Venture to the Vile (PS5) Review – Mutated Metroidvania

Venture to the Vile (PS5) Review

A darkly weird and visually unique Metroidvania, Studio Cut to Bits’ Venture to the Vile released on PC last spring. Although I missed it then, I assume that all the game’s platforming, puzzle-solving, and combat has arrived on the PS5 intact. With a story that feels like a grim fairy tale mixed with modern horror, Venture to the Vile stands out in a vast and ever-expanding catalogue of games in the genre.

Who is that Masked Man?

Venture to the Vile takes place in Rainybrook, one of those storybook Victorian villages that obviously harbor a lot of secrets. For one thing, all of its residents wear animal masks, an at-first unexplained element that feels both odd and possibly allegorical. Your character starts as a young boy on his coming-of-age “antler day,” helping his friend Ella check countryside rat traps. Time moves forward — as it always does — and soon Ella and antler-boy are teens, many years later still checking traps. Things are stranger now, and on the way home your character falls into the Vile. The Vile is a cavernous, day-glow underworld filled with horrors. He’s attacked, and wakes up over a month later in an infirmary.

You learn that nearly everyone in Rainybrook is sick and/or mutating into something monstrous. You have a claw weapon where you used to have a hand. Thus begins your quests: to find Ella and discover the source of the mutating horror. Of course by encountering and defeating Vile-infested monsters, you absorb both the power and debilitating effects of the disease. You know, literally what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Venture to the Vile’s narrative and setting are definitely both disturbing and intriguing. The only minor quibble I had with it was the annoying gibberish language that all the characters speak. Aside from saving on the cost of voice actors, I’m not sure what this decision brought to the experience.

Secrets and Surprises

Story and setting are, of course, important. Even more critical to a Metroidvania are level design, combat, and mechanics. Overall, Venture to the Vile shines in these areas. This is a 2.5D world, so that while movement overall is side-to-side, there are usually a number of parallel foreground and background layers to explore. Access to them is clearly marked. This allows the seemingly compact environment to be much more complex than it appears.

Enjoyable platforming is another make-or-break aspect of the genre. Especially as one with terrible platforming skills, I rarely became too frustrated, although there are moments when the jumps felt a bit sluggish. Mostly, this was during the early hours of the game, before the character used items to level up his platforming abilities. The environment is also filled with puzzles. These felt just about right in difficulty. Not too obtuse, not too simplistic.

Although Venture to the Vile is not a particularly long game, there are a lot of side quests and several endings to make repeated playthroughs worthwhile.

Combat is focused on melee-type attacks with a fairly forgiving parry. That sounds simplistic but your character expands his repertoire from the starting blade-hand into an array of body Mutations like tentacles and floor-breaking stomps. Likewise, the monster and boss variety is extremely wide and usually interesting. The theme of mutation results in some genuinely — and occasionally disturbingly humorous — enemies and creatures. Bosses are impressive and often based on the characteristics of mutated animals.

Visual Interest

The art design of Venture to the Vile has been called Tim Burton-esque. I can see that. The game has a visual approach that I would call stop-motion adjacent, though it’s much smoother than any frame-by-frame animation would be. Any visual aesthetic where the characters all wear plague-mask-like face coverings gives off potent mythological vibes. Both interior and environmental level designs are very good, both from a visual and gameplay mechanic point of view. Besides its rich and appealing art style, Venture to the Vale’s music by Mike Kearney — his first game score — explores a lot of ground, from quaint sentimental tunes to more disturbing, horror-filled cues.

Especially towards the end of the 8-10 hour game there are some disconcerting difficulty spikes that demand much more precision. However, during the early months of the PC release, the developers made some smart changes and concessions due to player feedback. Difficulty and accessibility now have many new options. If you want to focus on the story and exploration you can even opt for a no-damage mode and never die in combat. Console players will experience the game with all these helpful changes in place.

Connoisseurs of Metroidvanias have a dizzying array from which to choose on both PC and consoles. Add Venture to the Vile to the short list. Its distinctive story and setting, coupled with generally enjoyable combat, puzzles, and exploration make it a pretty strong choice for genre fans looking for their next game.

***PS5 code provided by the publisher for review***