Saint of Chains

[h1]Another Great Tribute To The Classic Horror[/h1] One of the surprising discoveries I dug up during Steam February Nextfest 2026. Saint Of Chains is a wonderful first-person psychological horror. The game takes hefty inspiration from classic horror titles, especially from the Silent Hill series and Cry Of Fear. Even the gameplay structures, the low-poly models, and the monster designs just exude the vibe of retro horror games. It may be a short experience, but it's definitely one worth your time! [h2]Things I Like About Saint Of Chains:[/h2] [list] [*][b]Excellent Atmosphere:[/b] Once again games like this one show us that you don't need high-fidelity graphics or realistic gore effects to create effective horror material. Saint Of Chains excels at building up the tension and subtly places some set pieces to make the atmosphere more nerve-wracking. The environment is often dark. The game likes to put creepy graffiti and unsettling pictures on the walls and corners to make you feel like you're always being watched. The constant low humming is a wonderful way to decorate the already oppressive ambience. The randomly played sound effects make it even better. Imagine when you walk…

Saint of Chains isn't shy about its inspirations. It isn't ground-breaking in its execution. It isn't interested in doing anything especially unique, and ends up feeling bizarrely 'cosy' as a horror game, content as it is to revisit everything that horror games of higher profile have been doing for years. But then, you look at how excellent its post-launch support is; how well the devs take on player feedback, how readily they respond to issues, and how expertly they implement major game improvements, and you conclude that Saint of Chains is not the posterchild for perfecting the indie horror genre - but it's a damn good representative for indie development done right, and that demands celebration.

Sadly, it’s a resounding no from me. I have absolutely no idea what state Saint of Chains was in before its supposedly “major” 1.20 update, but given the four hours I’ve just invested in playing it, I can only imagine. The biggest problem is that the game feels almost entirely derivative. It essentially lifts the Silent Hill aesthetic wholesale, alongside some fairly obvious nods to other recent indie horror games. There’s nothing inherently wrong with taking inspiration from something. Silent Hill has influenced horror games for decades, but there needs to be something of your own underneath it. Here, there really isn’t. If you’re even remotely familiar with the franchise, everything feels painfully cookie-cutter. The gameplay doesn’t do much to distinguish itself either. You navigate the same painfully familiar horror-game locations, a hospital, a school, etc. wandering through marginally different corridors until you encounter yet another door that’s stuck, locked or blocked. Then it’s off to find the inevitable key or item required to progress, occasionally encountering an enemy along the way. Rinse and repeat. Combat is absolute jank. The input delay on blocking made tryin…

An entertaining little psychological horror game, but definitely not survival horror. The game is mostly linear, and you don't really have to worry about your resources. The first boss is a total joke. You just shoot up your pistol ammo and that's it .. done. The second boss is definitely the best, and while the final boss is a real pain in the ass, I've been through worse.

Condemned: Criminal Origins and Silent Hill 2 have a love child. This game is that love child. It's your duty to shoot it with a Deagle .50 Cal.

8/10 A solid first-person survival-horror. The Silent Hill inspiration is reflected in the enemy design and map design. Always isolated, your protagonist frequently crosses over to a 'nightmare realm'. Another inspiration I noticed was Condemned. The occasional communication with an ally over the radio and the narrative based around a cult gave me strong vibes of the first Condemned game. Inspiration alone isn't the only thing the game has going for it. The devs clearly had a story they wanted to tell and accomplished it with this game. The cutscenes are short (and skippable) and have an old-school charm - between the low-fi textures and sometimes awkward line delivery. The story is relatively easy to follow, with fragments delivered by cutscene and story-progression item descriptions. Enemy design and environments are where this game shines. Where some indie horrors use trash mobs over & over again, Saint of Chains introduces a new enemy the instant you start to get used to them. Enemy design is intricate and there are lots of small details relevant to the protagonist's mental state. The dev team took some of the best design motifs from Jacob's Ladder & Silent Hill 2 whe…