Sorry We're Closed
Released: November 14th, 2024
Developer: A la Mode Games
Publisher: Akapura Games
Systems: PC (reviewed) Copy provided by publisher, colleague Laura Kate Dale consulted on game
Can one get away with talking about Sorry We’re Closed without mentioning how unapologetically queer it is? I’ve done it in the first sentence, so I’ve buggered my chance at such a feat.
In fairness, you’d have to try so hard to not acknowledge it that I’d suspect an unsavory motive for it. Nevertheless, one cannot assume queerness is all this game has going for it.
Sorry We’re Closed is a love story. It’s a love story filtered through the lens of psychological horror and informed by angelology, all with a pop-punk aesthetic. Is it pop-punk? It sounds like something that might be correct, but I’m very out of touch and can’t speak with authority on the matter.
What I can speak confidently about is fucked up horror imagery, and there’s plenty of it found between gorgeous splashes of pink and blue. Comparisons to Silent Hill are downright unavoidable, from the 90s horror sensibilities to the rusty, dingy, germaphobe-baiting environments that contrast against the many more vibrant elements.
Sorry We’re Closed joins a subgenre of games explicitly invoking 1990s survival horror. It comes complete with fixed camera angles, PSX-flavored graphics, and gameplay that involves both combat and inventory-based environmental puzzles.
It’s really rather good, too.
Michelle has a shit job and a small flat with rent she can barely afford - the millennial dream, essentially. She can’t get over her ex but she’s got incredible taste in jackets. Anyway, there’s a demon called The Duchess who is basically the very culmination of gender as a concept, and they’ve ordered Michelle to love them or face the consequences.
A millennial romance, essentially.
I very much enjoy Sorry’s writing. It maintains a witty tone throughout and features a cast of really likable characters. Through her journey to break a love-starved demon’s curse, Michelle meets eccentric celestial entities of both demonic and angelic persuasions. They’re visually incredible, and their unique views of the world are super enjoyable.
There are a few other love stories on the side. Humans stumble through messy feelings, demons and angels fall for each other, all kinds of star-crossed stuff’s going on. Michelle can have a direct hand in the outcomes of these relationships, meddling to wreck them or working to fix them. You’ll get to make such decisions along the way to your choice of ending.
Progress runs along a routine of waking up, talking to folks on your street, going to a monstrous shitshow of what I’ll call a dungeon, then returning. Dungeons are where the survival horror chicanery takes place, coming with a few conceptually neat mechanics.
First off, Michelle’s curse has planted a third eye on her head which, when opened, reveals a secondary world in a radius around her - the mortal world or the demonic one, depending on her current location. This is used for several environmental puzzles, as what may be a physical part of one world may not be in the other.
At its most basic, one use of the eye will be to walk through masses of thorns found in the demon world by rendering them incorporeal within the eye’s radius of normalcy. Just don’t try to run, as it’ll make Michelle’s eye close and you’ll get a thorning.
Demonic monsters will stagger their way to Michelle as she runs around doing her business. They’re taken down with either an axe, handgun, or later on a shotgun. When aiming to attack, you enter a first-person view and cannot move. From here, it’s a straightforward issue of getting the enemy in your sights and firing - unless of course, you use that whole second sight dealie.
If you open your ol’ third eye while monsters are within its radius, they’ll be temporarily stunned. Should they merely walk into it while it’s active, closing and reopening will stun them as many times as you like, though you’ll want to consider repositioning yourself to keep them away.
Crucially, the eye makes enemies incorporeal but their hearts will be exposed, the destruction of which deals lethal damage. Most demons contain multiple hearts which’ll need shooting in sequence. They’re stunned a little each time you hit one, and getting them all in accurate succession nabs you a perfect rating.
The catch is that shots to anywhere other than the colorful heart targets won’t do anything while the radius is active.
It’s a cool system, and together with its art style, the search for weak points in first-person puts me in mind of Killer7. It’s never a bad time to think about Killer7. While most comparisons rightly focus on Silent Hill, there’s no way the Grasshopper classic had zero influence here.
I really dig the combat mechanics as ideas, but I struggled somewhat with the way they’ve been implemented.
Even with settings altered and some upgrades that increase enemy stun times, enemies recover from heart shots incredibly quickly. The problem is that hearts are pinned to specific body parts, so if an enemy is frozen in position after hitting one, you’ve a split second to shoot the next before it jolts out of your sights. Many is the time I’ve lined up a shot, only to have the target damn near teleport and cause me to miss.
It’s not so bad if the hearts are mostly contained to the torso, but those fixed to limbs move around so much it’s a bloody hassle. If you can play a third-person game with a mouse, it won’t be quite as bad, but it’s still really annoying, and the accessibility menu’s sticky targeting to make shots easier feels pretty useless.
Of course, the option to forego hearts in favor of just dumping bullets into demon flesh until they jerk over remains, but even basic enemies can become a huge resource drain if killed in this way. Going for the heart is obviously the intended method, around which combat is designed.
When one does make it work, it’s very pleasing. Hearts make progressively more rewarding noises as you take them out in order, and there’s just something inextricably cool about it. It’s a shame I struggled with it, because it’s a fundamentally great system.
