You Should Play HOLE

This is the best £4 I’ve spent in ages. Unsettling, claustrophobic and concise, HOLE drops you into a dark office with a gun and says good luck.

So, where do you work, Peter?

HOLE takes heavy inspiration from ‘the backrooms’; a weird, office/industrial liminal space from the realm of internet creepy pasta. Tight corridors, desk partitions and rack shelving make up a hellish maze in which you’ll try and survive. This is a shooter however, and you’re not entirely powerless in the face of what you’ll encounter in these corridors. Trusty Glock in hand, you’ll creep from room to room in search of an extraction point.

Honestly the less you know the better. I’ll spoil as little as possible, but I’d stop here and play it,

I’d never played an extraction shooter before this but it’s a familiar rogue-lite style loop. The longer you survive the more of your colleagues you’ll have to deal with. The more time spent in office, the more currency, data and items you’ll collect. Successfully extract and you’ll get to bank all of the resources you collect, die and you’ll only take home 10% of your hard won gains(though any collectables are safe). Death is always pretty close, an errant headshot from the, mostly inaccruate, office denizens can end things abruptly.

We need to talk about your TPS reports.

The design of HOLE’s map is oppressive, it’s dark, claustrophobic and almost every meeting room, storage cupboard and corridor looks identical. Is it an infinite space? Is it a map you can learn. As you lay down bits of mental string in this awful labyrinth, you’ll enjoy moments of satisfying familiarity as you begin to piece together the layout in your head. Even then it’s hard to every be 100% confident in navigating it.

What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?

5 or 6 minutes into a run, I was feeling great, it was the most resources I’d ever managed to gather. I’d found the exit and was being careful not to stray beyond where I could see it. “This is it, I’m gaming the system, I’ll camp by the exit, until I reach the practical limits of what the starting pistol can achieve and then I’ll dip the moment it gets too hairy”.

As the firefight heats up, a growing pile of loot builds up at the far end of the corridor I’m firing down. A break, the last of the enemies goes down. This is the moment right? Nice and simple, dash down the end, grab it and go. Of course the moment I’ve got the loot, more figures swarm the area I’d just left and a hail of shots panics me. I duck into a side room and as the sprint animation dips the torch, can’t see where I’ve gone. When I finally stop I’ve got no clue how to get back to the exit. The directional sound of gunfire, footsteps and weird mumbling is all around me. There should only be a turn or two before I’m back in the right corridor, the exit microwave in my path. Of course I turn the corner and it’s empty. The threat level ticks over into level five and I’m hearing sounds I’ve never heard before so I sprint for it. Straight into what turns out to be a supply cupboard, three figures in masks, and the end of my run.

I can’t believe what a bunch of nerds we are.

For all it’s creepy atmosphere and growing sense of threat, HOLE’s gun-play is satisfying. A single head shot will suffice for all of the basic enemies and the stun mechanic helps mitigate the tedium that can arise from bullet sponge armoured foes. Shooting their legs or kicking then down before mag dumping has a certain comedic quality.

There’s a clear sense of John Wick-style gun fetishism to the game. The sort of game I’d expect to see Jonathan Ferguson (Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK which houses…) smilingly dissect. Separate indicators for ammunition in the magazine and in the chamber. Competition style two cartridge reloads of the shotgun. A button to cock the gun, separate from the reload button turns weapon management into a multi-step process without becoming annoying. As your barrel heat rises, the chance of a jam increases which will require you to mash the cocking button until the spent case is knocked clear. Later unlocks offer the chance to customise your weapons and gradually you’ll go from cautiously creeping around corners to hunting out fights. Even as you power up, a moment of over confidence or panic can quickly end things.

Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays?

HOLE’s directional sound cements the experience of the game, combined with the labyrinthine maps, it lures you in or sets you running. There’s a simple language to the lo-fi sounds each indicating a certain reward or enemy type. The office is all on a single level but later on you’ll encounter verticality and the challenge of working out whether the sound is above or below.

…and it was everything that I thought it could be.

It might take a few runs to find your footing but there’s a constant sense of progression and I’ve hit what feels like the end game in about seven hours. And honestly I want to play around in it a little more as there are still some secrets I’ve yet to uncover.