SILENT BREATH

Silent Breath is a uniquely terrifying horror experience that will have you watching your volume levels like never before. In this first-person survival game, you find yourself lost in a mysterious forest with the goal of locating missing people - but making any noise can summon deadly threats.

Tired of those loud Twitch streamers screaming for engagement? The developers behind Silent Breath are, too. One scream and it's back to square one. What sets Silent Breath apart is its innovative use of microphone detection to induce genuine fright. Any sounds you make in the real world, from screams to whispers, will be picked up by the game and can trigger new terrors waiting in the shadows.

Staying silent becomes a gripping psychological challenge as the tension mounts. For pure visceral horror, few games can match the adrenaline rush of narrowly avoiding a jumpscare by clamping your mouth shut at the last second.

A Forest That Bites Back

The forest environment of Silent Breath is as much a character as the player or the threats stalking you. Lovingly rendered with photorealistic detail, the woods feel truly alive and ominous, with underlying malice guiding every tree branch and shadow. The VHS-style filter gives the visuals an eerie, grainy aesthetic reminiscent of found footage horror classics.

Even more unsettling is how the forest seems to be actively hunting you through dynamically generated scares and threats. Every playthrough becomes a unique nightmare as scares, missing person locations, and enemy AI behaviors are fully randomized. You'll quickly learn that no area is truly "safe" when the entire forest is designed to prey on your fears in unexpected ways.

If I'd have to classify Silent Breath, it's a combination of Slender: The Arrival and Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion. Most of the game will have you on a fetch quest around the forest, while the randomized monsters sometimes feel alien to the game's overall artistic direction.

Voices in the Dark

While exploring the forest at night, you'll need to watch your back at all times – because the threats in Silent Breath don't just pop out for cheap jumpscares. They stalk you through the shadows, from the mysterious "Sisters of the Forest" to other unidentified horrors closing in from behind.

The sound design keeps you consistently on edge, every crunch of leaves or twig snap making you spin around in a cold sweat. Like the found footage films that inspired it, Silent Scream leaves much of the lore and backstory up to interpretation through cryptic clues.

That said, Silent Breath is definitely not the type of game you play for its lore. The storytelling here is kept to a bare minimum – mostly set dressing for the viral gameplay.

VHS Visuals

The visual department in Silent Breath was a bit of a mixed bag for me. On one hand, it's clear that Unreal Engine 5 is this close to photorealism, but only in the hands of a dedicated art department.

Silent Breath, unfortunately, aims more for a cheap, post-processed solution that makes good on the surface level. Once you begin noticing how low-res most of the textures are – and how the game uses flat backgrounds most of the time – the illusion of realism is promptly shattered.

At least, the creatures' designs are cool. Fans of The Forest and Sons of the Forest will recognize more than one monster in Silent Breath, as the game seems to draw inspiration from those iconic designs.

Pros

• Innovative microphone detection mechanic
• Dynamic, randomized scares and threats
• Gorgeous Unreal Engine 5 graphics (in some places)

Cons

• Some performance/optimization issues
• Lack of gameplay variety beyond survival