Right so I will be completely honest with you. I nearly slept on this one entirely until Respawning’s own Alex put me onto it last week and I must have been in a good mood because I was actually paying attention and now I have finished it and I need to tell you that it is genuinely brilliant and nobody is discussing it enough.
Let me set the scene. You are Gabriel, a soldier shipwrecked on the island of Tormentosa, which is a nightmarish version of Spain soaked in religious imagery and folk horror and the kind of oppressive dread that makes you want to turn a light on. There is a war between the God of the Sun and the God of the Sea and you are very much on the wrong island. The enemies are called Astiados, which is Spanish for splinter, and they are doll-like statue creatures that move wrong in that specific way that horror games nail when they are really trying. You know the way. The kind of movement that makes your brain go no thank you immediately.
Now here is the bit that got me. Your blood is your ammunition. Every time you fire a weapon you are draining your own health to do it. You have to physically inject a tool into your arm to draw blood and reload. It is gruesome and brilliant and the moment it clicked for me I thought of two things immediately. Bloodborne, where the trick weapons and the blood vials and the whole philosophy of the game is built around aggression and risk, around spending health to gain health. And Lies of P, where the puppet enemies and the oppressive religious atmosphere and the feeling of navigating something beautiful and deeply wrong all combine into something that sits right in that same part of your brain. Crisol is not as deep as either of those games mechanically, but it absolutely understands the same feeling. The idea that safety is an illusion and every decision costs you something.
The world design is stunning for a game at this price point. Tormentosa feels genuinely alive in the way that only good horror worlds do, where you get the sense that terrible things happened here long before you arrived and the architecture is just quietly telling you about all of it. Cathedrals on cliff edges. Hollow cities. Stained glass that becomes an enemy at one point, which is one of the more unnerving things I have seen in a horror game in years. The environmental storytelling is doing a lot of heavy lifting and it earns every bit of it.
The story surprised me too. I was not expecting much beyond atmosphere and vibes, which would have been fine, but Crisol actually has something to say. The conflict between the Sun God and Sea God cults is genuinely interesting and the way it ties into Spanish history and folklore gives it a texture that most horror games do not bother with. It feels like it was made by people who actually care about the culture they are drawing from rather than just raiding it for aesthetics.
Now, is it perfect. No. The back half gets a bit repetitive as the enemy variety starts to thin out and some of the arena layouts feel like they are being recycled. The combat is tense rather than fluid and there are moments where it tips from satisfying into slightly clunky. A few reviews have been harder on this than I am willing to be, because I think the tension is largely the point. This is not a game that wants you to feel powerful. It wants you to feel like you are barely surviving, and mostly it succeeds at that.
And the price. It is seventeen quid. SEVENTEEN. At that price point Crisol is not just good value it is almost embarrassingly good value. There are games charging four times that which offer a fraction of the atmosphere, the world building, or the genuine creative ambition on display here.
Vermila Studios are a small Spanish team and this is clearly a passion project made by people who love horror and love their culture and wanted to make something that honoured both. That comes through in every corner of Tormentosa. It is not a flawless game but it is a special one and the kind of thing that deserves way more attention than it is getting.
If you have any love for Bloodborne, for Lies of P, for BioShock, for the older Resident Evil games, for horror that actually has something going on underneath the scares, play this. Right now. For seventeen quid you have absolutely nothing to lose and potentially a new favourite to gain.