Sylvio Critic Reviews

Sylvio succeeds at every single thing it wants to do. Games don’t do this kind of hermetic horror often, and Sylvio makes zero concessions. The car, the gun, the reel-to-reel, the black blobs: they’re all secondary to Juliette Waters and her journey through the abyss.

Sylvio is very good at one thing: getting under your skin with a fascinating story and the constant threat of fear as sound is a mechanic in this game. Unfortunately other elements distract you in this experience and the game misses finishing touches, which is a pity for a game that finally tries something new in the horror genre.

Quotation forthcoming.

Hardcore horror fans will appreciate it, as presumably they’re used to tolerating subpar gameplay and sub-subpar production values, but casual players would be better off sticking with the more venerable titles it draws influence from.

I would totally play a game that is just the audio processing from this game. Everything else is a tedious glitchy mess.

I almost walked away during the opening moments, when Sylvio seems like yet another cobbled together mess of repetitive graphical assets. I figured I’d play until the first jump scare and then quit. Instead, I found a game that uses its limited resources to find clever ways to scare the life out of me. It’s a quiet horror game – an anti-screamer, right down to the calm almost-whispers of the protagonist – and it’s a triumph.