hints at the larger story of the player character Gabriel being sent on a divine mission by the Sun God to help save Hispania, a “nightmarish reimagining of Spain” influenced by Spanish folklore and history.
It’s difficult to pinpoint what specific first-person horror games Vermila Studios is borrowing from, as the gameplay and presentation are pretty standard. The shooting, whether from a pistol, shotgun, or rifle, feels responsive if unremarkable. The most impressive part, genuinely, was that at no point during the demo did I experience motion sickness, a constant disability I face playing first-person titles or anything with too smooth a framerate. Enemies can be attacked piecemeal, meaning different limbs can be targeted to handicap a doll, but the damage seemed most effective when aimed at center mass. At close range, Gabriel can use his hunting knife to damage enemies, but the attack loses power with each hit until it’s about as effective as a plastic ninja sword. The PR rep informed me that the knife needs to be sharpened at a tool bench with the help of a canister of compressed air, which I never stumbled upon.
Blunting the player’s knife is an attempt by the developers to organically manage the difficulty of combat. Melee weapons in horror games present the player with a dangerous tradeoff: avoid wasting ammunition by letting enemies get close enough to potentially damage you. However, ammo isn’t limited in Crisol, at least not physically. Gabriel, I suppose via a gift from the Sun God, divinely turns his blood into bullets, often through impaling himself with some part of the weapon. Each gun takes a different amount of blood — the pistol steals two small bits from your health bar while the shotgun, which is far more powerful, takes a lot more.
As the most precious resource, health doesn’t automatically regenerate. I had to either use syringes, which can be found hidden throughout the levels in boxes and chests, or find a decaying corpse on the ground to slurp up its remaining life force. The blood ammo system makes the combat dynamic, as I wanted to balance killing enemies in my way without placing my health in dangerously low territory. Each missed shot feels like a waste, a gamble taken that my own skill couldn’t back. I quickly realised, however, that enemies were rarely confined to arenas, nor did they drop any buffs, trinkets, or anything to make them worth killing. So when I got confident enough, I simply ran past them.
The majority of my time playing the demo was spent mixing combat and stealth, as the invincible doll/terminator/demonic tall girl Dolores trapped me in a room and tried to kill Gabriel, seemingly for the second time. The arena was confined, spotted with open shipping containers in which to hide away from Dolores, and segmented by electrified pools of water that needed to be switched off. Dolores doesn’t quite one-shot Gabriel, but she takes out a good chunk of health if she grabs you with her Edward Scissorhands–ass hands. Finding the power boxes meant navigating an industrial maze, avoiding enemies and bombs. I progressed more with each death until I was running with abandon, slotting into the shipping containers to confuse Dolores until she went away with a simple “Where did you go?” bark. I turned off the final box, taunted Dolores, and escaped into the next room, ending the demo.
With an hour under my belt can I definitively say what commentary Vermila Studios is attempting? Not entirely. But can I recommend the game? I suppose. There’s an art to a demo, and with a completely different demo available on Steam that I hadn’t played, my press demo felt like it was missing context, thus not showing exactly what makes Crisol unique. The blood ammo aims to differentiate the title from standard FPS and horror fare, but in what I played, it mostly felt like a cool gimmick within a competently designed experience. For any socially-inspired horror commentary, I’ll just stick to watching Cria Cuervos or Pan’s Labyrinth. I mean, have you seen that dude’s eye-hands? They’re terrifying.
