The premise of a lot of modern horror films really don’t grip me much, but A Quiet Place is an exception.

I love the idea of a film that is mostly silent while still managing to capture tension, atmosphere and get the audience on the edge of their seat. So the idea of a game set in this world is extremely compelling.

And for the most part, I think Stormind Games have done a really good job bringing it across. Set before the events of the first film, you play as Alex, a young woman who gets pranked regularly by her partner and is prone to jump scares. So much so, she gets an intense asthma attack in the opening moments of the game.

So you’re probably thinking to yourself, how does someone so jumpy manage to survive with such menacing looking creatures roaming around? Those survival instincts really do kick in. And those opening moments actually play an important part in the game as Alex finds and uses inhalers to calm herself, and even takes pills to quell her fears and nausea.

As you can imagine, seeing a creature stalking around makes her anxious, but also when she enters dust clouds and performs feats of athletics, like climbing over boxes or lifting heavy items. You’ll need to monitor Alex’s meters closely in order to make sure she’s not putting herself in grave danger or passing out in uncompromising positions.

The Road Ahead does a good job of gradually introducing new mechanics across its chapters, keeping the gameplay fresh while also putting you in different areas and telling its overarching story over a period of days. The game does move back and forth between its timeline so you can get some context for your characters before and after the creatures appear, and it also means the game can tell its story in a few different ways.

If you’ve seen the films, you probably know what I’m eluding to here. Silence is key and so you’re probably wondering how that translates to a narrative-focused video game. Pretty well, mostly. There’s notes and documents scattered around the world which you can pick up and read, plus there’s safe rooms where you can talk safely, and waterfalls that mask sound so characters can reflect on their current situation.

Stormind understand the source material very well and have found really smart ways to keep telling a story while staying true to what the franchise is all about.

But there’s this feeling I kept getting while playing A Quiet Place that made me feel like this was a game designed with VR in mind. The way the characters lean into you during dialogue, the use of cameras to focus on the environment, the way you interact with the world and even the killscreens designed to elicit jumpscares. It certainly makes sense as VR and horror have become a natural match. Oddly, though, it makes the game feel a tad restricted at times as it felt like the developers were working to the constraints of the hardware, even though, ironically, you can’t play the game with PSVR 2.

I’ve seen some of the developers refer to this game as an Alien Isolation-like, and there are certainly tropes here that liken the games. But there’s a freedom in Isolation as you wander the corridors and hide in the closets. Meanwhile The Road Ahead really limits how much you can actually escape from the creatures and often they just dive on you even when it feels like you’ve been really diligent with your movements.

As you imagine, everything is reliant on sound. So you need to be mindful of where you’re walking, how fast you’re moving, whether you’re crouched and even avoiding traps at later points in the game. You have a Phonometer which basically measures how much sound you’re making versus how aware a creature is of your presence.

If you’re walking on leaves for instance, they’ll crunch loudly in the environment and put you in immediate danger, so you should try to find an alternate path. Fortunately, you can throw some items to distract the creature and get them to look elsewhere between the likes of glass bottles and bricks.

Later on you can even pick up sandbags and pour sand over surfaces, making it safer for you to walk across them. Which is where I go back to Stormind really trying to keep the game fresh over the course of its duration and respecting the source material entirely.

And the story even works well in context of the universe and serves as a satisfying spin-off, even though there are clearly more than a few connections to the Emily Blunt saga, even down to some of the central core beats.

Some scenes definitely frustrate with difficulty curves suddenly ramping up at key moments and forced multiple restarts getting a bit draining and graining at times.

But on the whole, this is a mostly enjoyable horror romp that faithfully represents the franchise its based on, doesn’t outstay its welcome with the content on show and manages to keep itself fresh enough right up to the end with new ideas and ways to keep moving forward.

Verdict

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead faithfully plays into its source material, keeps itself fresh and interesting, and provides a decent story with good atmosphere and tension. The game’s limitations regularly rear their head with limited motion, agency over your actions, and the randomness in which you somehow die, but on the whole it’s a decent way to spend Halloween if you love the series and are looking for something to get you in the mood.