Hollowbody is very clearly a love letter to Silent Hill 2 with a cyberpunk twist to it. This game was created by a solo developer and that in of itself is very impressive. Unfortunately though, in some ways you can feel its lack of a dev team. There are definitely some janky portions of the game, the melee combat being the most noticeable.
When engaging in melee, sometimes your weapon will just go straight through the enemy, which basically leaves you open for an attack. This can be a bit frustrating, especially because melee seems to be the best option for most engagements.
The soundtrack of this game however is phenomenal. The Akira Yamaoka inspiration in the music design is very clear and it fits into the game's vibe very well. The ambient sound is mostly great as well, however in one of the final sections of the game, the ambient sound is a bit too powerful. The noises the enemies make can also be a bit too loud at times too, and I had what I believe was a glitch and I heard the sound of a monster breathing when it was unable to be killed or anything constantly. The voice acting in this game is very high quality as well, especially since I was going into expecting it to not have any voice acting being a solo-dev indie title.
As far as puzzles, this game is pretty straightforward most of the time. A couple of the puzzles are a little bit confusing as they do not follow real world logic in them (specifically melting foam with battery acid and shooting C4 to detonate it). So sometimes you just have to try a few different things to get stuff to work, and that's okay!
The game is paced fairly well and ends right before it starts to overstay its welcome. Hollowbody has a similar pacing and level design as the first 3 Silent Hill games. If you squinted your eyes during the apartment section would swear it was Silent Hill 2!
The story of Hollowbody is interesting with some cool lore bits scattered around through notes. The ending you receive is unfortunately completely dependent on one decision made very early in the game. I am not a big fan of this design but that's okay if you are planning on doing multiple playthroughs.
The last few gripes I have with this game are the animations being a little bit odd at times (that's more of a nitpick). I am not a fan of the in game map as well, i think it would be better served as a paper map as it can be hard to tell what you're looking at sometimes with it, but I understand the choice was more for aesthetic reasons. Lastly, the loading screens are a bit immersion breaking and take a little bit too long to load, though I am sure this is mainly due to the engine being Unity.
Overall this game is pretty good and definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of survival horror, specifically the old silent hill games. Pick it up and support the solo-devs keeping classic survival horror alive!

6.5/10

YES

builds atmosphere extremely well, an easy recommend for fans of the ps2 era
I wish there was more enemy variety, the second and third areas were a little longer, and the hard difficulty was available from the beginning (survival horror devs please don't make me experience your game for the first time on normal it makes it too easy for those of us with a lot of experience with the genre)