Hollowbody Review: Welcome Back to 1996

Let's quickly get back to 1996. A young Shinji Mikami places a camera in the corner of a room, locks an inventory to a grid of squares, and instructs you to aim a shotgun at a zombie without letting you move at the same time. What follows is Resident Evil, one of the most influential games ever made and one that defined an entire genre for years to come.

Now, nearly three decades later, a solo developer by the name of Headware Games has crafted something that does not merely pay tribute to that era; it inhabits it completely. Hollowbody does not just awaken nostalgia; it is nostalgia, through and through. The graphics, the fixed camera angles, the clunky-by-design controls, the scratchy audio; all of it makes you feel as though the past thirty years of gaming progress simply never happened. Whether it is a good thing or not will depend entirely on who is holding the controller.

Originally released on PC in September 2024 to a very positive reception on Steam, Hollowbody has now arrived on PlayStation 5 in a feature-complete package that includes all post-launch updates, new optional puzzles and locations, additional lore, a third-person camera mode, and quality-of-life improvements. It is, in every sense, the definitive version of the game. But does it hold up on console? It will be, again, entirely up to your respective judgement.

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The dying city from above — bleak, cold, and utterly convincing as a world that has already lost.

Story

Hollowbody is set in the near future, in a decaying British city totally destroyed after a bioterrorist incident turned its population into something that walks, breathes, and attacks but can no longer be called human. You play as Mica, an unlicensed black-market shipper who crashes her hover vehicle deep inside the exclusion zone while searching for Sasha, her partner or close friend (the game is deliberately vague on this point), who went missing after investigating the incident. Stranded, with limited resources and the ruins of a dead city around her, Mica pushes forward into the darkness.

The premise is really good, and the tech-noir atmosphere it creates is something that will pull you in immediately. There is a cold, industrial dread to Hollowbody’s world that sets it apart from its obvious inspirations; this is not the foggy melancholy of Silent Hill or the gothic horror of early Resident Evil, but something grimier and, I'd say, even scarier than the two. The setting works beautifully, and Mica is a protagonist worth following.

The story itself, however, is frustratingly incomplete. After finishing the game, a considerable number of questions remain unanswered. How exactly did the incident unfold? Who was behind it and why? What is the true nature of the relationship between Mica and Sasha? These are not the narrative gaps I'm simply okay with overlooking.

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The grey, desolate coastline sets the tone from the very first moments. Hollowbody wastes no time establishing its mood.

Those should have been answered for the sake of the commitment to the story. In this way, I kind of feel betrayed by the game because it left me hanging without any promise of resolution. As fond as I found myself of the game’s world and mood, the story ultimately leaves you with more questions than answers, and not entirely in a good way.

Gameplay

If the story is a mixed bag, the gameplay is where Hollowbody’s identity becomes most interesting and most odd at the same time. Make no mistake: this game does not just look old; it plays old, with full intention and commitment. The inventory system will be immediately familiar to anyone who spent time with the early Resident Evil games: a fixed grid of slots, careful item management, combining objects, and using key items to unlock specific doors and progress through the environment. 

The combat follows the same philosophy. You cannot aim your weapons in any conventional way; Mica fires in the direction of the enemy, and you manage distance and positioning to make your limited ammunition count. It is awkward. It is deliberately awkward. And in the context of a horror game, that awkwardness is a feature because it makes every encounter very stressful in a way that modern combat systems in modern games rarely achieve.

The camera is where things get particularly interesting. Hollowbody can be played in the original fixed-camera style, with angles chosen cinematically to maximise tension and obscure what lurks around every corner. It is undeniably effective; not knowing what waits at the end of a dark corridor is one of horror’s most reliable tools, and the fixed camera feeds that horror masterfully.

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The enemies are genuinely unsettling — wonderfully grotesque creatures that belong in a different era of horror.

The PS5 version also includes a third-person camera mode added post-launch, which makes the game considerably more manageable if the classic approach is not "your cup of tea". I spent the majority of my playtime using the modern camera option, and while it somewhat kills the horror atmosphere, it makes the game far more accessible. Both options are valid, and having the choice is the right call.

Graphics and Sounds

Visually, Hollowbody is, to put it plainly, a game that looks like it was released thirty years ago. The textures are low-resolution, the face models are rudimentary, and the environments have the blocky, pre-rendered quality of the PS1 era. This is entirely deliberate. Headware Games has recreated the aesthetic of early survival horror down to the finest detail, but whether it lands as an artistic choice or simply reads as dated will come down to personal taste.

For me, personally, it does not sit particularly well. I can appreciate the craft and intention behind it, and I do not doubt that for a certain audience, those who grew up with those games and hold them dear, it will be enormously appealing. But being realistic and being emotional are two different things, and while I am an older gamer (already in my forties), I still appreciate more modern-looking games, but it is all down to a personal choice at the end of the day.

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The fixed camera turns every abandoned room into a potential threat. You never quite know what shares the space with you.

The sound design follows the same logic. Audio filters have been applied throughout to give the game a deliberately old, slightly degraded quality, as though you are listening through hardware from another era. Again, if everything looks and feels like the mid-nineties, it makes complete sense that it should sound that way too, and the consistency of the commitment is admirable. The ambient soundscape is unsettling, and the audio design contributes meaningfully to the horror atmosphere in a way that a more polished presentation might not.

Conclusion

Hollowbody is a remarkable achievement for a solo developer, and it is clearly a labour of love for anyone who grew up terrified by the original Resident Evil and the likes. The atmosphere is thick, the tension is real, and the commitment to its retro identity is something you must appreciate, regardless of your age. If you are the kind of player who misses survival horror in its original, uncompromising form, Hollowbody will feel like a gift.

But it is a game with real limitations, some by design and some not. The story leaves too much unresolved, the deliberately archaic visuals will be a stumbling block for many players, and the classic control scheme, however authentic, demands patience that not everyone will want to offer. The PS5 version, with its third-person camera option and accumulated updates, is the best way to experience it, and at its modest price point, the barrier to entry is low. Just know what you are signing up for. Hollowbody is not trying to be a modern game. It never was.