Featured Image Credit: Veilbreak Studio
Topics: Resident Evil, Indie Games, PC, Free Games, Steam
This brand new free demo on Steam should be a good one for Resident Evil fans to check out.
The Hour: Echoes of the Crescent is a new upcoming horror game and debut title from Veilbreak Studio, perfect for Resident Evil or Silent Hill players.
With no release date for the full game available yet, the developer has launched a demo on Steam for those who want to get an early peek at the game’s opening.
The demo for The Hour: Echoes of the Crescent functions as an opening prologue, which is called “The Awakening” and is a standalone chapter which lays the groundwork for the story ahead, with its events rippling outward into the main game.
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The demo concerns the disappearance of a character named Leia Burgess, who has been cut off from anything familiar and must find answers using the world around her as a guide.
Meanwhile, the blurb on the full game version of The Hour: Echoes of the Crescent reads:
“Players step into shoes of Alex Turner, an aspiring paranormal investigator eager to prove himself. When Alex receives an unexpected invitation from the Hotel Manager of the enigmatic Meridian Hotel, he seizes the opportunity to embark on his first major case.
“The Meridian, notorious for its dark history of unethical experiments and recent mysterious disappearances, has been temporarily closed to guests, with only minimal staff remaining.
“Alex soon finds out that The Meridian Hotel hides more than just ghosts. Follow Alex on his adventure as an amateur paranormal investigator as he stumbles into a web of secrets, puzzles, and hauntings that will test his courage and unravel a mystery close to his heart.”
Played from a first-person view, the aforementioned Meridian Hotel features lots of environmental storytelling and visual cues to introduce its horror themes, where you must pay close attention to the game’s sounds and sights to piece together the story and discover fragments of the hotel’s past.
Similar to horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, the game also features various puzzles for you to complete while in the hotel. Described as “deliberate, environmental challenges”, these puzzles are inspired by the building’s architecture and history.
You’ll need to realign mechanisms, decipher coded notes, discover and solve hidden rooms, restore power systems, and navigate maze-like layouts if you want to make it through the hotel unscathed.
According to Veilbreak, each puzzle solution “feels earned and rooted in narrative logic rather than abstraction,” which should mean you’re rewarded for smart thinking when it comes to solving them.
The Hour: Echoes of the Crescent doesn’t have a release date yet, but you can wishlist the game and check out its demo by heading over to the Steam store page.