Created by solo developer VidyGames, Plastomorphosis is a throwback to classic survival horror titles, down to the clunky combat, fixed camera angles and complex puzzles.

In Plastomorphosis, players must escape from a futuristic city that has been taken over by murderous mannequins and a mysterious burst of dark energy.

Is this a retro-inspired instant classic or does it fail to capture what makes a survival horror game truly good? Find out in our full review for Plastomorphosis.

Plastomorphosis
Developer: VidyGames
Publisher: VidyGames
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: January 24, 2024
Players: 1
Price: $6.99

The first thing players will notice about Plastomorphosis is how rough it is on the eyes. The entire game is overlaid with a heavy static filter, and constantly uses harsh colors as environment lighting.

These effects border on headache-inducing, making the game really difficult to go through. Older survival horror titles did not have the best visual clarity, but they certainly didn’t reach such a level of visual hostility against the player.

Thankfully, the developer does give players the option to tone down some of these effects, but even at their lowest (the effects cannot be fully turned off), Plastomorphosis‘ post-processing is difficult to stomach, and I’m not fully convinced it hasn’t given me some permanent eye damage.

Much like the games it draws inspiration from, Plastomorphosis opts for fixed camera angles, which frequently sabotage the player. Not only does the game fail to show you places of interest or highlight area connections, but it is also incredibly vague with its angles at points.

Switching camera angles is always a disorientating experience, and will most likely result in some combat deaths. Having to take a whole second to understand where you are every time that the camera switches is incredibly painful, and the overuse of cuts in some areas makes exploration tiresome.

The camera angles also seem to neglect backtracking, which is astounding, considering it is an essential part of the game. There are quite a few moments where the player is moving off-screen for a good while before a new camera cuts in, making it clear that the level layouts were only built with moving forward in mind, even though backtracking is mandatory.

The game’s puzzle logic is also somewhat spotty, frequently forcing players to make leaps of logic or simply guess some things. A good early example is a keycode puzzle that is required for progression, where the player finds two numbers painted on a corridor’s walls, as well as two numbers on a broken tablet.

The two numbers found in the tablet are separated by a very specific blood stain, which you also encounter on top of a number drawn in a wall nearby. In most games, that would indicate the number’s position quite clearly, but not in Plastomorphosis.

The weirdly specific blood stain has nothing to do with the puzzle, as players instead have to guess where the number goes. Yes, guessing is built into the puzzle, to the point where even when players ask for help on the Steam forums, the developer has to give them two different answers, which is exacerbated by the fact that every player encounters a random version of this puzzle.

It might initially seem like Plastomorphosis‘ puzzles are unintentionally bad, but the first chapter also throws us a curve ball near the end that is genuinely baffling.

Wave-matching puzzles are almost always used as filler, mostly due to how straightforward and simple they are to solve, like the ones used to hack doors in the Arkham series. Plastomorphosis puts some spice in it, by making your controls randomized, which turns what is usually a 30-second ordeal into a game of trial and error.

Incompetence, I can forgive, but Plastomorphosis is dealing in malice at this point. Developer VidyGames lost the plot with the game’s puzzle design, which only gets more obtuse and intentionally annoying as we progress through its chapters. 

The game’s combat is mostly similar to how the older Resident Evil games operate, making it so the player has to stand still and draw their weapon out before shooting.

The shooting controls are about what you would expect from a classic survival horror title, and it seems fair with the way its shots work. The game doesn’t try to cheat the player out of hitting a target, even if the controls are clunky.

Melee combat, on the other hand, is terrible. Melee is incredibly slow and doesn’t do enough damage to be viable, as the controls make it impossible to dodge enemies before getting hit. The game is somewhat generous with ammo, but avoiding enemies become increasingly harder as you progress, forcing you to use ammo regardless of resources available for the sake of not dying.

Plastomorphosis is not a broken or unfinished game in any sort of way. It is competently made despite the game design disagreements I have with it, and it is an especially solid title for a solo developer, featuring both a unique setting and unique visual identity.

Is it fun to play? Absolutely not. Even the most die-hard survival horror fans will struggle to find something to latch on to, as the game gets continuously worse as you progress through it.

Plastomorphosis starts out as a rough but tolerable survival horror game, and slowly morphs into a test of patience propped up by tedious gameplay, a bad fixed camera system, obtuse puzzles and painful exploration.