Psycho Dead Preview - Classic Survival Horror With a Psychic Twist

IN OUR WORDS

A zombie in a narrow corridor bring a familiar survival horror problem. You can spend a bullet to take it down, or aim for its leg and slip past while it’s on the floor. Psycho Dead adds a third option. If there’s a loose object within reach, Elixia can pull it towards her and hurl it at the creature. Suddenly, the room you were searching for ammunition might contain everything you need to get through it. That’s the idea at the heart of Moon Catalyst’s third-person survival horror game, and its hour-long Steam demo gives you a laboratory full of reasons to try it.

Elixia wakes up inside a secret research facility where the experiments are loose and the way out has to be pieced together room by room. The opening makes its Resident Evil influences easy to spot, from the limited inventory to the locked routes you’ll have to revisit. 

There’s a trace of Elfen Lied in its red-helmeted opening too. Those influences come together in the way you explore.  The same psychic force that can crush a creature can also break open a key cabinet, giving you a reason to look at the lab differently every time you run into something you can’t get past.

Fighting your way through the laboratory

When a creature blocks a corridor, getting past it can be as simple as shooting it in the leg and moving while it’s down. The shotgun can stagger enemies at close range, which gives Elixia another way to create space before a monster gets close enough to grab her. 

Closing that distance carries a different risk with Limps, which explode after they die. The demo also features the Ripper, one of the laboratory’s experimental creatures, and turrets that can keep a stretch of corridor under fire.

When ammunition is scarce, Elixia can look for something in the room to throw. Psychokinesis lets her pull loose objects towards her and launch them at speed. Shock Shot gives her a direct ranged attack when there’s nothing handy to throw, while Crush applies sustained pressure until its target implodes. 

Against a turret, she can spend Psychic Energy to absorb incoming fire with Barrier, provided she keeps the shield facing the threat.

Exploring rooms you’ll need to revisit

Crush also comes into play after a fight, when Elixia needs to break open a key cabinet to get farther into the facility. Between those cabinets, locked routes and puzzles such as the electrical panel, there are reasons to return to rooms after the first pass.

Glowing red crates can be broken open for supplies, though limited inventory space determines how much Elixia can carry away. Her Glowing Bracelet leaves that space free and lights the area even while she aims, so it stays useful when a search turns into a fight.

The save room gives those trips an optional purpose as well. Its wardrobe lets you spend tokens hidden around the lab on outfits, with both the tokens and unlocked costumes shared across saves. How much help you get finding things depends on the difficulty. 

Classic removes the nearby indicators for items and puzzles, putting more emphasis on how closely you look at the room. Both Classic and Nightmare also feature some enemies that Normal leaves out. If you forget how an ability works while retracing your steps, the tutorials are available from the pause menu.

The look and sound of the laboratory

Psycho Dead looks fantastic. Blood spatters across the laboratory, and grotesque creatures turn up often enough to make you wary of the next room. The level of detail also gives the facility a history. There are traces of what happened there even in the quieter stretches, when the music and the sound of creatures moving nearby do much of the work. There’s even a brief chase with a massive robotic creature that breaks up the slower exploration and gives you a reason to stop looking around and run.

Elixia’s character design is the one part of the presentation that feels out of place to me. There’s a reason for her to look inhuman, but something about the way she’s rendered makes her feel disconnected from the world around her. The other characters look at home in the laboratory, while Elixia stands out even in quieter scenes. It’s especially noticeable given how polished the rest of the game looks.

The full campaign will show how much the decisions change when Elixia has different rooms to work with and different creatures in her way. The free demo is available on Steam. The full game is planned for PC via Steam and GOG, as well as PlayStation 5.

WHAT STAYS WITH US

Closing impressions

Psycho Dead is for survival horror fans who enjoy the slower stretches of Resident Evil, where finding a key means revisiting a corridor and every bullet has to earn its keep. The psychic powers give those familiar decisions a twist. If you enjoy searching for clues, solving environmental puzzles, and hearing a creature before you see it, the free demo gives you about an hour of that.

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