Surrounded

Gather your friends and prepare for one of the most intense paranormal hunts in the history of gaming with Surrounded. This co-op multiplayer horror game will put your and your friends’ wits, as you tackle some seriously unsettling paranormal mysteries and evil curses. Improvisation is key, but so is preparation in this relentless multiplayer experience.

If you have a knack for mystery games, horror adventures, and cooperative gaming experiences, then Surrounded was essentially custom-made for you. However, the shallow gameplay might also spell bad news for players who wished to give this game a try hoping to find their next multiplayer night centerpiece.

Cooperative Nightmares

The gist of the game will be more than a bit familiar to regular players of games like Dead by Daylight. A team of players must join forces to investigate some paranormal disturbances — which are randomly generated — at a certain location.

Depending on the map and the paranormal entity, the gameplay varies drastically. However, most of the time you’ll be spending looking for clues and evidence that you can use to pinpoint the identity of the evil creature you’re trying to hunt.

To make matters worse, you and your friends aren’t the only ones doing the hunting. The creature, whatever it might be, dynamically reacts to things like noise and lights, so you’ll have to keep a low profile during your investigation.

Oppressive Ambiance

One of the best areas of Surrounded are, without a shadow of a doubt, the outstanding visuals. Developed in Unity — an engine that has an undeservedly negative reputation — using its HDRP module, Surrounded looks top-notch for an indie horror game. Not since Visage have we seen a game that looks this good on this price range.

There’s a lot of variety in the locales you’ll visit in Surrounded. The only part that might irk some players is the overabundance of extremely dark areas all throughout the game. While some darkness is understandable in a horror game, the gamma levels in Surrounded are all over the place, making the game feel a bit too hard to navigate.

Exploring Possibilities

Every mystery you tackle in Surrounded takes place in a unique, massive location. Exploring the maps can be a thrilling experience — especially with a creature always lurking in the shadows — but the aforementioned darkness can hinder the joys of exploration just a bit. Turning up the brightness isn’t an option, either, as doing so messes with the overall tone of the game.

Depending on how you solve each mystery, players will unlock new and alternate finales for each scenario. This helps to make the game feel much more fresh each time you pick it up and does wonders for replayability.

Pros

• Phenomenal horror atmosphere
• Clever enemy AI
• Fun to play with friends

Cons

• Your mileage may vary playing with random players
• Some areas are a bit too dark to see
• Some minor performance issues