Not long into the game you’ll acquire a special use weapon, the Heartbreaker, which gradually charges as you shoot enemy hearts. When fully charged, the entire world freezes as the surroundings turn solid pink and enemies become frozen silhouettes with a huge heart inside them. One blast from the Heartbreaker wipes them out.
The sheer audiovisual spectacle of it is worth the price of admission, though it’s wasted on regular enemies. It’s best use when exploring is to take out the largest of the demons, since they can’t be killed conventionally, only temporarily knocked out.
It’s also required for boss fights, which are all about charging the weapon in between avoiding a boss’ attack patterns.
These huge monsters - typically monstrous versions of the Duchess’ past “affections” - don’t just have the usual weak points, but multiple large hearts that can only be restored by the Heartbreaker. Their regular weak points are often kept out of the Third Eye’s radius until they attack, at which point they should be avoided and shot.
Bosses are huge, imaginatively designed body horrors, and they’re theoretically well designed. Michelle’s lack of evasive move and the tight windows in which to shoot hearts can make them a bit more annoying than they ought to be, though the less frustrating ones actually feel more manageable than regular mooks.
Where Sorry We’re Closed shines brightest is in the stuff not related to survival horror gameplay, joining those few games I’ve played where I feel I’d like a little less game. It’s not that the gameplay is bad - even at their least appealing, I enjoyed the proper horror sections - but if I could choose between more of that or more character interactions, I’d immediately opt to rebalance the ratio in favor of the latter.
My favorite part of the whole campaign is Michelle’s street, talking with characters each night to advance their own development and regularly visiting such locations as Marty’s record shop or Darren’s bar. I particularly enjoy talking to the demons, many of whom have no real plot relevance but provide fun comments regardless.
Some of the minor characters have a little sidequest attached to them. A shadowy figure that appears in each dungeon wants to eat disgusting things, while a demon chef in The Duchesses’ employ wishes for new ingredients to make its food compelling again. Neither creature tells you exactly what they want, they can only describe it, so you’ll need to suss out which item to give them - it’s not hard to figure out though.
I’d have enjoyed more of these requests through the game. Not only do they provide a little more to do, they provide a fun glimpse into the deeper workings of the celestial world. They’re often a bit of a laugh, too.
One particular subplot involving an angel who’s gradually losing their divinity due to a relationship with a mysterious demon is particularly good. Here, we get to fully examine one of Sorry’s most prominent themes - how love changes a person, and what can happen when you try to love without that change.
The angel, Chamuel, is a compelling foil to The Duchess. Both want love without anything else altering, but Chamuel’s relationship is sincere in contrast to the courtship being forced on Michelle. For Chamuel, love means losing the status of angel, a pain the demonic counterparts know all too well. The Duchess doesn’t want to lose the power they’ve accrued through demonhood, but wants the pain of being a demon to go away, and thinks being loved is the answer.
Love is give and take. As soon as you let one or more people get that close to you, compromise will always be needed. In a way, your life isn’t entirely yours anymore. Sorry We’re Closed is, in part, about what it can look like when someone’s idea of love is nothing but take, when a person refuses to make a sacrifice that is, ultimately, worth trading in for.
Through Michelle, you get to decide what love is worth. This isn’t a game full of big dramatic choices, but what forks to be found in the road are worth mulling over, especially when there can be unforeseen consequences - relationships aren’t straightforward, after all.
I’ve mentioned the visuals already, but I really enjoy them. The horror segments don’t hide their inspiration, what with all the rusted metal, alien geometry, and distinctly grimy environments that do the original Silent Hill’s Otherworld justice. It contrasts against the gorgeously bold colors of the UI and characters. Michelle’s bright blue hair and searing pink jacket really stand out.
Her assortment of weapons are fantastically designed, too. Not only are they colorful, their vaguely canine attributes make something as simple as a pistol look exotic. It actually growls as you reload it, and I’ve not once gotten sick of hearing it.
On the subject of sound, there’s quite a memorable soundtrack, from the chill vibes in the normal world to the demonic locations’ threatening eeriness, it’s all good stuff. It’s the boss fight music that steals the show, though. I’m a big fan of when a game soundtrack starts throwing lyrics into the mix, it’s almost always a perfect mix of cool and corny, a combo Sorry We’re Closed pulls off with style.
This a game with an art direction that simple speaks to me. Sometimes it literally sings to me, too.
Sorry’s inherent queerness is far from the sole reason I enjoy it, but I gotta admit - it helps. Pretty much every relationship is some flavor of gay, and that’s fine by me. Not only is it deeply baked in, it’s all just there, a casual and natural normal that I’ve been fortunate to have in my own life long enough that I often forget it’s seen by others as “different.”
That’s one of the game’s most personally compelling traits. It’s not merely “representation” like you see in other games. It’s reflection. It’s us. It’s the world as I see it, and while I’m all about that gay rep, Sorry’s world means more than a big name title letting a queer or two onscreen as a treat.
Sorry We’re Closed not only pays homage to classic survival horror, it provides a truly unique love story that delves into the very nature of romance itself. For all its theming and grisly imagery, however, there’s a script with a pointed sense of humor and a cast of fun characters to match. Combat has good ideas set back by some awkward implementation, but the moments of annoyance aren’t enough to pull down the sum of all parts.
Now I simply must know where she got that jacket!
8/10
