Silt Review: a grayscale journey halfway between Abzù and Limbo

Silt is a 2D adventure inspired by two gems from the past. From the puzzle-platform Limbo – here our review of Limbo – takes up the very structure of the playful experience, while Matt Nava’s Abzu looks for the underwater setting. Anyway, let’s talk about the first title of Spiral Circus Games, a studio founded in 2018 in the UK. The passion for everything eccentric has brought together four people in what is a small but ambitious collective, which has given life to a truly peculiar experience, as we are about to tell you.

Awakening

In the void and darkness of the opening, we are greeted – in order – by a long roar, a hopeful arpeggio, the sound of the waves and someone’s apparent breathing. Growing cryptic, mechanical sounds follow, shrouded in a haze of white noise and followed by a crackle: once again, inhale, and exhale.

A glow reveals chains and structures of a lost time, welcomes us in the restlessness of some verse: “the giants wander in the remote depths, under the foam and the black waves. Deprive their eyes, leave them empty, that is the seat of their power. A machine has been waiting for unknown times, wakes it from sleep and becomes an executioner“. Inhale, and exhale: here is the light, it is perhaps time to let ourselves go, to wake up.

Silt immediately presents itself between vibrations and rumbles with a surreal mantra from which it is impossible to detach, where curiosity and fear grow parallel as we are thrown into an unknown place. In the depths of the sea, among countless algae that appear to be veins and capillaries, a diver wakes up chained: who trapped us? Where we are?

In search of answers we can only do one thing: possess the only creature close to us, what looks like the cross between a piranha and a lantern fish. Our soul leaves the human shell and enters the small animal but it will be enough to receive a bite to stop the possession. This is how our journey begins. Gliding over some initial advice, Silt picks up on the absence of frills and interfaces from the Danish pearl of Playdead, because he wants to make sure he fully sink the player into its dark depths. It also proposes a progression characterized by a constant increase in the level of challenge, which calls to discover varied environments and to meet more or less docile creatures: after the piranha that saves us from the imprisonment of the unknown in fact we know a tiny fish capable of passing through small holeswhose use must be interspersed with that of the devourer to access the subsequent zones.

The further we proceed, the more Silt shows us what an ecosystem is described in every detail, in an exploration accompanied by his diving suit and by those, more graceful, related to solving the puzzles. In the mystical scenario completely hand-drawn by Tom Mead we are perhaps the darkest and most undiscovered entity. Owning more and more inhabitants of the seas, including the imposing hammerhead fish ready to remove glassy and rocky obstacles, we will begin to ask ourselves no longer who we are but what we are.

From the very first minutes of the game, the two key factors that characterize Silt are framed: the extraordinary quality of the designs and the importance of the combination between them and the sound. Stopping to analyze the backdrops is imperative in order to appreciate the minutiae of the artistic direction but above all to remain entranced. in front of huge and mysterious machinery. The title of Spiral Circus Games invites us to let ourselves be possessed exactly as we possess other creatures, in a process that consists of two acts: inhaling and exhaling.

Natural selection

The playful essence remains basic and easy to understand: with the press of a few buttons we will be able to move freely, guiding the human in unknown places, turn on the torch of our helmet and to possess when appropriate other creatures, which conveniently reveal themselves in the vicinity of the enigmas to be solved. Entered in increasing difficulty, puzzles never seemed trivial to us and indeed they even offer the possibility to opt for different solutions, between the more complex ones and those considered “standard” by the developers. In all this there will be more shocking moments where we will be taken by surprise by monstrous beings ready to devour us in one gulp: sometimes Silt will give life to chases that can be overcome without difficulty but which will not fail to keep us on our toes thanks to the skilful mix of sounds. and settings.

Furthermore, on some occasions these sections have surprised us, calling us to sharpen our wits when necessary. Accompanying the absence of light in the depths we will find the awareness of not being able to control all creatures and we will realize that we are only a link in a wider food chain. In fact, we will have to deal with beings much larger than us, which at the slightest inattention will devour us, as well as take control of a fish to devour its defenseless fellow. The theme of natural selection in short, it didn’t take long to reveal itself and proved to be one of the cornerstones of the experience. Spiral Circus Games has exploited this concept to weave the plot of the game, not failing to raise a multitude of questions left – deliberately – unanswered.

The big car

When we get the better of the titans, we will have to absorb the soul, and then – due to a supernatural distortion – find ourselves in an environment never seen before. In a riot of confusion and floating contraptions, we will no longer even hear the protagonist’s breath for a moment, only to regain consciousness to make a discovery: the creatures we face are nothing compared to the great machine, at the center of the events narrated. Fearful we go inside and it is here that Silt really managed to surprise us, in ways that we do not want to reveal to you.

In any case, we reiterate the great effectiveness of the sound and, net of the animations of specific creatures, we can only praise what the game of Spiral Circus Games has shown us on the screen, thanks to the continuous alternation of majestic sceneries rich in history. Understanding where Silt wants to go on the narrative front is not easy initially and it is a pity that the extent of the adventure has proved rather limited.

Our journey, which also culminated in a satisfying ending, lasted about three hours and we believe that with a few more tens of minutes available, the developers could have deepened a series of important elements of the plot. That said, it is clear that the essentiality of the experience is a virtue in its own way, just as it was for Limbo.