Over the last decade or so, the horror genre has been going through something of a renaissance thanks to the efforts of smaller-scale developers and indie studios. While the AAA market has decided to largely avoid the genre altogether aside from Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and more recently Alan Wake, the genre largely tends to see new releases from little known developers like Pulsatrix Studios, whose newest title – A.I.L.A. – does some interesting things with the horror genre, especially with its core premise.
A.I.L.A. has you take on the role of a game tester, Samuel, who works for the software development arm of “The Company”. As part of his job, Samuel has to regularly help with the QA testing for any new game that might be under development. His latest job, however, is an incredibly strange one. Samuel is sent a development kit for a new VR-based software – the titular A.I.L.A. – that he has to test out to make sure that it can then be shipped to customers at a larger scale. As you set up the development kit, you realize that A.I.L.A. isn’t just another piece of software or hardware to test, it’s a full-fledged game creation tool The Company can use to build personally tailored experiences for every individual player.
“Getting back to A.I.L.A. itself, plugging it into your test bench and booting it up also introduces you to the eponymous AI, who gives you the rundown behind what makes it tick.”
All of this takes place in the year 2038, with plenty of environmental storytelling implying that the game’s core setting is definitely a dystopian cyberpunk one. Samuel lives in a relatively large apartment that also happens to have several doors locked that he can’t get into. Along with this, there are also notices about him running behind on his bills, which locks him out of several important smart home-styled features. Interestingly, the apartment also didn’t seem to have any way to actually get out, though this might just be one of the mysteriously locked doors.
Getting back to A.I.L.A. itself, plugging it into your test bench and booting it up also introduces you to the eponymous AI, who gives you the rundown behind what makes it tick. Essentially, it will put Samuel through a number of different experiences, and with each one, it will learn more and more about our protagonist. Armed with this knowledge, A.I.L.A. will be capable of creating even more interesting and immersive experiences that are tailor-made for Samuel in particular. This premise already has excellent potential, and A.I.L.A. makes good use of its core conceit of examining the character of Samuel through the kinds of horror experiences he likes. It’s also interesting to note that, in the story, A.I.L.A. isn’t supposed to generate just horror experiences.
The opening level once where you get the A.I.L.A. development kit is the one that was presented in the title’s demo, and while it’s an excellent example of how the game in general is able to build up and release tension, it’s also something of a mixed bag. Dubbed the Impossible House, the level has you largely exploring just three rooms and a hallway. It even has a unique gimmick with a TV and a remote that allows you to change the state of the Impossible House House, which can further aid in exploration by unlocking and locking different doors. This creates an incredible first impression, and you’ll constantly be on the edge of your seat as you explore the different rooms in their various states.
“A.I.L.A. will be capable of creating even more interesting and immersive experiences that are tailor-made for Samuel in particular.”
However, this opening level also provides quite a few examples of my biggest gripes with A.I.L.A.. Among other things, there just isn’t much in the way of guidance for what you’re supposed to be doing. While it does add to the sense of surrealist horror that the title is sometimes aiming for, a lot of the puzzle solutions feel outright nonsensical. This especially comes to a head when you have to tediously go back and forth between a room and a hallway to find the exact corpse whose finger you need to cut off to then get access to an entirely new room that is otherwise locked with a fingerprint scanner. You’ll be collecting other similarly grotesque puzzle pieces along the way, including eyeballs, and other body parts.
Now, I’m not asking for objective markers that plainly point out the puzzle solutions for me. Rather, the fundamental puzzle design throughout the game feels deeply unintuitive. While other games would use item descriptions, and maybe even give you maps to help you navigate larger spaces, A.I.L.A., at best, gives you vague hints through things like hand-written notes on the wall using blood that you shouldn’t let a particular door close, for example.
While these puzzles might be hit or miss depending on how much you vibe with the more surrealist aspects of the game, the more action oriented levels where you’re constantly moving forwards and making progress feel a lot better in terms of pacing as well as gameplay. Speaking of general gameplay, A.I.L.A. doesn’t really do anything new but it gets the job done. You can obviously move around, crouch, interact with objects, and attack things with weapons. In this regard, there isn’t really much to complain about since the overall experience feels satisfying while the general scarcity of ammo will never really ease the tension you’re feeling.
“Speaking of general gameplay, A.I.L.A. doesn’t really do anything new but it gets the job done.”
It is worth noting that, while there are some elements of surreal horror every now and then, A.I.L.A. is quite content in making use of classic horror tropes, be it inducing the uncanny valley effect with the use of strategically-placed dolls and mannequins, or even just having you be on the run from a large axe-wielding man. As is often the case with horror, whether or not these tropes work depends entirely on your tastes in the genre; I personally found it to be hit or miss, with some of the jump scares working quite well, but the use of things like mannequins often feeling overwrought.
Gore is also a major thing throughout the title; even the prologue kicks things off with the protagonist’s palm getting split in two thanks to an axe attack. I would even go as far as to say that A.I.L.A. might have an over reliance on gore, with things often veering into torture territory thanks to scenes like having to pick out glass shards from your feet or needing to chop off your own fingers. Enemies that you get to fight in various levels also have the tendency to die in rather gory ways, from having their limbs sliced off to straight up exploding depending on your weapon of choice.
While the experiences A.I.L.A. creates for Samuel are interesting, the game feels at its strongest and most coherent in the moments between them. Samuel feels like a far more interesting character to explore, and his conversations with the AI shed a great deal of light on who he is. Unfortunately, the narrative doesn’t really go far beyond that, and each of the levels tends to be its own self-contained thing that might have some hints about Samuel’s personality and his past.
“While the experiences A.I.L.A. creates for Samuel are interesting, the game feels at its strongest and most coherent in the moments between them.”
When it comes to visuals, A.I.L.A. is quite an impressive sight. The use of modern tools like Lumen and MetaHuman becomes immediately apparent the moment you start walking around the apartment. Even smaller details are quite easy to spot thanks to the overall high visual fidelity. The performance was also quite decent; I was able to run the title on the High preset with an average frame rate of around 110 FPS on a PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, and 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM. On the audio side of things, there isn’t really much noteworthy to say; the sound effects and atmospheric sounds all sound satisfying, but nothing too interesting or new for the horror genre.
A.I.L.A.’s interesting premise does wonders when it comes to creating a strong first impression. However, spending even a couple of hours with the horror title makes its flaws seem more and more obvious. Most of the levels, while quite interesting in their own right, tend to feel quite incongruous with the larger narrative at play owing to how self contained they tend to feel when compared to the overarching plot about Samuel’s state of mind and the gradual breakdown of the A.I.L.A itself. And when it comes to gameplay, the action feels just fine while the puzzles feel downright nonsensical at the best of times. The general lack of guidance throughout levels are also indicative of issues with accessibility, especially in the more puzzle-heavy zones. With all that said, A.I.L.A. is undeniably a phenomenal-looking game, but ultimately, it feels like it holds far more potential than what its full horror experience actually delivers.
This game was reviewed on PC.
