Your Blood is the Ultimate Ammo in Crisol: Theater of Idols

Your Blood is the Best Weapon

The very first thing that sticks out when playing is the ammunition system; in order to replace the clip in your gun of choice, you must extract a helping of your own blood from your body, removing a portion of your current health. This simple, but effective, mechanic turns up the intensity of the survival-horror mechanics, forcing you to choose between your own safety and the ability to take down the monsters chasing after you.

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To refill your health, your character has the ability to extract blood from living (or recently deceased) creatures and use it as their own, resulting in an animal-shaped pile of gore left behind. The rare chicken or dead horse almost always comes in handy, as you’ll constantly be fighting the terrifying walking mannequins, which hit hard and require multiple limb removals to put down completely.

Exploring rewards extra currency, health syringes and other loot that help progress through the level. An advertisement for a special double-barreled shotgun leads you into a gun store, where the new weapon sits behind a locked, heavily decorated glass case. Once the key is found later in the level, you can head back to the shop and unlock a powerful new item that eliminates enemies in a single close-up shot.

A Horrifically Twisted Take on the Streets of Spain

The level explores the narrow, twisting city streets of steampunk Spain, full of early-20th century advertisements and wagons full of wild brass technology blocking pathways. The tone of the gameplay shifts heavily when you find a way to progress as a gigantic, bipedal brass machine bursts out, intent on killing you while speaking in haunting and creepy voice lines. The vibe goes from creepy horror-shooter to terrifying survival-horror in an instant.

The teams at Blumhouse Games and Vermila Studios are clearly committed to finding their own unique take on the horror-shooter genre, infusing new mechanics and ideas that pair perfectly with the genre’s staples into their own unique perspective as Spanish developers. It’ll be exciting to see how far the game has come (and what other surprises are in store) when Crisol: Theater of Idols releases later this year.

Crisol: Theater of Idols

Developer(s)

Vermila Studios

Publisher(s)

Blumhouse Games

Number of Players

Single-player

Steam Deck Compatibility

Unknown

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