Downhill Preview

Independent games offer plenty of freedom to express and explore ideas, something that Sisterhood Games took in their stride while developing their debut title DOWNHILL, a fourth-wall-breaking action RPG which hopes to raise funding through Kickstarter this year.

Taking on the role of the player themselves in a uniquely meta manner, you explore a world where night and day have been separated to hold back hordes of otherworldly creatures who now appear to invade the Dayworld. The story beats in the game are, on the surface at least, fairly simple to follow and offer an uncomplicated good-versus-evil tale, but your presence in the story complicates things.

Rather than taking on the role of a main character, you instead form a pact with Fade, a person who already exists within the story with their own life and motivations, a factor which plays heavily into the morality system DOWNHILL employs.

Up until this point, everything the player has witnessed of Fade has been entirely autonomous – all of their actions and dialogue choices had been cutscene led – making the switch to gameplay more poignant as Fade becomes aware of your existence and allows you to take control in a satisfying blend of combat, puzzle solving and seamlessly delivered narrative beats centring around your decisions.

To say your decisions hold weight severely undersells the main draw of the game, in which your actions not only have consequences for the world around you but also for your relationship with Fade. Loading from a previous save is an entirely reasonable course of action, especially with save points littered throughout the world; however, if you wanted to save time and energy, you could also resurrect from the game over screen without punishment – though Fade may not be too happy with constant, agonising deaths weighing them down.

Visually, the game leans into a pixel art style that perfectly encapsulates both the fast-paced moments and the sinister undertones its story sets out, almost reminiscent of titles such as the 2019 survival horror Yuppie Psycho or the chilling puzzle-platformer Inmost, albeit with significantly less reliance on vignettes to make the world appear darker than it is. Despite these comparisons, it’s important to note that horror is a footnote to the action and narrative that make up the core focus of the game.

Over the course of the 30-minute preview, players can explore a microcosm of the moral choices, abilities and puzzles present throughout the whole game; sadly, there isn’t enough time to explore how your decisions impact the wider world, such as whether you kill or spare creatures, but there’s no doubt about how the game will delve into player morality and the way in which we choose to act when the player is judged on their actions.

Outside of the unique storytelling, combat and movement play a pivotal part in your course throughout the game; three main abilities present themselves in this preview in the form of a basic attack combo, an invincibility dash known as ‘Blink’, and the reality-shifting ‘Nightwalk’, the latter of which allows you to traverse an alternate dimension where time is suspended and the environment changes.

Nightwalking in particular offers a new way to approach combat, allowing you to make additional strikes at the risk of harming yourself if you stay too long in the Nightworld; these reality-shifting powers are not new, with ‘Effect and Cause’ in Titanfall 2 and ‘A Crack in the Slab’ from Dishonored 2 proving to be prime examples of how switching between different versions of an environment can be utilised, but DOWNHILL approaches this concept in a way previously unexplored by applying imposed limitations, meaning your time is restricted, your health is at risk and a cooldown prevents you from abusing the mechanic. At a glance it may appear that using Nightwalking in combat is tacked on or simply an accessory to the action so players are incentivised to use the ability more, but the lack of any significant enemy staggering and a fairly slippery combat system mean a quick trip to the Nightworld can prove invaluable against larger, faster and stronger enemies.

DOWNHILL doesn’t just excel in its visual and mechanical prowess but also in how the world is framed. A somber, haunting soundtrack helps to build up the more atmospheric aspects of the game but does well to avoid drowning out the crunchy combat and audio effects that keep the world alive. The game doesn’t lean constantly into a dark tone, allowing for moments of light humour to break through the cracks – a testament to the incredible writing that this preview shows in all its glory, making each character (including Fade and the player) feel unique and well fleshed out.

Despite a well-realised world, DOWNHILL is not without its faults; as a title in early development, there are still some noticeable bugs that present themselves in play; throughout my short time with the game, I dashed through objects with the Blink ability and into parts of the level architecture that I was never meant to reach: stuck between rocks, inside a table and, in one instance, directly outside the level itself.

When not glitching out of bounds, I also found certain trigger points for dialogue activating at inopportune times, out of sequence or too close together – towards the end of the demo you are given a large, empty stretch to run through while Fade delivers a monologue about the world itself and the significance of the sunflowers at the side of the road, but if running through this section, the text boxes quickly overlap and cut each other out.

Early build complaints aside, the only part that feels unsatisfactory at times is the combat – despite its fast pace and slippery nature requiring you to utilise the Nightwalk mechanic effectively, it doesn’t stand up on its own and can be daunting at times, especially when overrun. Large rooms and multi-stage encounters do little to alleviate this and even during the preview’s main boss battle, it is fairly apparent that measured strikes and careful use of Blink can’t evade or avoid damage in the face of a giant speeding ball of hatred (an apt description of one of the boss’s main abilities).

There’s nothing the developers of DOWNHILL can do to make me dislike the game they have built so far. Aside from its visually stunning world and nuanced writing, every facet of the game comes together brilliantly despite its few technical flaws, all of which will no doubt see improvement as the complete experience is crafted and balanced over time.

DOWNHILL shows promise; the outline of a strong game with impressive characterisation and a stunning art style is incredibly clear, if not hampered by some teething issues within the game itself. A round of bug fixes and some improvements to the combat could easily help this game stand out as one of the most hotly anticipated indie games of the coming years.

You can back the development of DOWNHILL on their Kickstarter

Check out the demo on Steam