There’s been a few indie efforts playing off nostalgia for the old survival horror format. Fixed camera angles, puzzle solving and limited resources used to be the norm. I get why people clamour for it but the end results aren’t always desirable. The Order of the Snake Scale certainly falls into this camp. FM Simple Game Studios’ small budget is forgivable but, from a design perspective, it’s a messy effort.
The story focuses around a murder in the small mining town of Happy Rock. As Seth Vidius, an investigator hired by the NML corporation, your job is solve the disappearance and any other weirdness that ensues. As a crime procedural, it’s all over the place. Whilst the Sheriff introduces you to the cadaver, the one witness to the crime is drunk and useless. It never feels like something with threads to pull on with favours for favours being the only way forward.
Seth doesn’t ask many questions and the whole tale feels like something he stumbles into. There’s a Eldritch element to the story and you meet a cult early on. There’s some predictable corporate shenanigans and most of the townsfolk has rough things to say about their grip over the town. Seth will pick up notes during his sleuthing that usually points to puzzle solutions. Some backstory is delivered through this as well. It’s not especially compelling. People generally have little to add and act as quest givers as you go from A to B to accomplish C.
The breadcrumbs to lead you there aren’t always obvious. Each person tends to have a request to find something or someone. Typically, they point you to a location for you to search. Whilst the game’s short enough to not outstay its welcome, it doesn’t feel like you’re solving a mystery. At best, you’re giving someone closure in exchange for something that leads you further along the main thread. Even then, very little of The Order of the Snake Scale seems optional. So many of these errands feel like fluff but they will ultimately end in the game’s closing credits. It doesn’t feel feel like a smooth, curated journey and borrows from the adventure game logic of old.
Seth operates with tank controls but, rather than using the left stick for all of his movements, he pivots using the right stick. It’s surprisingly cumbersome and it’s not helped by the frequent camera switches. Thankfully, it’s not a game that demands a lot of precision. Most of the game takes place outdoors and areas are wide open, accommodating Seth’s turning radius.
There is an alternative control scheme but it requires you to draw your pistol. Once readied, half the screen is consumed by an aiming reticule. This gives you a red-tinted, first-person perspective which is much easier to move in. It’s a compromise and one that is truly ugly to look at. The Terminator vision from Seth’s synthetic eye is not a great way to view the 3D environments but it does make the game more playable.
In combat, the reticule allows for accurate head shots which becomes essential against a couple of enemy types. Given the clumsy movement, avoiding fights seems an impossibility. There’s only one fight I can reliably skip to save a few bullets. Ammo is a surprisingly scarce resource. At times, you’ll be flush with it but there are stretches where lead is hard to come by. Reloading needs to be done manually but a quick tap of the square button gives a swift response. Enemies advance on you slowly, giving you enough time to drop them. You only gain one weapon but it shouldn’t take more than seven bullets to floor the toughest opponents.
Health is not so generous. Seth can take five hits and these can vanish quickly if he’s cornered. All but one enemy are melee fighters so, as long as there’s distance, you can avoid damage. Health kits and morphine do restore one pip of health but I’ve only managed to find a handful of them. It leads me to retrying encounters if I slip up. Fights are never complex but dealing with moving targets can always lead to missed shots to the odd punch. You do have your own fists but these are genuinely useless.
As a town, Happy Rock is laid out fairly well. A tourist map can be picked up early on which shows the extent of the game world. There’s seven locales to dip into and it does feel like a cohesive place. Outside of the main square, it can feel empty. Enemies do not respawn which results in the last act being a quiet run as you polish off the last of the requests.
I can’t be too down on how it looks. It’s clear this is a game with a meagre budget but it does lack a lot of polish. Paths I should be able to traverse are locked behind invisible walls, characters have walking routines that loop and, once you’ve completed their chores, they barely say a word to you. It can look quite ugly but the game mostly takes place in the twilight hours. Outdoors looks grimy whilst indoor areas can seem equally rundown. Even the factory, which should be a hive of activity, has a deserted feel to it.
The music does a better job of injecting some atmosphere. Each area has a spooky ambience that does well to inspire dread. It’s a shame they loop so often and the cut is very obvious. It’s even more obvious when the readout in the aiming reticule shows the filename. As for the rest of the sound, enemies have their own battle cries that indicate they’ve seen you. That’s a good signal to ready your weapon, assuming you don’t exclusively play the game from that viewpoint.
At the very least, The Order of the Snake Scale is playable and cheap. It’s a short tale that borrows much more from the adventure genre than survival horror. Tension feels rare and there are times when your journey can traverse some lonely roads. The tank controls are poorly implemented and the first-person compromise makes for unsightly viewing. The puzzles don’t require any lateral thinking but, for all the game’s simplicity, it comes off feeling shallow.
+ The town becomes familiar very quickly.
+ The puzzle logic is fairly sound.
- Ammo and health can feel very scarce.
- Combat is simplistic and lacks variety.
- The quest itself doesn't follow an investigative flow.