Post Trauma Review: Emotionally Damaged Survival Horror Game!?

Throughout the years, countless video games have explored trauma. We’ve seen humanity in its most desperate moments through The Last of Us series, a woman confronting her own inner battles head-on throughout the Hellblade games, and, in the horror genre specifically, the Silent Hill franchise—most notably the second game—doesn’t shy away from exploring the fragility of one’s mental state.

Post Trauma, coming to us from Red Soul Games and publisher Raw Fury, borrows elements from classic survival horror titles such as the original Resident Evil trilogy and mixes in many of the themes found throughout the Silent Hill games, such as grief, guilt, and redemption. Its shifting world, which leaves players questioning reality versus illusion, takes more inspiration from the latter, and yet its heavier focus on puzzle-solving will also have players jotting down notes and taking screenshots with their cellphones. But did Post Trauma leave me traumatized? Or will I maintain my composure without issue? Let’s find out in our full review.

Let me begin this review by saying there are things to like about Post Trauma. For one, its cinematography could make even Roger Deakins blush. The game’s fixed camera works to surprising effect as you explore familiar horror locations, such as medical facilities, abandoned police stations, and, naturally, unsettling school grounds. (Come on, you knew that one was coming.) It’s not a scary game in the traditional, “AHH I’m going to die!” sort of way, and yet my heart often skipped a beat upon entering new doorways and corridors, typically due to a strategically placed mannequin posed as if it were ready to spring to life and lunge towards me like a YouTube prankster. Post Trauma’s lighting is moody and atmospheric, the campy voice performances will conjure memories of, “Hope that’s not Chris’s blood!” and its puzzles are sometimes deceptively satisfying to solve…sometimes.

And yet, for its few triumphs, it is a game that too often undermines itself. For every well-designed puzzle, there are two generic ones. Its archaic combat stays true to the roots of the survival horror genre—but to a fault—and the game’s inventory system is overly simplified to the point of feeling nearly unnecessary. There are awkward first-person story sections that feel disengaging, a handful of clunky boss encounters that will leave you wanting to hurl your controller at the screen, the baffling absence of a map button, and a meandering second half that loses much of the creative spark that Post Trauma occasionally showcases.

Post Trauma features two difficulty options: normal, which is said to be the developer's intended difficulty, and a more challenging hard mode. After a terribly awkward and gruesome introduction, we awaken in an abandoned metro train and quickly take control of our lead character, Roman, who has no earthly clue how he ended up where he is. I’m not gonna say I haven’t woken up in some weird situations before, but none quite like this! From here, we begin to grasp the basic controls, with Roman having access to a flashlight for illuminating the game’s many dark corridors, and a very generic inventory system that can be pulled up at any time to equip weapons, heal with restoratives, or use key items to open doors and solve puzzles. 

Controls take a somewhat more modern approach as opposed to the tank controls made popular in Grim Fandango! Just kidding, while that game did indeed have tank controls, most of you watching probably remember them from the original Resident Evil, though us nerds out there, myself included, know that this classic control scheme was first popularized in Alone in the Dark! See, reviews don’t have to be boring; we can learn cool things along the way!

Roman can also dodge attacks, though not very well, swing weapons such as hammers at enemies, and, of course, aim down the barrel of a gun with the precision of a Call of Duty game and score epic headshots. Wait, you didn’t believe me there, did you? Of course, he’s terrible with guns—by design, I guess. The goal of Post Trauma is the same as any other retro survival game: to explore various environments, kill or avoid monsters, solve puzzles, gather items, manage resources, and ultimately, unravel the game’s narrative and reach your conclusion—or, um, conclusions—as the game does have multiple endings.

Where Post Trauma differentiates itself ever so slightly from its predecessors is with its heavy emphasis on working through brainteasers. Yes, games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill certainly had their fair share of conundrums to crack, but they also had tense enemy encounters that added an element of strategy to the exploration. Like, gee, I only have this many bullets—should I conserve them for a potentially tough boss? Or should I use my precious shotgun blast and spray that zombie’s head all over the place? Or how about Silent Hill, where it’s almost always better to run for your life, though sometimes there’s no choice but to fight!

