Sylvio is a lovely horror game with a great soundtrack and sound design, scratchy Silent Hill-style looks, and a palpable atmosphere largely dependent on those three things. You're a ghost hunter, and what that involves here is listening out for Electronic Voice Phenomena, analysing that phenomena with your handy tape recorder and notepad, and occasionally shooting detritus at giant balls of ghostly energy.
I mentioned the sequel a while back, which adds video recording into the mix, but I'm mentioning the original Sylvio today because it's just received an important update that transforms it into Sylvio Remastered. You already own it if you own the original, and it looks to be a comprehensive update that ports the game to Unity 5, while making it look nicer and adding better controller support in the process. "The graphics are now better, the GUI has been remade, the gameplay mechanic has been improved, and it now has full controller support for nearly all controllers on the market," creator Niklass Wanberg announces on Steam. Oh, and it's out now, on Steam and presumably at some point on the Humble Store.
Here's a trailer:
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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.