Quite literally one of the most obscure survival horror games. Not only is it basically reflecting every American college or highschool horror film ever but also offering an AI companion that can be played by another player. Over local or remote play while sharing one screen. I played in both methods, including all difficulties and I’m very mixed about this game.

Gameplay
While having somewhat of a fixed camera, you dont have any of the tank movement. Does this matter? Only really for the coop part, as tank controls + coop and screen share would just absolutely not work.
But it does, in a way. Combat offers melee, flashlights and guns. Mostly variants of pistols and shotguns. Flashlights can be attached to guns via tapes which offers a unique system, due to abundance of tape this is ignorable, aside the weapon upgrade or rare flashlight upgrade. The flashlights not only help in dark areas but are combating enemies too. You can shine them at enemies to make them back off, to the point they are running away. It makes the enemies apparently get more damage. Melee can be mostly ignored, as the damage is too low to ever be a viable method to fight enemies, its solely used for breaking windows or doors.

Characters have abilities but from the characters in the game, only 2-3 are viable to pick. Taking a character that does more firearms damage vs. Someone that can pick locks faster? No brainer. The second character? Either you take the character that increases heals and gives hints how to progress, or the one that spots pickups easier and says if a room has been cleared. You can give your AI companion orders, to wait follow or hold a specific weapon.
More dynamic between the characters would have been appreciated, for example the melee character should not only be unlocked late in the game, but also melee should be viable for early to mid game enemies.

Difficulty wise the game has a very high reverse difficulty. The beginning can be really hard, due to the lack of ammo therefore skipping enemies is sometimes a must, especially since they respawn and if you don’t know where to go or are still exploring it can be draining a lot. At least the game never lets you get stuck as its always clear where to go. There was just a single riddle I had to look up.
Generally, most of the fun was exploring the school, collecting loot and discovering which rooms can be traversed or opened. It even has different cutscenes and reactions depending which characters your take with you.

Story
Your characters are stuck after school for various reasons and find one of their friends is missing while the school being locked and various monsters roam the campus. It has its atmosphere and tries to be scary but I felt more that the game is more mysterious in a sense that you discover a school mystery.

Sound
One of the strongest points of the game is its unique soundtrack. This enhanced the mysterious thriller setting you find yourself in, especially in the school which seems to be designed build a long time ago. Mostly its female choir which in this form I never heard in a video game.

Conclusion/TL;DR
For me it was a no brainer to pick this up. Combat might be clunky but the other gameplay, exploring the school and discovering what’s going on entertained me a lot. The coop feature is there too, but due to the very small rooms the single shared screen does not work in its favour. At least its possible! But the AI works too. My biggest issue rather is the reverse difficulty, this one is the easiest during the last hour of the game while being very difficulty during the first hour.

Just to bad you cant play with a controller

literally silent hill in a 2000s era american high school setting