Empty Shell (Switch)

Geoffrey Wright | March 27, 2024 | Review | No Comments

Empty Shell has been available since last year on some other platforms, with a Switch version seeing a release earlier in the month. Offering what looks to be a tense & bleak top-down survival roguelike, is it interesting enough to head into the abandoned research facility yourself? Lets find out

A secret research facility on a remote Japanese island has been abandoned for decades. You play as a volunteer, fresh off signing a recovery contract, who will be heading into the supposed deserted facility. With no information provided beforehand, its up to you and the other volunteers to uncover the dark secrets and consequences of the research that took place here.

While there’s not really any cinematics or the like to fill you in with proceedings as you go, there’s plenty of logs and material to find on your journey to fill in the blanks. These mainly come from researchers or previous volunteers that have fallen, sometimes containing tips and codes to stored loot as well, It’ll take some time to get all the info on the research facility, death can come at any time and the longest I’ve managed is a couple of hours before having to start again. This might be one you’ll wanna keep around for a run here & there.

From the story and setup you can pretty much get a good idea of how the game will be presenting itself, dark & bleak. There’s a lo-fi look to everything and pretty much no colour to proceedings as you’ll be squinting against the grainy blackness hoping to catch a glimpse of something moving as your torch sweeps the area. The foes come in all shapes and sizes, and are generally detailed enough to pick out what it is with a quick glance within your torchlight. Objectives and key items can stand out from the rest of the setup too, something needed as the secret facility environment can seem a little samey and maze like at times.

Luckily the audio doesn’t try and do anything fancy, its muted and more atmospheric orientated setup lends itself well to the bleak outlook of the visuals. Performance is also really good, even when the screen fills with enemies during a larger ambush, as it didn’t seem to noticeably struggle to keep up. Having switched (giggidy) to a Lite, I can no longer checked docked to see if there’s an issue, but in portable play UI scaling seemed off – think Dead Rising via a CRT on 360 back in the day. Text is almost unreadable in logs as some letters can meld into others, your brain will fill in blanks sure but it can affect your intake of the interesting backdrop to the game.

Primarily a hard-hitting roguelike, the game also packs in the inventory management and overall tension to rival a survival horror. Played from the top-down perspective, progress is always slow as vision is limited and danger lurks everywhere. Death is only the beginning, so if you go down then a new volunteer is generated and randomly equipped for you to start over with. You may luck out and get some killer equipment to breeze back to a similar standing as before – you can never really go back due to the procedural nature of the levels. Don’t sleep on melee though, it can really help and will get you through those times with inventory mismanagement or a lack of ammo. Inventory space is scarce (can be upgraded) so just keeping some essentials, a weapon or two, and some bullets is all you need to manage – the rest of the space keep free for the unknowns ahead. You’ll be stuck if the objective is more than just a switch unless you stop hoarding and free up inventory space.

While looking for these objectives to complete the stage and moving on, you’ll also have plenty of opportunities to search lockers, crates etc for extra supplies. The cash picked up from fallen enemies can be used to upgrade your characters & equipment, so long as you’ve explored enough to find the stations. Exploration is key to survival oddly enough but it is also your downfall. Enemies can ambush you easily, they even sometimes meld into the background due to the visual style, or hide just out of sight (the auto camera is generally fine otherwise) Once the action starts to heat up and enemies swarm in, you’ll also have to contend with the joycons, but as long as you are prepared then you should be able to survive unscathed enough. The good side of the Switch trade-off is in the portable factor and the sleep mode. I had a run going over a few days and could jump in & out at any time on the go, on a single charge too.

Empty Shell is an interesting mix of tense dual-stick action and survival horror tension, wrapped in a bleak visual style and an interesting setting. The only real downsides, which can effect folk differently, came down to Switch quirks. UI and general word scaling on the Lite was pretty bad to the point it got in the way at times, and as always the joycon sticks can struggle to keep up with the more intense encounters. If these Switch quirks are fine to you then there really is an interesting game here that has some benefits to the port too, but for everyone else (or if you have a PC handheld) then you will probably be better served with one of the other versions.

UPDATE (30/03/24): A couple of days after this review was posted a patch for the Switch port was issued that seems to have fixed the text & UI issue. Everything is clearer and much easier to read, and while we don’t change reviews once posted, we can at least add these updates within a certain timeframe. If interested in the Switch port you could probably add another star to the rating given my biggest pet peeve with it been fixed.