à la mode games and Akupara Games have joined the ranks of other game devs and publishers who are trying to recapture the essence of old-school survival horror games with their entry into the modern genre, Sorry We’re Closed.
Sorry We’re Closed follows Michelle, a woman who is struggling with a breakup with her girlfriend three years previously. One night while sleeping she’s visited by a demon that marked her with a third eye, now Michelle has to navigate both this and the demon world searching for answers.
Now, onto the game itself! Sorry We’re Closed‘s controls are simple to learn and thankfully they give you the option to either play it with old-school tank controls, or modern. The art of the game is a massive callback to the old PS1-style graphics and character designs which were awesome back in the day especially love how, just like then, the character art for characters is not how they look in the game itself, don’t know if this was intentional or not but that happened A LOT back in the day.
The soundtrack is good as it’s a lot like the old survival horror games where it was on a loop and heavily synthesized. The game could have used voice acting though as I’ll get to that in a bit.
Gameplay-wise, Sorry We’re Closed is interesting as you can go from third-person view to first-person, and you must fight in first-person view. You can use Michelle’s third-eye ability while in the Demon world to see how parts of that world look in the Human world and can help you explore and find secrets. The game features different endings based on choices you make as you play the game, especially during dialogue trees.
My major gripe with the game is it’s a bit boring for me, the lack of voice acting and long-winded text dialogue makes it a bit of a chore to play, in older games, text dialogue was short and sweet, kept the game moving but a lot of modern games seem to forget this and unfortunately, Sorry We’re Closed fell into that same trap too.
Overall, Sorry We’re Closed is OK. When the game finally picked up its interesting but a lot of the time it was a bit boring for a game that’s supposed to be survival horror. I’m not saying that no one will enjoy it, it just wasn’t for me. On my scale of 1-10, Sorry We’re Closed is a 5.5.
