Solid survival horror game that wears the PS1 inspiration on its sleeve. The gameplay here is pretty solid with a well designed map with lots of keys to gather and puzzles to solve. Like classic games in the genre it rewards paying attention to your environment for clues. There’s a fair amount of backtracking required for some puzzles but the house isn’t so big that it ever takes more than a couple minutes. By the end of the game you’ll unlock various shortcuts that come in clutch when you need to save before a boss fight.

Speaking of boss fights and combat in general, it’s a mixed bag. The first boss arena is pretty annoying as you’re on a rotating platform so you’re mostly fighting the camera rather than the boss. Later bosses are better and I appreciate that they have a visible health bar. Alisa really leans into resource management as the pillar of its difficulty so there are some fights where you have to restart since you’ve used all your ammo. Having that visual on damage done helps you gauge your progress.

I really liked the resource system here. When enemies are defeated, players collect gears. These are used at the merchant in the save rooms for both resources such as weapons and ammo, as well as being the resource required to save your progress. I like that this forces you to decide between fighting regular enemies or running past them and weighing not only the risk involved with combat but also if the currency earned is worth the ammo required. The only negative I see is that players using the auto aim option get less gears.

The biggest annoyance with the game is that there are some moments where you’re dropped into a situation, sometimes quite literally, where you have a puzzle or boss fight begin with no way of exiting and failure means a game over. I understand that managing saves and losing progress is part of the genre but some moments in Alisa felt like I was blindsided. One puzzle in particular just really feels like there should have been a checkpoint for that one instance.

Plot line here is not interesting and the intentional (?) bad voicing acting doesn’t do the game any favours. It nails the PS1 aesthetic however and I really like how the game looks, even going as far as being in 4:3. The dollhouse inspiration felt pretty unique however the game isn’t scary. There’s some creepy elements and enemy designs but nothing that actually ever scared or even startled me.

For a game mostly developed by one person I was pretty impressed. It scratched the classic Resident Evil itch I had to help tide me over until the next release. Would definitely check out another title from this dev.