Of all the genres, horror games are the ones I like to tackle the least. This review should make it obvious, the fact that I’m writing my thoughts on ProbablyMonsters’ newest horror franchise weeks after the first game’s launch ‘Ire: A Prologue’. What should’ve been a few hours of my day instead took me days, because I just couldn’t stop freaking out over being on a boat—alone—with a terrifying monster aboard, hunting me down at every corner of this tiny little map I’ve been given to work with.
Normally, I say “no” to horror games with a emphasis on the rejection. And yet I couldn’t quite do the same with Ire here as it tackles a setting I quite like and haven’t heard of in quite a long time: the Bermuda Triangle, essentially a no man’s fly nor boating zone, where people have been lost to time for “reasons unknown” (you can look this one up yourselves). It’s a cool idea to work with for a horror game and Ire: A Prologue left me intrigued all the way towards the end, despite the issues I took with the gameplay.
In Ire, players take on the role of Emily, a young lady who finds herself trapped aboard her father’s expeditionary ship aptly named “Emily’s Dream”. Like all horror games, something is very wrong here and it becomes apparently obvious once Em goes below deck and finds ink-blotted stains, dead birds, and an eerily quiet ship. The engine’s busted, the radio is shot, help is nowhere to be found. And once our fair protagonist finds out she’s back in the Bermuda Triangle, that sudden sinking, uncomfortable feeling comes flooding back to her—which she is frequently happy to share as a fully voiced protagonist. Now mind, her performance is fantastic, but I’ll touch on some of my issues with how those voice overs impact gameplay further on.
Em soon finds these strange, numbered wooden doors that appear to be holding back a torrential bit of flooding behind them. She can’t open them right away, but once she seems to meet a specific criteria loosely defined by the Captain’s Logs. Once they’re ready to be opened, the doors emit a bright, Davy Jones-esque green and opening them loops Emily back to where she once woke up on the ship. There are thirteen of these doors and each one will bring Em back to where she started—except things begin to change aboard and, unfortunately, and uninvited guest now roams the halls of Emily’s Dream: and it’s out for blood.
If it wasn’t obvious by now, Ire: A Prologue is a first-person psychological horror game where players must complete specific objectives within each loop (think chapter) to progress. All the while a terrifying menace of a monster, one that seems to be flipping in and out of existence, haunts the boat that Em once called home. It is pitch black in this ship and very few things are told to the player, meaning that you’ll be doing quite a bit of puzzle solving and reading all the while praying to Ra that the freaky doodle of a monster doesn’t come and snatch up Em for itself.
Really, if you’ve played the likes of Bendy or Hello Neighbor, you’ll have a good idea how Ire plays. Em can’t run nor can she fight back—you’ll either need to be very good at hiding or duck away from the monster every chance you can get. This menace won’t let up and as you open up more sections of the boat, our major antagonist will (typically) dynamically patrol the boat on the hunt for any survivors. Eventually, our baddie will occasionally guard specific rooms and you’ll have to lure the big lug out by throwing objects and doing whatever you need to do before he comes back to drag you into the state of Indiana. Or underwater, but that’s not as funny as being forced to visit Indiana.
Further Reading | Interview: ProbablyMonsters’ CJ Cowan on ‘Ire: A Prologue’
This game is far more terrifying for me than other survival-esque games like Ire. While I was able to complete the likes of Bendy on my own time (even at night, with the curtains closed!), both the monster’s design and the audio absolutely kept me on edge. Couple that with the setting and the intrigue of the mystery aboard Emily’s Dream, I was fascinated by it all. While you’re ducking around avoiding the big bad wolf with naught more than a flashlight and a few vents, you’ll find drawings and cassettes that give somewhat detailed accounts of what had happened to the rest of the ship’s inhabitants prior to the monster’s ill-timed arrival. The cast’s performance are great and they really helped drive in that whatever they’ve found is driving everyone on the vessel insane. Insane enough that they also have BBS-styled communications via notes on boards and desks. Really, who does that?
