Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story

Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story is an original survival horror adventure game developed by the independent studio Suzaku. Top Hat Studios published the title on the PC platform, and its creation was possible thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The main source of inspiration for its creators were such series as Clock Tower and Fatal Frame.

Story

Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story takes place in a cyberpunk universe filled with elements taken from Chinese folklore. The game takes us on a journey to Neo Hong Kong from 2083, the secrets of which we learn as Mei Lin Mak. The protagonist, equipped with cybernetic eyes enabling her to see more than the average person, searches the nooks and crannies of the ruins of the Chong Sing Apartments, hiding a bloody puzzle more than a hundred years old. Her task is to discover the fate of fourteen lost souls - she hopes to discover the truth about the curse cast on her family.

Mechanics

In Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story the action is shown from the side. In the course of the game we traverse claustrophobic corridors and rooms of the apartment building, as well as the crowded streets of Neo Hong Kong, shimmering with neon lights. The overriding element of the game is solving puzzles, which requires talking to NPCs (who often have useful information), as well as searching for specific items; sometimes it is also worth looking closely at particular elements of the environment, as they can also hide secrets, the knowledge of which will bring us closer to the goal. This is not the end of the story, because Mei encounters spirits on her way, with whom she cannot fight - instead, the girl sends them back to where they have come from, by offering sacrifices in chapels or by solving puzzles connected with them. These beings are not the only threat waiting for the protagonist (for example, she may be electrocuted), so it is worth remembering to manually save the state of game on in-game TVs, because the game does not have control points or an autosave function.

Game modes

After a single completion of the feature campaign, we unlock the New Game Plus mode, where we can not only solve the optional secrets that we have omitted before, but also find a trail of completely new puzzles waiting to be solved.

Technical aspects

Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story features hand-drawn 2.5D graphics. The artists were inspired by the work of Masamune Shirow (creator of Ghost in the Shell), as well as Chifumi Suzuki, a character designer at Tecmo Koei (who was responsible for characters design in the last installments of Fatal Frame and Dead or Alive series). During the game we are accompanied by an atmospheric soundtrack composed by Andy Andie Han, who in turn was inspired by the works of John Carpenter and Vangelis, among others.

Last updated on 07 January 2022