Crisol: Theater of Idols review: it feels like a lost Xbox 360 horror classic

Content warning: this article discusses graphic violence, disturbing imagery, and mature themes in an 18+ game.

There’s something quietly defiant about Crisol: Theater of Idols. It feels like a lost Xbox 360 cult classic, unearthed from an alternate timeline where mid-budget horror games were allowed to be strange, stylish and self-contained. It’s lean, confident, and, more importantly, it never loses sight of its art direction and its desire to build atmosphere. If you're waiting on Resident Evil Requiem, Crisol is a recommended taster.

Developed by indie team Vermila Studios and made using Unreal Engine 5, Crisol plants its boots firmly in an alternative history Spain, steeped in art nouveau curves, faded glamour and gothic severity. You play Gabriel, a soldier navigating a decaying coastal city ruled by religious iconography and wooden idols that have a nasty habit of coming to life. It’s a premise that could easily get lost amidst its own design, but it works wonderfully. Crisol works because it commits to the style; every archway, mural, rusted balustrade, and flickering lantern feels considered, part of a world with rules and rituals that feel grounded in its own reality.

The obvious comparison is BioShock, and not just because both games understand the power of aesthetic cohesion. Like Rapture, Crisol’s city is built on belief, faith rather than free-market ideology, and the spaces you move through tell that story long before the lore docs you find or characters reveal. Posters peel from damp brickwork, promising faded fairground glamour. Sea salt clings to tavern beams in a harbour town full of bars and brothels. Religious statues tower overhead in a spiralling Gothic cathedral that dominates the skyline. It’s cluttered and busy, each street is dense with props, textures and visual noise that feel authored and purposeful.

A beautifully grim world

The sea-themed district is a particular highlight. There’s a theatricality to it, creaking docks, brine-stained statues, velvet-draped interiors lit by jaundiced lamplight. You’re constantly aware of the ocean just out of sight, a presence rather than a backdrop. Crisol understands that horror often lives in implication. Doors are barred, alleyways kink at odd angles, and the world invites you to poke around, and crucially, it rewards you for doing so – not greatly, there aren't collectables in every nook, but emotionally, as the world bears down.

Structurally, Crisol plays like a light Metroidvania. Maps dovetail and intertwine, looping back on themselves with satisfying logic. You’ll unlock a door from the far side and realise you’ve created a shortcut to a plaza you passed an hour ago. Yet it never sprawls. Behind the illusion of openness, you’re being funnelled from set piece to puzzle in a way that feels deliberate and disciplined. In an era when so many games equate value with square mileage and bloat, I found Criosol's leanness refreshing.

The final third loosens the reins slightly, granting Gabriel a boat to navigate the waterways that spider through the city’s underbelly. It’s the closest the game comes to a broader sandbox. But even here, it’s smoke and mirrors. This is a linear horror game at heart, driven by atmosphere and puzzle design rather than sprawling objective lists. That clarity of vision is part of its charm and a reason I kept going until the credits.

The click-clack of combat

If the environments are the stage, the enemies are the performers. The bulk of your foes are wooden mannequins and religious statues jolted into motion. They stagger and clack towards you in eerie, unerring patterns, joints snapping into place with an unerring wooden click-clack. It's the same noise the world makes – the creak of wooden floors, signs blowing in the wind and drip-drop of rain on wooden roofs – which makes exploration edgier than you'd think.

Combating the game's wooden zombies is a simple concept elevated by execution. Shoot off an arm, and the mannequin drops its knife. Blast away its legs, and you’re left with a hatchet-wielding torso dragging itself across cobblestones while you fumble to reload. Pop a head, and it lurches blindly, still dangerous, legs kicking at you. Combat encounters start tamely but become frantic reflex tests as more enemies mass.

Which brings me to Crisol’s central mechanical idea: blood as ammunition. Gabriel fuels his weapons by drawing his own blood, trading health for firepower. It’s an elegantly grim notion that fits the setting perfectly. The pistol sips modestly, easy to justify in a tight spot. The shotgun gulps, carving chunks from your health bar in exchange for devastating blasts. Early on, the trade-off between power and health feels like using the shotgun is a genuine last resort.

As you upgrade Gabriel’s health, damage stats, and buffs (such as a random chance to not use bullets when hitting enemies), the tension softens. By the finale, you’re wielding a full arsenal – machine gun, sniper rifle, even a grenade-tipped harpoon – and the risk-reward balance shifts toward empowerment. It’s satisfying, undeniably, but there’s a sense that the concept could have been pushed further. The idea of self-harm as a strategy is ripe with potential, mechanically and thematically. Crisol flirts with that edge without quite diving in wholly.

It could have gone deeper

A similar restraint applies to the blood-draining mechanic. You can siphon blood from animals and dead humans to restore health and reveal emblems used to unlock secret chests. It’s functional, neatly tied into progression, but never explored fully. In a game so drenched in religious imagery and moral overtones, there was room to make that act uncomfortable, to weave consequence into the loop. Where BioShock might have wallowed in ethical dilemmas, Crisol mostly keeps things surface-level.

And yet, it’s hard to begrudge it, because what Crisol does, he does with conviction. Take Delores, a recurring boss who stalks Gabriel across the campaign. She’s a towering, ornate, metallic skeletal figure, with a disturbingly human skull glimpsed behind a cracked metal mask. Each encounter reveals a subtle evolution in her design – fractures widening, ornamentation warping, new details emerging narratively – mirroring the story’s slow unravelling. She’s grotesque and beautiful, a walking embodiment of the game’s art nouveau-meets-Gothic sensibility.

It’s in these flourishes that Crisol truly excels. Ornate but disregarded ceremonial coffins flicker in lamplight, the texture of peeling paint on a brothel’s balcony, the way you second glance a statue just in case it creaks to life. The visual language is consistent from opening drag to credits, and that consistency builds trust. I come to believe in this place, however twisted it may be, and want to see more of it.

Crisol keeps its horror simple

There’s a broader conversation here about scope. Big-budget horror games often drown in competing systems and bloated maps, terrified of seeming slight. Crisol feels liberated by comparison. It’s direct, focused and understands that atmosphere can carry as much weight as a stacked feature list, sometimes more. At roughly a dozen hours, it tells its story, explores its mechanics and bows out before fatigue sets in.

That’s not to say it’s flawless. The combat loop, strong as it is, doesn’t evolve dramatically. The blood-fuelled hook never quite reaches its deeper potential. Some late-game areas blur together mechanically even as they remain visually striking. But these are the rough edges of ambition rather than incompetence.

Crisol: Theater of Idols is a confident horror outing from a talented indie team. It’s visually distinct, mechanically solid and, above all, cohesive. In a landscape crowded with live-service failures and open-world sprawl, there’s something almost radical about a game that knows exactly what it wants to be.

It could have gone further, deeper. It could have pushed its themes harder. But as the credits roll and that last grotesque idol splinters, what lingers is the world, the art, the mood, the sense of stepping through a beautifully realised alternative world. If this is the foundation, the sequel could be something truly special.