The first official Horror Fuel game review of 2024! Let’s check out Casper Croes and Top Hat Studios’ love letter to late 90’s survival horror games, this is Alisa: Developer’s Cut.
Alisa: Developer’s Cut takes players into a maddening world where Alisa, a royal agent in the 1920s is hunting a notorious thief and ends up in a strange Victorian-like mansion where mechanical oddities lurk and Alisa must try to escape and keep her mind intact.
The Controls for Alisa: Developer’s Cut by default are the old-school “tank controls” which, I have not used in a long time, but thankfully, you can switch the controls to “modern”. The graphics for Alisa: Developer’s Cut are nostalgic with pre-rendered backgrounds and low poly character models. The soundtrack for the game really hits deep inside with callbacks to the very first Resident Evil along with the horrible voice acting, which at first I thought was bad for this game till I remembered how terrible the voiceovers were.
The game captures the feel of 90’s survival horror mechanics with puzzles, fixed camera angles, and awkward weapon aiming. Players earn “tooth wheels” (cogs) after defeating enemies which then can be used to buy supplies, new weapons, and outfits from a hand puppet merchant and a large humanoid dresser that will hang onto weapons and outfits you wish the change out of.
Overall, I’ve found Alisa: Developer’s Cut surprisingly fun as well as challenging as it reminds old-school horror gamers how easy we have it now and shows newer players what made these games hell but fun for us. The soundtrack, the cheesy voiceovers, the gameplay, and keeping true to the essence of late 90s survival horror games, On my scale of 1-10 Alisa: Developer’s Cut is an 8.5!
Alisa: Developer’s Cut is available now for PlayStations 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.
