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Silly Polly Beast is a new Survival-Horror title solo-developed by indie developer Andrei Chernyshov/Anji Games and published by Top Hat Studios. This game will see players take control of a mute girl named Polly as she needs to fight her way through a horrific world filled with masked enemies and bosses. The game promises a thrilling and scary shooter experience where no character is truly on your side. With many different horror titles and indie games releasing around this time of the year, is Silly Polly Beast worth the time of gamers this Halloween season? Let’s break down the game piece by piece and make the decision for ourselves.
The gameplay of Silly Beast Polly can best be classified as an Action-Horror Shooter with a heavy emphasis on the action. The main goal of the game will see the player fight their way through three major areas in order to defeat demonic bosses.
Polly’s main methods of fighting back against the hordes of enemies standing in your path are her skateboard and a revolver. The skateboard can be used as a melee weapon, while the revolver is, of course, ranged. Both do the same amount of damage, but fighting enemies from a range is typically the safer option.
Silly Beast Polly can be quite a difficult game. Enemies can kill Polly with only a few attacks, and most rooms in the game have many of them swarm you from multiple directions. Healing items also take time to use, making it easy for an enemy to get close and hit them after they use it, essentially invalidating the heal. Players will need to constantly be on their toes if they wish to progress.
The one saving grace when it comes to this difficulty is that every enemy has a chance to drop ammo and healing items upon being killed. However, even this safety net can fail you, as each enemy will take a lot of bullets to kill, and the chance of them dropping anything at all is completely random.
Aside from your main revolver (which constantly reloads any time the player reaches a flaming barrel), the game has several sub-weapons, such as a shotgun and an SMG. Ammo for these is quite rare, but they make quick work of enemies and should always be used.
While the high difficulty in Silly Polly Beast can be quite frustrating when you are low on both healing items and ammo during sections where the game expects you to kill many enemies, the very frequent checkpoints of the game thankfully make it easy to shake off any failures and try again immediately.
There are also multiple points in the game where the player can theoretically run past enemies or simply kill the one blocking the portal to the next area. However, because each enemy in the game drops a mask the first time they are killed, the player is encouraged to defeat every enemy in order to exchange these masks for extra skins for Polly’s skateboard or lore books.
Silly Polly Beast’s gameplay might put emphasis on the action, but rest assured that there is still plenty of horror to be found in this game. Much of this horror comes from the story and implications about the past rather than shoving creepy imagery in the player’s face.
From moment one, the game puts emphasis on how cruel the world can be to young women like Polly. Whether it be a random drunkard whom she walks by or the Orphanage Director from her past, adults in this world can be very cruel.
Listening to and obeying these abusers can only result in cruelty. Whether it be optional moments like walking toward an angry when asked and getting an instant game over, or doing a sidequest to get someone alcohol, instantly turning them into an enemy, the player must quickly learn to put themselves in Polly’s shoes and not trust those who have only cruel intentions.
This theme is, of course, present in the plot of the game as well. As the player listens to the so-called tormented king and kills demons, Polly’s body will be changed and altered into that of an Imp. This transformation is against her will and a betrayal, but that is par for the course in this world. One look at the several corpses around the Tormented will tell you that Polly was far from the first girl to go about a journey like this.
Because of the horrors she has to experience each and every day, Polly, as a character, has an abrasive personality and a desire to fight back against them. What this rage results in can be righteous and also dangerous when not thought all the way through, as the game eventually demonstrates.
If this type of narrative and style of horror is something you enjoy, then the story delivered by Silly Polly Beast will be one more than worth experiencing. Just be ready to retry the bosses over and over, as this game does not pull any punches.
Visually, Silly Polly Beast is a masterpiece in artstyle. The character models all vividly pop against the dark red and black areas of the game and are great at getting Polly’s emotions across during cutscenes. The game’s character portraits also do wonders in getting what type of character Polly is across in only a few expressions.
Of course, when talking about the game’s visual design, one must talk about the true star of the show: the camera angle and how much the game plays with expectations surrounding it.
The camera in Silly Polly Beast is static and out of the player’s control, but that doesn’t mean it’s stationary. Every area in the game has a set camera angle, which can turn the game from a top-down shooter to a 2D sidescrolling experience depending on what best fits each section.
At no point does any camera angle feel inappropriate for the game. Polly controls perfectly regardless of where the camera is pointed. Seeing how the game twists and changes the camera angle at any given turn continuously left me in awe and was a highlight of the experience.
Another surprising highlight of the game was the soundtrack. Which can turn from ambient to rocking in the blink of an eye. The brief sections where Polly rides her skateboard and boss fights in particular had some memorable tracks that enhanced those set pieces.
Overall, if you’re in the mood for a great Action-Horror title this Halloween season, then I would wholeheartedly recommend picking up Silly Beast Polly. This title wasn’t on my radar at all until this month but it has quickly become one of my favorite games of the year.
Silly Polly Beast
Bottom Line
Silly Polly Beast is a fantastic indie horror title that is sure to win over survival-horror fans. While the gameplay can be occasionally frustrating with how difficult it can be, the visuals and story of the title make for an engaging experience that is worth player's time.
