Sylvio is an indie-developed first-person

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adventure video game released on

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in June 2015 for

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, Xbox One and,

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, utilizing the Unity engine. The game is about an audio recordist called Juliette Waters, who records the voices of ghosts through Electronic voice phenomenon. She finds herself trapped in an old family park, shut down since a landslide in 1971, and she now needs to use her recorder to survive the night. A sequel, Sylvio 2, was released on October 11, 2017.

Gameplay

''Sylvio'' is set at night in an old abandoned family park, and is played from a

first person perspective In video games, first person is any graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player's character, or a viewpoint from the cockpit or front seat of a vehicle driven by the character. The most popular type of first-person video gam ...

. The player uses a reel recorder to record and analyze the voices of ghosts, which can be found by exploration, disturbing black orbs, disturbing physical forms, or having séances. The recordings are analyzed by playing the sound backwards, or in different speeds, and found hidden messages are written down in Juliette's notepad. On each recording a whisper will mark a place or object to use, and it's up to the player to understand what to do, and progress through the game.

Development

Niklas Swanberg mostly developed the game by himself. The ghosts voices were created using

voice synthesis Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal langua ...

software in combination with several analogue and digital effects. Swanberg lists the documentary The Nightmare and the phenomenon of sleep paralysis as an inspiration alongside electronic voice phenomenon. Sylvios protagonist Juliette Waters was voiced by actress Maia Hansson Berggvist. The attempt to fund a sequel through Kickstarter failed in 2016. Despite that, ''Sylvio 2'' still got released in 2017.

Reception

Reviews has been highlighting the unique gameplay of the audio recorder, and the game's unsettling atmosphere. '' Rock Paper Shotgun'' called it "an imaginative, unusual and frightening new horror game", while ''Indie Games'' said "When ''Sylvio'' sticks to what it's good at, it's a great, unique horror game", referring to the reviewers idea that the gun in the game was hard to handle. ''GameWatcher'' said "''Sylvio''s take on the first-person survival horror genre is immediately compelling and not just because of its overt '' Twin Peaks''/'' Silent Hill'' overtones, either".

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.sylviogame.com 2015 video games Video games set in abandoned buildings and structures Video games about ghosts 2010s horror video games Indie games MacOS games PlayStation 4 games Psychological horror games Single-player video games Video games about amnesia Video games developed in Sweden Video games featuring female protagonists Video games set in psychiatric hospitals Windows games Xbox One games