Silt (Xbox Series) REVIEW – A Slight Treat
For a moment, imagine yourself as Aquaman. Although you can control many sea creatures and take no breaths, you are slow and vulnerable to being beaten by one leech. Silt sounds like a nightmare, but it’s actually quite exciting. You can control some parts of the ocean, but you still have to respect the unknown and be afraid of it.
Spiral circle Games has created Silt, a puzzle-based adventure game that lets you play as a single diver who is trying to escape his limbo at sea. He does this by acquiring a nearby carnivorous animal fish. The fish eats the chains that bind the diver to the bottom of the ocean and takes them on a journey to “reawaken the machine.”
Silt isn’t very thorough in explaining its plot. There are no text logs, audio logs or explanations available for Silt. You can learn more about Silt’s story by looking at the near-silent cutscenes and actions as well as achievements.
This may frustrate some players but it works well with Silt’s atmosphere. However, more examples of these storytelling techniques would be helpful. The story is as it is. It is difficult to understand and a bit confusing.
Silt’s world is set in the deep sea, with environments that range from oppressive and dark to grand and otherworldly. The emphasis on black and white makes it feel isolated and lost at different levels. It reminded me of Tim Burton’s classic style and Don’t Starve’s picture book-like quality. The stark contrast of colours adds to the mysterious and gloomy tone of the game. It also highlights important features within the environment.
For example, white objects and fish can be interacted with and be possessed by other objects. Coral, machines and other non-interactable objects, on the contrary, will be dark grey and black. But just because an object or fish can interact, doesn’t necessarily mean it is safe. There are a few enemies that could prove to be very difficult. Their white colour is more a sign that they can be destroyed using other means than an indication that their friendly.
Silt’s story is very simple and I was compelled to swim past giant worms, dodge leeches and continue swimming to see the fabled machine. To wake this machine up, the only way is to absorb four ancient monsters deep within the ocean caves the diver must navigate. Divers will need to avoid hazards and make the most of the local ecosystem in order to get through these caves.
Divers have the unique ability to control fish and other objects and interact with the environment. The Blockhead, a hammerhead shark-like creature, uses its hammer-shaped skull to break down weak walls and other organisms. You will also find piranha-like fish, which can chew through ropes and eat other creatures, electric eels, which can power up lights, stingrays, that can teleport (for whatever reason), crabs with tough bodies that can jump and break machinery, and puffballs that explode when touched like a navy mine.
The game has a good variety of possessions and takes about 4-6 hours to complete. However, I was disappointed with the ending because I felt there was so much more potential for developers to explore how these creatures could be used in gameplay. Spiral Circle Games had only begun to explore the potential of the possession mechanic in designing hazards and puzzles. What would happen if puzzles required more than three steps and required all of the creatures to solve them? There are many ways to expand on the mechanics of the game and find tricky solutions.
The gameplay elements in this compact package could use some improvement. There are also a few things that are not fun. The first is that the swimmer speed of both the diver and the creatures can sometimes be mind-numbingly slow after the tenth attempt at a section. Although there is an option to “sprint”, the base speed feels more like a sprint.
The majority of the puzzles require you to experiment with the order of your possessions and set up the environment for the answer. There are however a few puzzles that will require you to be quick, which may not be as easy as you thought.
The first is that the possession tendril sent out by the diver to complete a possession can be slow and not very precise when it comes to reaching a creature distantly. The creatures move constantly, which can make it difficult to solve some of the more challenging puzzles. These moments can be very frustrating.
