A horror experience shared is a horror experience doubled, or so the saying goes. While playing a horror game alongside a pal may seem like it’ll detract from the solitude of your suffering, having someone in there who’s just as jumpy as you can in fact amplify it, filling the room with a giddy air of the heebie-jeebies.
Besides, many of the greatest slasher movies have a bunch of hapless heroes for the monster to tear through, and Sanguivore: Twenty Below, the new four-player co-op horror game from Forthright Entertainment and Blood Eater Games, taps into that classic horror trope. Stalked by a mysterious creature known as the Sanguivore, you and your friends need to figure out an escape plan from a remote location before the creature comes scurrying for its fleshy feast.
There are four distinct areas in the town where Sanguivore is set—from a snowed-in home to a Sheriff's Department—each with four escape routes for you to try and figure out. You and your friends may need to ‘split up and look for clues’ (yep, that perpetual ‘terrible idea’ in horror movies) as one person scavenges for supplies and makeshift tools to ward off the threats, while others attempt to solve the tricky puzzles, all while dealing with ghoulish visions and the all-too-real threat of the Sanguivore.
It’s a game of intense cooperation (though the foolhardy can try to go it alone), and you’ll feel the hairs on your spine tingling as you go about painstaking tasks like unblocking the fire sprinklers or trying to get the car started. Every now and then you’ll hear the distant anguished screams of a person being pulled through a window or being pulled under a raised house into the creature's den, which means you have one less ally to work with, and you’re one step closer to a grisly end yourself.
The whole internet is in a blood frenzy for co-op horror games right now, but Sanguivore opts for more of an ‘Escape Room meets Escape Town’ feel than other games in the space. These puzzles are challenging, and trying to think straight while death looms ever closer is a big part of the fun here.
Each level gets progressively bigger and harder, scaling up from a single room to a whole town. Thankfully, you’ll be scaling up too, not just through your own experience, but through a progression system whereby you gain experience and ‘shards’ with which to unlock new skills, perks, and skins (not useful, we know, but there’s no harm in looking good!) for your survivor.
With multiple solutions each time, myriad escape routes, and a degree of randomisation in the tools and weapons scattered around the place, Sanguivore has tons of replayability, and is ready to feed on you for the long run. Sanguivore: Twenty Below has just come to Steam Early Access, with a 20% discount if you purchase it in Week 1 of release. The game’s first map is set in Alaska, where a vampiric presence lurks. As the game moves towards full release however, expect to see new maps and monsters introduced into the fray, as well as bold new features like a PvP mode.
