Pneumata Review – What’s A Pneumata With This Game?

Pneumata Review

Pneumata is an upcoming game from game developer Deadbolt Interactive. Back in September 2023, they gave us access to the demo. Originally, Deadbolt Interactive scheduled to release the game on Halloween, 2023. That date proved optimistic as the game’s release ended up being pushed back a year after the demo was available. So it’s September, 2024 and Deadbolt, a small indie team is now ready to release the game. Have they used the extra time to good use?

Let’s see.

Horror Game Tropes

Pneumata is a survival/psychological horror game. The creatures have a Silent Hill/Lovecraftian vibe, which the developers acknowledge. Pneumata means ghost or spirit, even holy spirit. The game takes place in a small Missouri town, specifically in an apartment complex named Clover Hill. The game also employs a staple horror trope, the unreliable narrator – the character you play. You are searching for Jamie, your wife, who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The game employs quite a few horror game mechanics. The game provides detailed lore through notes and videotapes. Save points scattered throughout the levels. There is also health, ammunition, and more weapons throughout the level. You will solve puzzles to gain access to new areas.

The game arms you with a flashlight, a knife, a shotgun, a pistol, and limited ammunition for both. For melee weapons, you’ll find a section of rusty pipe to wreak havoc with. Resource management will be tantamount. You have very limited amounts of ammo for the pistol and shotgun. Also, melee weapons and running have endurance limits. You also have to monitor your stamina.

Unreal Engine 5 – Blessing Or Curse?

My playthrough of the various iterations of the game left me with a nagging feeling. Did the devs bite off more than they could chew? The allure of the power and new features of Unreal 5 is understandable. The environments, assets, and details are amazing. I have never seen such realistic lighting effects in a game before. This is immediately apparent from the game start, where an outside noise wakes you up in the middle of the night. The glow from electronic displays and the outside streetlights are impressive. A figure in your driveway with the gleam of car tail lights behind him is truly creepy.

Shortly thereafter, you arrive in a small town at night during a thunderstorm. The rain and lighting effects are truly jaw dropping. Storms light up the countryside and woods around you in a way that is truly unnerving. It can create afterimage ghost lighting that ratchets up the creep factor. Light sources such as street lights, lamps, fire, and especially flashlights are glorious. I’ve never seen such lifelike graphics for a flashlight. Not only for how it illuminates objects but also for the shadows that are cast by it.

Without a doubt, Unreal Engine 5 can produce some amazing visuals. But there seems to be some costs that go along with it.

The PC version of the game requires a beefy machine. I’m running a rig that is geared towards 1440p gaming. Running the game straight out of the box was an underwhelming experience. A solid frame target frame rate of 60 FPS was not attainable. The game ran in the high 40s/low 50s FPS. I had to employ the frame generation options of my AMD 7800 XT card and knock the graphic settings down to get the frame rate at an acceptable level. I can only surmise that on consoles the graphical settings will have to be on medium or even low.

Game Disconnect

As impressive as the environmental graphics are, I found a disconnect between me and the game. Interactions and movement in the game are sluggish, if not downright slow. The default walking speed feels more like a shuffle. The running speed is not much better. Game movement is just too slow. This affects combat too.

Game design decisions also hamper opening doors or grabbing objects. Instead of having hands reaching out, the game displays a hand icon. You press a button and doors just open. You select a pair of pliers from inventory to cut open a lock and it’s all done with a button press.

Another perplexing game design decision is restricting you from equipping weapons when you want to. I wanted to explore an area with my gun in hand but couldn’t. Instead, the game gives me a – You can’t use that here – message. Immersion breaking, to say the least. And very frustrating. Another immersion breaking game design decision is how the game will wrest camera control from you to show a point of interest. It does so without returning to your initial camera position when done too. I much prefer the approach where the game leaves you to explore points of interest. Much rather have items highlighted by a blinking icon or an object outline.

The character designs don’t do that much for me either. To be fair, perhaps their depictions are an artistic choice. I find them to be crude and uninspired. This applies to the creature designs too. Especially against the backdrop of the stellar environmental elements.

Unreal Engine 5 – Blessing Or Curse?

Couple these gameplay issues with the decision to use Unreal Engine 5 and I suspect the devs faced a learning curve. The number of delays the game has faced further enhances this impression. Most troubling is game crashes. I’ve experienced several of these which are perplexing at this stage of the game development.

The developers will release Pneumata digitally through console and PC stores on Sept 20th. PS4 and Xbox One will release digitally a week later. There will also be a Physical Version for the PS5.

Pneumata – Jekyll and Hyde

To put it in horror terms, Pneumata is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde construct. The game environments, sound and lighting are top-notch, but the gameplay is subpar. Maybe future updates will improve the gameplay, but it feels pretty baked in right now, so I doubt it.

*****Steam Code provided by publisher*****