It’s been three monotonous years since Michelle and her ex broke up and she isn’t taking it well. It doesn’t help that her ex appears on a popular soap everyone on her block watches. But Michelle perseveres, working her dead-end job and talking to people around the neighborhood. That all changes one night when, after closing up the corner store she works at, Michelle heads home and turns in for the night. A bump in the night turns to green pouring out from the cracks in her front door until it slowly opens. A being, too large to pass through the door without ducking, crouches a bit before entering. “I have a beautiful opportunity for you.” This is Sorry, We’re Closed.
Sorry We’re Closed
Developer: à la mode games
Price: $25
Platforms: PlayStation 4/5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC
A PlayStation 5 code was provided for this review
Sorry We’re Closed is a love story wrapped in a survival-horror package. If I were to list out things about Sorry We’re Closed as descriptors, survival-horror would be third or fourth on the list. Because while the core gameplay is tank controls and killing creepy baddies, you’ll spend most of your time dealing with relationships. Michelle, our protagonist, is living on a corner in London that’s particularly juicy when it comes to romance, angels, and demons. This allows Michelle to think about anything else beyond her own relationships and dealing with the fallout from her breakup.
After this, a being enters her room and offers her a “beautiful opportunity,” Michelle awakens to find herself in a beautifully decorated lounge. A strange creature resembling the head of a raven or crow, with thin blue limbs, ushers her in. This is the Dream Eater and while they’re masquerading as a gracious host, their name belies any sense of hospitality being offered. Soon, Michelle finds herself being chased down a hallway and the game begins in earnest.
The strange creature that entered her room? The Duchess. The Duchess is interested in one thing, love. However, the demon concept of love varies, and while some angels and demons find love alluring, they’re all a little scared of it. That’s because while love is a beautiful and wondrous thing to these creatures, it’s a very human emotion. Caught too deep in love and a demon or an angel could become human, and who wants that? The Duchess isn’t looking for that, however, she is looking to harvest love and she sees Michelle as a fountain of it. Despite Michelle pining for her ex for three years and refusing to move on, The Duchess has zeroed in on her as the perfect specimen for her harvest.
Sorry We’re Closed bleeds sexuality and romance. While most creatures in the game might fail to achieve the standard of beauty set out in the mainstream, in an alternative culture the demons and angels of Sorry We’re Closed are hot. The Duchess gifts Michelle a third eye in the form of a tattoo on her forehead. With the third eye open, Michelle can cross between her world and the demon world. By doing so, she can also see the true form of entities that she’s known in her day-to-day life. Her guide in dealing with this curse, Robyn, has two different wardrobes depending on whether or not you’re viewing her through your regular or third eyes.
Impressively, much of the game has this double-texture look. As you explore environments in an attempt to lift your curse and face The Duchess, you’ll find yourself in different places. Exploring them requires the third eye to pass through various caltrops and traps intent on impeding your progress. The third eye creates a circle around Michelle, revealing the demon world or perhaps the real world. Equipped with just a hatchet, using the third eye, Michelle can see the hearts of the various enemies that seek to do her harm. By aiming at their hearts, she’s able to perform combos that can take the enemies down quickly. If an enemy is within the third eye range when Michelle uses it, it’ll stun the enemy briefly.
As you navigate the environments solving basic puzzles and talking to various demons that might prefer torture to letting you go, you’ll notice how nearly everything looks different with the third eye. Navigating around is done from a fixed camera perspective, a beautiful homage to survival horror’s past. Combat, however, is perceived through the first-person. Entering first-person, enabling the third eye, and firing at those hearts to build combos. Soon, Robyn will give you the Heartbreaker, a gun that requires combos to charge and once it does, can hit a heart that even Michelle can’t see.
The Heartbreaker is the focal point for boss battles and enemies that simply won’t die normally. Another staple in survival horror are the enemies that persist. You do everything to kill them normally and they go down, but eventually they’ll get back up. Sorry We’re Closed allows you to use the heartbreaker on these enemies to eliminate them permanently. The only weapons in the game are a hatchet, pistol, shotgun, and the Heartbreaker. More weapons would seem unnecessary because Sorry We’re Closed isn’t really about combat. Sure, there’s a fair amount of combat in the game, with some pressured situations that really ramp up the fun. However, Sorry We’re Closed is about relationships.
Combat exists as a means to an end. Michelle isn’t a combat master and, while she’s fairly proficient with the weapons given to her, she’s using this curse as an opportunity to learn more about herself. About the meaning of love and what it takes to survive such an ordeal. Throughout the game Michelle meets various demons and angels that deal with love in one way or another. Chamuel is dating someone who refuses to see him now because they’re falling too deep in love and risk losing it all to become human. Darrel is upset because he’s proposed to Oakley several times and has been rebuked every time. Michelle, through her journey, learns that love takes courage and a willingness to jump into the unknown. If she so chooses, she can help these wayward souls throughout her journey.
Beautifully enough, you’re not missing anything by denying these angels and demons the knowledge that Michelle may or may not take in from this experience. Perhaps you want to give in to The Duchess, or maybe you want to rebuke the curse AND return to the monotonous existence Michelle once lived. Pining for her ex through a thick leaded-glass screen as she works every day in the corner store. By making choices with the demons and angels around town, you unlock or close out different endings to the story.
Sorry We’re Closed is an absolutely gorgeous game despite being an ugly, low-poly rough-texture game. The culmination turns it into something downright stunning. And while some of the humans in the game just have their model as their portrait when speaking with them, the important characters have a beautiful 2D portrait representing them. And the characters have such flat representations but are genuinely compelling. Darrel, a shirtless man running a bar that gets a rat for Oakley and thinks it’s a hamster and is exactly the type of jerk you expect him to be. It’s a disaster waiting to happen yet his intent seems pure. This type of fixation can’t be healthy, but that almost doesn’t matter, they’re in love. Heartbreak isn’t an end, it’s merely a transitional period.
I could gush about Sorry We’re Closed for longer but this review is actually just for the console version. Which means changes! The console release adds New Game+, aim assist options, new difficulty modes, gyroscope support on Switch and PlayStation, and a new Time Attack mode. The accessibility options are varied, offering an enemy lock on, toggle or hold option for aiming and running, a first-person POV range, and aim assist. Unfortunately, there’s no colorblind mode, although as someone with trichromacy it’s difficult for me to spot the necessity for it.
For a port job, this is pretty by-the-numbers and the game works great. I never saw any slow-downs or issues graphically. Sorry We’re Closed ran as expected with almost no issues. Truly, this is what you would expect from a port. There’s also an option that struck me called Water of Life. Michelle can recover health by finding and drinking water. This can be from a sink or from water bottles she finds throughout the game. Water of Life permanently adds a water bottle to Michelle’s inventory. You can have this enabled regardless of what difficulty you’re on. I think it’s an impressive option to have, allowing players to play on the hardest difficulty and give themselves a backup option for practice.
The Final Word
Sorry We’re Closed is one of the best games I’ve played this year. Contextually, it struck me with its storytelling wrapped-up in a tight survival horror package and delivered in short form. Ported to consoles, it runs flawlessly with no issues and an expanded option set and new modes, making Sorry We’re Closed on consoles an excellent option for play.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
