An ’80s/VHS aesthetic, plenty of blood and violence, a comic book art style, plenty of blood and violence, crafting mechanics, plenty of blood and violence. I Hate This Place is a new survival title that comes from Rock Square Thunder and Broken Mirror Games.

“A craft-based, isometric survival horror game with twisted monsters and warped reality. Scavenge and build to survive terrifying days and nights while using stealth and noise to fight enemies that stalk by sound. All styled with bold comic art and an ’80s horror vibe.”

You play as Elena, who, along with her friend Lou, decides to take part in a ritual to summon a God, The Horned Man. It works, but Lou mysteriously disappears, and you have to find her. Along the way, you’ll cross paths with various characters, uncover secrets and even learn something about your family. Search underground bases, help ghosts rest in peace, face strange cults, craft items and build a base to help you uncover the truth behind the mysterious Horned Man myth.

I Hate This Place plays very much how you would expect any survival game to play. All the basics are here, such as searching for and gathering resources, and in this regard, the game feels quite unoriginal, but welcomingly familiar. If you have enough specific resources, you can construct buildings which work as auto farms to provide more much-needed resources. Find blueprints to unlock new constructions, items, and weapons. All of this busy work is only half of the game, the other half is more action-oriented.

Leave the safety of your base and venture out into the semi-open world map. Here is where you’ll have to explore, talk to NPCs, take on missions, all the usual stuff. The game map is not huge, but there’s still a variety of places to seek out.  While exploring, you’ll have to keep an eye on your stamina and hunger, as well as your health. This is not all that tricky, just don’t keep running to maintain the stamina. Make sure you’re carrying a good supply of food and healing items (can be crafted at your base or found by looting) to sort out the hunger and health thing. Honestly, I Hate This Place is quite simple to understand, and after a rather bland and stifling introduction, the game just lets you loose to explore and play.

While I Hate This Place doesn’t bring much new to the table, it does offer up a nice onomatopoeia thing when it comes to the stealth mechanics. You see, a lot of the monsters that you’ll cross paths with can’t see, but they can hear. As you move, you create sound, and that sound is presented in an onomatopoeia, comic book (the game is based on a comic) way. Walk on broken glass and “CRUNCH” appears on the screen, running on solid ground will display a “THUD”, and get a “SQUELCH” if you walk on something soft. If you make too much noise, a monster will hear you, and you’ll have to decide to run or fight. You can crouch and make less noise, but never be 100% silent. I really liked this aspect, and it helped to create quite a few tense scenarios.

There’s a day/night cycle that offers up all the usual issues. Going out during the day is safer, but sometimes you’ll have no choice but to leave your base at night, as some missions are night-specific. You can only ever find ghosts at night, and this was one of my favourite aspects of the game. You find a ghost, talk to them, and then you find yourself in a kind of spirit world where you have to explore, find clues and piece together how they died. I Hate This Place becomes a bit of a detective game, but these ghostly encounters are only a few and other than these, there’s really little point in going out at night.

There’s really no reward for exploring after the sun goes down, but the risk is increased. Which makes the day/night cycle a bit redundant, just go out during the day. I feel that the devs should’ve enticed you to explore at night. Maybe have special resources and upgrades that only appear at night or similar. The ghost thing is nice and all, but as I said, there are only a few of them.

Overall, while I Hate This Place keeps things basic. The base building is easy to understand, and the resource management is simple. There’s nothing all that deep, and I’d probably recommend this to newcomers of the survival game genre. More experienced players might find this a bit too simple in places, and the challenge is light to middling. I Hate This Place is available now on PC and all the consoles, and comes with a price point of around £27. It’s pretty good, not as hardcore as other survival titles, and you can reach the end credits in nine hours or so.