For the most part, Ire’s gameplay and world design does a great job of making the player feel isolated. It’s what kept me going despite some of the issues I would eventually run into, going against the monster. When it comes to this kind of survival horror game, two aspects are key to player engagement: the monster that chases you and the level design. Ire only ever takes place on this midsized expeditioners vessel that has two floors max with a couple of rooms strewn about. It is built, much like the progression, like a looped track, where each end of the map will take you up or further below deck. For most of the chapters, the baddie is set to waltz about and investigate any noise the player may make and this does work well. The dread I felt, knowing the monster was coming my way from its hurried “footsteps” and the dying of the lights, were enough to keep me second-guessing my movements all the way til the end of the game.
My issues, sadly, began early on. I would encounter the big bad camping the entrance to the boat, making it a bit difficult for me to even get a chance to get started on working through my objectives. I appreciate the detail that’s been put into Emily’s Dream—it basically is a small yacht realised in a video game! But this sort of design does create a bit of a problem, one that I’ve seen in games like Security Breach (all though Ire is much, much better off than that mess of a game). It’s a small boat and Em’s movement are restricted quite a bit. Hiding spots are few and far between and you don’t really unlock most of those (including the tossing mechanic) until you’re nearly midway through the game. So, I often ended up being snared unceremoniously by the monster multiple times just trying to move into the halls of the middle chamber. Our squiggly fellow also has a tendency to get stuck on level geometry and, if you’re unlucky enough to be hiding in front of him with no other way to sneak around, you’ll have to force a fail state to continue (and lose out the chance on getting the no death cheevo!).
But honestly, I much preferred it when this big jerk was roaming the halls. In certain chapters, this guy will decide to camp certain objectives and you’ll have to coax him out. It can be a bit frustrating, watching Em throw a roll of tape like she was being forced to attend church on a Sunday night and either not catch the monster’s attention or pique his interest and strut his way to the noise and right to Em. The egg timer in the galley may save you from this frustration once in a while, but towards the end of the game the monster will have scripted events that make this clock useless. See, for most of the game’s runtime, the monster’s behaviour is dynamic, but the final chapters will force the player to “confront” this big bad. And by confront, I mean more so that he’ll simply show up and Emily will scream that “he’s there”. Where is he? I dunno—between the torn violin string and someone screaming, I’m too busy sharding my pants to look around.
It also doesn’t help that certain rooms make it impossible to gauge the monster’s distance away from the player as it isn’t clear whether it’s walking away or towards the player. You do get a little gadget that “helps” with sensing the monster late into the game, but besides that fact I found its efficacy to be a bit… on the unhelpful side.
Now, while I was tense during my playthrough of the game, these moments really did take me out of the survival part of Ire. Instead, I felt like I was spending most of my time juking the monster around until he either decided to just camp the place I’m hiding at or bugger off somewhere. One aspect that I’d also like to pile on top of these grievances is Em herself. She’s a talkative one, which I don’t mind, but she has a tendency to scream when spotted. This creates a bit of a problem: when I’m, say, behind a counter or an engine block and the AI spots me, there really should be a better cue for this. Because when Em screams that she’s been spotted, I’m going to blame her for getting me in trouble. This behaviour mucks with the dichotomy that is player agency and the game’s only real active hint system and I would prefer to see this behaviour tweaked in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I’m fighting the character I’m supposed to be guiding. Unless that’s intentional. In which case, makes me really not like Emily.
I think what I would have liked to see from the monster’s behaviour is the game adjusting his position to be further away from the player’s starting position upon death. Because as it stands, sometimes it really felt like I was going against a monster but rather game logic that would get its wires crossed and leave me with little of a fighting chance. There were times that I felt that the S.S. Emily’s Dream felt like a better boat rather than a good game world to explore, due to some of these gaffes.
Despite my issues with the game, Ire: A Prologue is one of the better survival horror titles I’ve plated. It’s got a good lore backing it, a great performance from the cast, and the objectives chance often enough to keep gameplay fresh. Emily might chip in to occasionally help the player, but you’ll be doing most of the puzzle solving on your own. Against the precipice of a terrifying-looking monster hunting you down in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, this is easily a game that’ll terrify you to bits. If this is a start to a franchise, this is definitely a good one. ∎
Ire: A Prologue
Played on
PC
PROS
- Lovely visuals and audio design.
- Puzzles are good and objectives are kept fresh.
- Lore is great!
- Solid performance from the cast.
CONS
- Emily's Dream is more akin to a real ship than one that accommodates gameplay.
- The monster has a tendency to get stuck on level geometry or camp the player.
- It can be difficult to gauge the monster's distance in many rooms through audio alone.
