The Tartarus Key (2023)

If you’re looking for an unsettling low-poly adventure to get under your skin, The Tartarus Key is right up your alley. With crunchy yet slick visuals, puzzles to sink your teeth into and atmosphere you could cut with a knife, it’s a psych-horror fan’s dream. It occasionally tells a little more than it should show and some key loose ends are left frayed (if not hanging), but it’s very difficult to come away feeling unsatisfied.

The Tartarus Key combines thoughtful puzzles, engaging writing, and a compelling setting and melds them together inside a PS1 package. It may not create a great deal of horror, but the writing and suspense keep you moving forward.

The Tartarus Key is an old-school puzzling treat, with the mysterious story and clever puzzle design making for an enthralling experience throughout. I was a big fan of the PSOne-style visuals, whilst the game’s foreboding atmosphere will certainly leave players on the edge of their seat – even if the occasionally cheesy quip sways the mood. It wouldn’t be a 90s survival horror-inspired experience without them, right? There were a few little hiccups along the way with a couple of overly obtuse puzzles and the lack of voice acting, but they didn’t stop me from having a blast as I slowly unravelled the unnerving mysteries of The Tartarus Key.

A brain teaser that borrows the aesthetics of PS1 horror, The Tartarus Key's repetition sadly dulls the impact of its spooks.

Nothing we see here matters because it’s all been made up for puzzle-solving. As such, the weirdness of the game’s mystery and its visuals is practically obliterated. It’s good, then, that The Tartarus Key squeaks by on the strength of its puzzles alone, because the connective tissue between them seems determined to strip the game of narrative intrigue before our very eyes.