If you want old-school survival horror, and I mean truly old—medieval old—I have the perfect demo for you, named False Oath. From its visual style (PlayStation One graphics) to its mechanics, it just feels right, like it was dropped directly into our laps from the classic era. However, with one major difference: you will not shoot the living dead this time with your trusty 9mm pistol or dashing from ramshackle offices to industrial parks—you will be deflecting blows with your shield and slashing zombies in the neck with your longsword in a castle of old!
A knight with a mission
You play as Elis, a knight with a mission to find a missing healer. By finding him, you hope he can heal your lord who seems to be in quite the predicament—plague and everything. Very unpleasant. But, as these things go, events go sideways fast. When you arrive at a castle along your way, you are locked into a cell by the guards, with these ominous words trailing down the stone corridor: “It has begun.”
I think we all know what this means in terms of survival horror—the horse manure has hit the fan! Suddenly, the prisoner sharing your cell turns sickly green and hungry for brains… the game of survival has begun indeed.
Time to fight
The gameplay mechanics are rather simple, with their heavy tank-like controls, just like the classics. You can evade the zombies if you would rather not fight, or simply move out of range of their attacks to save durability. As I mentioned, it just feels very right, translating that archaic muscle memory splendidly into this game.
You start with a shield that blocks the entirety of an undead slash aimed to rip you open, but each block knocks the durability down to zero eventually, a detail that will leave you without a protection for a while. I hope your dodging skills are up to scratch, because these zombies have gone to the Mike Tyson school of knock-out punches. It hurts! Luckily, you can give as good as you get—so watch those heads fly!
However, finding silver ingots lets you repair your shield—and guess what? The ingots also work as a resource for upgrades—for the damage of your sword and the amount of durability your shield can have. Careful consideration must be given here. You do all this at an anvil, which also lets you save if you have an inkwell. The design, while simple, comes off as brilliant to me—it works well and feels spot-on. Chef’s kiss!
I highly recommend the False Oath demo! I understand that games with PlayStation One graphics, touting old-school gaming, can come off as a bit much nowadays—yet this one felt genuinely great, like a true cozy throwback to the peak survival horror era. So it is certainly something to look forward to!
Thanks for reading.
– Thomas