In Post Trauma, enemies are about as common as a trophy Pikachu card. When you do encounter them, while they are visually frightening, they offer little in the way of actual threat. Most of these blundering beasts will go down with a few well-placed hammer swings before helplessly plummeting to the ground or, in some cases, die while still standing up, with Roman now able to walk directly through their defeated form. The real challenge will come from the intentionally clunky combat controls themselves, as players will haplessly swing their weapons about like they are fending off juggalos at an ICP concert. Want to use a gun? Good luck actually connecting on any of your shots—it’s often better to just swing, which is a real problem during the game’s painfully bad handful of boss encounters.

But let’s go back to Post Trauma’s puzzles, which, as I alluded to earlier, have a few moments of brilliance. While, yes, plenty of familiar tropes exist, such as, “Find the numbers scattered about the room and then enter them into the keypad,” there are also tricky patterns to remember, notes to physically scribble down, and even a few clever mazes to navigate. Moments of creativity such as these are when Post Trauma is at its best. The actual exploration, on the other hand, is a bit of a mixed bag. While interactable points are easy enough to spot, there’s no map button; rather, a map is sometimes posted on a random wall of whichever area you’re exploring. I have no idea why Roman couldn’t have simply scribbled down the map, giving players the option to pull it up at any time they wish, because, without it, you’re left bumbling about, and it ultimately felt like the game was wasting my time for no good reason.

The inventory system is also beyond rudimentary. There’s not much room for combining items in clever ways, as you’ll typically know exactly what goes where; it’s just a matter of making a mental map of each layout in your brain to retrace the steps and get to the correct location. There are safe rooms, which are a nice tribute to the genre, and they even include storage boxes, but it wasn’t all that often that I even found the storage units necessary to use.

But worse yet, the game doesn’t have an identity of its own. The story feels like an Aldi-brand version of insert whichever Silent Hill game here, with Roman going through mental anguish, a mysterious little girl eventually becoming involved, and a secondary character that we occasionally switch to that not only isn’t all that interesting but also comes with the game’s woeful first-person segments. These sections of the game are about as much fun as being on the receiving end of an atomic wedgie. Here, you’ll bump about the police station while trying to avoid a random monster that pulls you underwater, collecting items and clues. I get that the developer was perhaps trying to pay tribute to more modern survival horror games, but you have to wonder why these sections were put in at all, as they add nothing to the experience.

I touched on the excellent cinematography of Post Trauma earlier, but when viewed in totality, the game’s visuals are mostly quite good. The second half of the game features far more bland environments than the first, but the character models, creature designs, and lighting left me impressed—especially coming from a small indie developer. The animations outside of those aforementioned death scenes weren’t half bad, and the sound design is quite lovely, though I unfortunately did encounter a nasty bug where my volume was half-muted no matter what adjustments I made. I’ll hope that’s ironed out soon, as composer Nicolas Gasparini does his best Yamaoka impression, creating some truly chilling compositions that work effectively. The game also features notable voice actors from series such as Diablo IV and The Mortuary Assistant, and they deliver their lines as wooden and hollow as you would expect, though, by design…I think.

In terms of performance, I encountered a few framerate drops throughout my playthrough, though nothing that was ever game-breaking, and there were a small number of other odd quirks, such as Roman randomly deciding to stand on furniture, but for the most part, the game functioned. Hopefully, some patches will further address the minor performance issues and ultimately add an actual map feature, but otherwise, the game works.

While Post Trauma has its heart in the right place, its lack of a real identity holds it back, along with clunky combat, a middling inventory management system, and a general lack of polish. While it has a few really great puzzles, there’s also plenty of unoriginal offerings that make getting to the good bits of the game a chore. I really wanted to love this game; there were a few times where I was at least liking aspects of it, but those moments were all too few and far between. Post Trauma is a 10-hour-plus slog that only hardcore fans of classic survival horror should consider, assuming they’ve exhausted all other options.

MEDIOCRE