Edge of Sanity (PC)

Edge of Sanity is a 2d sidescrolling adventure game, set in a Bleak Alaskan landscape you’re trying to survive against some lovecraftian horrors. Developed by Vixa Games, and published by the folks at Daedalic Entertainment, Edge of Sanity is out on Xbox consoles, PlayStation Consoles, Switch and PC. Does Edge of Sanity has something good about it? Let’s have a play.

Set in the Alaskan wilderness in the 70’s, we play as Carter, our protagonist is a survivalist with links to the Prism company in an isolated winter research base, with some very weird goings on occur and Carter finds himself in a troubling situation, battling the severe weather, an uncommon threat and his own mental wellbeing, with each twist and turn Carter has to deal with multiple threats, and manage the survival of others. The game is a fully 2d adventure with an emphasis of exploring areas for integral survival supplies and making tough choices along your journey.

Upon starting your adventure you’re given the options between starting a new game or an Ironman run, so you can full send into a challenging adventure or ease yourself in.

After an initial tutorial explaining the basic story and the games mechanics, the game is separated into days, with each day having a few individual objectives. To get to the next story point you’ll be given some objectives, these will involve searching different locales such as mines, burial sites and other facilities to get the goods you need whilst trying to protect yourself from vicious foes which all look like disturbing versions of worms, people and bears amongst other lovecraftian evils.

Each main area to explore will give you a main task, this might involve rescuing an innocent civilian to help with your further adventure, if per se you manage to rescue these people, they’re dropped back to your camp and you have additional people to manage. This also ends your day, which after your first or second level you might not worry about, but rescue someone too quick and your day is over with a lack of precious supplies, these rescued allies will be relied on to scout future levels to see what items are available in a location, so scouting out what you need is paramount to your success.

After each level, you’re presented with a hub where you and your fellow survivors can create survival items like additional food, or water. Each character has their own needs, so will require feeding and making sure they have water, adding a good level of depth to this bleak adventure, managing whether someone can eat or drink adds a level of desperation as you try and get as much loot as you can to make sure everyone’s alright. Occasionally you can boost morale by giving people goods like coffee to help them feel a bit better or even letting them have some rest.

If Carter has a more troubling trip through one of these levels, you’ll be “given” some trauma, these act as debuffs in the game such as a lack of lootable items, or the opposite, some buffs for combat or other things too. Again some additional levels to give you another future headache in your journey, as you don’t want your character to lose his mind.

Sometimes the game will force you to go to new areas to add some narrative to the goings on, this is where you can converse with Frank, your Prism colleague amongst others to find out whats really going on. With only a few days to survive your adventure you can’t dally about some objectives will be time based so you’ll have to get to your objective or loot fast, you’ll need to make tough calls throughout.

You’ll need to have your wits about you whilst dealing with the games vicious enemies, where combat is especially challenging, weapons like rocks and knives can be found around the level, but each of these doesn’t have much use but you’ll get eventually some stronger firepower. This in earlier stages can be especially challenging as some areas will be inundated with lower level enemies but quantities can be a little too much.

Visually Edge of Sanity has a striking similarity to another bleak adventure in 2016’s roguelike strategy Darkest Dungeon. Edge has a similar cel shaded look to it, where everything has a thicker line to drawings but each model has a certain look to them, enemies look horrible but intense at the same time, with humanoid enemies with growths and each of these are animated well.

The audio is especially intense, with haunting atmospheric keyboards playing throughout, where 1982’s The Thing has pulsating dreary tones, Edge of Sanity has a more classic audio set up to the advenutre. Most of the game is voice acted too when necessary, with every main character having a lot to say with good performances all around.

As something for Halloween that’s a little different or just a unique adventure, Edge of Sanity finds itself in a good position, with lots of click baity First Person jump scares are still around, and a heavy emphasis on retro styled horror titles, we have ourselves a unique title which is bleak like some genre classics, but has enough going on in it to give players something a little more to chew on.