Fade to Silence: An In-Depth Look – Gaming Review

When I first heard about Black Forest Games and THQ Nordic’s latest survival game, Fade to Silence, I was immediately drawn in. Described as a challenging survival RPG set in an endless winter, you must fight to survive and battle Eldritch monsters along with the elements. As a fan of all things Lovecraftian, anything with Eldritch monsters will get my attention. So how did the survival RPG hold up?

First and foremost, this is a survival game and a horror game, but it is not a survival horror game. While the monsters in the game were frightening, I never felt like they were coming after me like they do in games like Resident Evil or The Evil Within. This was much more on the lines of State of Decay, where there are horror elements in the world, but the horror isn’t the focus. In fact, I would often find myself much more stressed out about the elements, mainly the blizzards, than the actual monsters in the game. In fact, using your survival view, it became fairly easy to avoid the monsters in the world, with the only times I really confronted them being mission based.

Avoiding the monsters sounds like it’d be boring, but honestly, it was the preferred method. The combat in this game is not good. I can’t sugarcoat that, unfortunately. It consists of two buttons, a strong attack and a light attack. While I struggled at first, once I told myself to treat this just like a “Soulsborne” game, and the combat became easier. I placed an emphasis on timing, and that made quite a bit of difference. While this made the combat easier, it didn’t make it worth participating in.

Moving on from the combat, the gameplay is standard survival game fare. Go out and find items to craft new items and survive longer. What was nice about Fade to Silence, however, was finding followers to go out and get crafting materials for me. This made life so much easier. It allowed me to go out and make progress in the areas I wanted to, while my followers took care of hunting and cutting down trees. What I did mind was the lack of tutorials. You’re given a brief lesson on what to do at first, and then you’re thrown into this hostile world without a clue of what to do. You’re just told to survive. I had to learn how to craft and survive on my own. A little more handholding would have been appreciated.

Ultimately, Fade to Silence is a difficult game, and I can appreciate that. This game consists of permadeath, with deaths coming frequently and fast. For those that are not familiar with games killing your character often, this can be frustrating. I eventually just accepted that my character would die and it would happen over and over again. The difficulty did lead to some moments that felt unfair and did lead to some serious frustrating. It felt like everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and all at the same time. Add in some rough combat and you have what most of my experience with Fade to Silence was. There is another option for gameplay, titled Exploration mode. This allows you to have an easier time with the game, however you cannot unlock achievements and you cannot experience all that Fade to Silence has to offer in terms of gameplay mechanics.

I do want to praise the environment you explore. While it is predominately white, snowy and dark, it is gorgeous. I often found myself just wandering around to see more of the world. It’s a gorgeous hellscape, very obviously distorted by whatever Eldritch abomination has appeared. Finding out more through the story about what happened made me appreciate the landscape more and more.

While this may seem more negative than positive, Fade to Silence really is not a bad game, it’s just not a great game. It has a great premise but unfortunately it’s shortcomings overshadow what good there is. This is one of those games that I hope continues to get support so it can become what it is supposed to be. It has a solid survival game base, it just needs some work to become a great survival game. The difficulty, while appreciated, at time felt unfair and unbalanced. The combat was rough and unenjoyable, and the game doesn’t give many tips on how to survive. But beyond all this, there is a gorgeous landscape that needs to be explored and a story that was quite interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing what else Dark Forest Games can do to improve the game, and I hope that they do realize what Fade to Silence can be.

Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think! Have you tried Fade to Silence yet? Will you be checking it out? Let us know in the comments!