LifeisXbox’s Silver Chains Review | Silver Chains is a first-person horror game developed by Cracked Heads and published by Headup Games. In Sliver Chains you take on the role of Peter, who after a mysterious car crash finds himself in front of a big, haunted mansion. After suddenly becoming unconscious in front of this mansion, he finds himself in a bed inside of the house. However, there is no sign of life at all. As you try to uncover the secrets of this mansion and its past, you will come across many obstacles in the shape of ghosts, puzzles and logically, this being a horror game, jump scares. Do you have the nerves to explore this spooky, haunted mansion all on your own with just your trusty lantern?
ℹ️ | Bradley played Silver Chains for 7 hours on Xbox Series X. This game is also available on Xbox One and S/X, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, and PC.
What we liked!
- Story | In Silver Chains, you play as Peter. He crashes his car into a tree in front of a mysterious mansion, and as this mansion is his only hope of survival, he approaches it. You start to notice mysterious figures in and around the manor, when he’s about to knock on the door, he faints. He now wakes up inside of this dark, most likely, haunted mansion. There’s no sign of life, yet someone.. or something brought him there. You’ll find strange notes written by a woman. In her notes, she talks about strange evens that have happened to her and events that have occurred inside of her mansion. These notes are a clever way to add some story to Silver Chains, as I think missing these would leave you with unanswered questions which is a great way to get players to search in order to make sense of previous events. Not long after Peter finds signs of life, or should I say, death? It seems like this mansion is inhabited by a long dead family, there are ghosts, a puppet and even a monster who is lurking behind the walls. The story of Silver Chains was surprisingly well written but I do wish there was a little more explanation regarding what happened after the ending of Silver Chains. There were even a few voice actors who did a pretty decent job. The voice actors were Christian Serritiello, who played Peter, Matilda Lindberg, and Tasmin, who also had roles in the game, but I won’t mention these as I don’t want to spoil anything. After doing a 2nd playthrough, I did fly through the game because I had already discovered all of the manor’s secrets in the last playthrough. However, it was fun to see how everything lined up with the ending of the game.
- Graphics | This game was developed in Unreal Engine 4, an engine that is very well known for being very powerful. The team behind Silver Chains surely used the engine to its full potential! As you explore this haunted mansion you will walk in long hallways and dark rooms, every one of these rooms are very well crafted and carefully designed. There only were a few areas that I did find a little disappointing when it came to graphics, the outside and the attic for example. Overall, the game had stunning graphics that kept me on the edge of my seat while waiting for jumps cares to scare the living daylights out of me.
- Sound Design & Music | As I am walking in this dark, silent mansion I hear the wind outside and my own footsteps on the floor, even when I’m not walking… wait… those weren’t mine, were they? Exploring this mansion with all these sound effects was amazing. I was surprised as to how many sound effects there even were! There were sound effects for the floor cracking above me, the windows outside, a rocking chair that moves as I touch it, I think…, and more… Even when I walk on different substances such as dirt or carpet, my footsteps will sound different! At some points in the game there was even music, dark music. I did enjoy some of the tracks but it would have been great if they had be a little longer. I personally loved Silver Chains theme song!
Somewhere between
- Jump scares | Silver Chains is absolutely riddled with jump scares! Early on in the game there aren’t really any jump scares, so I was slowly starting to not expect them at all. When the game had successfully made me believe there were none at all, they threw one at me, and gosh, it got me good! You may not be as spooked of it as I was because I just told you of its existence, but luckily as with most horror games, you won’t know when to expect them! After this first jump scare it suddenly felt as if the whole mansion woke up, every few minutes there was one waiting around the corner for me! At one point there were 2 jump scares incredibly close to each other and I totally did not expect that! It was just that little disappointing that there weren’t any at the very beginning of the game and they felt a little repetitive.
- Character Designs | I personally wasn’t a huge fan of some of the character models. One character that looked great was the puppet. Sadly that’s the only one in Silver Chains that appealed to me. The ghosts for example looked more like plastic rather than real ghosts, and so did the few human models in the game. Now, you don’t see yourself very often, but when you do see your arms for example they do look fairly polished in comparison to the other models. The Mother didn’t look very realistic either, but not that that really matters as her purpose is to scare you!
What we disliked
- Issues | Despite this being a very fun game in my opinion, it does come with it’s fair share of issues. At one point in the game there will be a moment with a lot of particles, sadly they didn’t optimise this enough and my Xbox suffered from serious frame rate issues. On the bright side, it wasn’t that long. One feature that was full of issues was the inventory system itself. Opening the inventory allows you to see previous quotes and objects you’ve collected. Hovering over these objects will show you its description and a 3D model. Now, this 3D model and the quotes I talked about are both on the same layer, they overlap, meaning that I am able to see the 3D model behind of the text, which shouldn’t be happening at all… This issue happens 100% of the time and it’s odd to see that this hasn’t been fixed yet. Sometimes the tiles of quotes clipped into each other as well, making it difficult to read. There was also one, but only one, point in the game where I got soft locked. I was supposed to be hiding in a closet and the Mother was scripted to look into this specific closet, but because I wasn’t in there the game didn’t do what is was supposed to do and I was stuck inside of that room. This soft lock can actually be seen in the picture above, the Mother is looking in there, but I’m standing somewhere else! Despite these issues, they are very minor and don’t ruin the experience at all!
How long to beat the story | Approximately 4-5 Hours
How long to achieve 1000G | Approximately 6-7 Hours
Similar with | Hello Neighbour
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