Silt (Nintendo Switch) – The test

Announced during the last Nintendo Direct Indies, Silt had something to seduce with its rather atypical artistic direction… But is the exploration worth getting wet? Put on your diving gear, and come take a ride into the abyss!

Play it like Cousteau

Silt is the first game from English studio Spiral Circus Games. Founded in 2018, the studio has the particularity of being made up of only four people: a developer, Dom Clarke, a graphic designer, Tom Mead, an animator, Antonenko Anton and finally an audio manager, Nick Dymond.

We owe the idea of ​​Silt to Dom Clarke and Tom Mead, the two friends with a mutual passion for the strange and the supernatural… What better than to combine the abyssal depths which are full of strange creatures, while offering a small dose supernatural via game mechanics which we will discuss a little later…

Like most indie games, Silt’s storyline relies heavily on personal interpretation. A short introductory text mentions four Goliaths that we will have to find and defeat, to recover the energy buried in their eyes in order to realize our destiny…

Then the game starts and offers us to embody a diver who wakes up attached to a chain in what seems to be the Abyss. Very quickly, we discover that our diver has a special ability allowing him to transfer his mind into the bodies of marine animals swimming nearby… Thus, it will be necessary to possess the “Piranhoid” fish that was passing by, to come and destroy the metal chain that held our diver. We will then have to regain possession of our body and continue our exploration towards the next room, where another enigma will arise for us.

Underwater reflection.

Silt is presented as an exploration game, it is nonetheless very linear in its progress. Indeed, the areas to go through to progress in the game are linked together without really offering alternatives to exploration. It is true that sometimes we have the choice to go rather to the left or to the right, but it is to better return to the opposite side afterwards. As we said in the introduction, the game offers a small gameplay feature: the possession of nearby sea animals. Know that as a general rule, you will always have to use the animals swimming next to you to hope to advance. There are nearly 11 different species, each with a special ability that will necessarily be used in the room you want to browse.

It will sometimes happen that it is necessary to chain possessions (yes, yes it is possible) and to pass from one marine animal to another to continue our progress… A little bite of the Piranha’s steel teeth before taking possession of a kind of hammerhead shark to explode a crumbly wall!

Be careful though, because some amphibians that you release will not hesitate to attack you (especially the biggest ones) and can make you pass from life to death. But most of the time, they will prove harmless. In the end, the puzzles to be solved in order to progress will be based on a good sequence of possessions and sometimes on a judicious placement of character or creature… otherwise you will have to start the room from the beginning!

Luckily, the auto-save system is relatively well thought out and allows you to resume in the room where we left off. But it’s sometimes frustrating to have to go back to a room from the beginning, just because we forgot to put the character in the right place… You have to find the right tempo in certain sequences and progress is made through learning by failure. But lives are infinite, so don’t worry!

Each area traveled will end with a clash against a Goliath (Boss) which will usually call for the use of new species that you have encountered in the rooms you have just traveled. Again, the Bosses have patterns that are relatively easy to understand and the clashes will never be very dangerous.

In the end, the “exploration” side is felt above all in the diversity and beauty of the areas covered…

A greyscale atmosphere

The very big strength of the game is its universe. Entirely designed by Mr Mead, the decorations are as varied as they are mysterious! There is a real feeling of depth in the scenery, both in the background and in the foreground and we almost regret that the exploration is limited to two-dimensional movements on a single plane…

Graphically and by its use of grayscale, the game will remind you of the well-known Limbo which offers a similar atmosphere, but on solid ground! On the other hand, the decorations and the creatures imagined by Mr Mead are still a little more detailed!

The universe mixes steampunk (in some rooms) and creatures from the abyss, also playing on the light… Some areas even require you to turn on your headlamp or better, to take possession of a luminescent fish to find your way in a cave dark (what a pity that the idea is not used more often in the game!)

In terms of animation, it’s also very good work, everything is very fluid and the inertia of the movements helps to remind us that we are moving underwater. Ditto for the movements of the different marine animals that we can have (all different in their way of moving).

In terms of the sound environment, the music knows how to be discreet, but always turns out to be in good taste depending on the situation and the sound effects contribute to “immersion”. » We are really immersed in this Abyssal atmosphere and we strongly recommend that you enjoy the experience with a helmet. As we said above, the game is relatively easy and the progression can be done in relaxation mode, without a big headache.

Technically the game holds up, even if we managed to crash it once, trying to get our soul out of a possessed fish when it had just been devoured… Our diver then found himself in a catatonic state and we had to restart the game to continue our progress. But honestly, it’s more detail, the whole is really clean.

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