Review Eriksholm: The Stolo Dream -Care Currage

Although this game is the first feature of the smaller (17 developers) Swedish studio, the concept wore the creators in their heads and worked for many years, and, according to its expedition, you can guess a much more or more experimental team. As the authors themselves stated, their goal was, among other things, to prove that games could be “more intimate, but still unforgettable.” This is one of the reasons why the central motive of this game is to clamp hope, although the whole world is trying to raise it. But this is also a story about the family, disobedience and power of one decision. All this is in the form of an isometric adventure of secrecy.

• Platform: PS5 (review version), XS, PC
• Date of issue: 13. 6. 2025
• Developer: River is the game
• Publisher: Nordcurrent Labs
• Genre: Stlace Adventure
• Czech Republic Localization: No
• Multi -user: No
• Download Data: 15 GB
• Game time: 8 hours
• Price: Not yet notified

The city of stolen dreams

Ericksholm is a fictional city of North, inspired by the elegance and rudeness of Scandinavia in the early 20th century. But this location, most likely, will remind the city of Danwell from the series “Oblige”, with which this game shares the gloomy atmosphere, a cold color palette, radical differences between the poor and rich parts of the city or even dangerous plague.

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

The main character of this story is a young girl named Hannah, who has just managed to recover from a dangerous new disease. But before he can start properly, her brother mysteriously disappears and begins to pursue her without explanation. Thus, he will have to use all his contacts and knowledge of the city, so that his streets in the shadows would save his brother and reveal what happened to him and why they both are so clearly looking for the police.

Players of this game location will probably remind the city of Danwall from the Disohonored series.

The emphasis on working with characters is emphasized, among other things, impressive models and sequences of films that are not many in the game, but can introduce you to key characters. In addition, the characters often conduct quite long dialogs or monologues directly during the game, including the popular dialogs of enemy characters NPC. The first half of the game works very well in terms of history, because you are controlled by a couple of riddles: what happened to your brother and why the police pursue you. But as soon as you find the truth about these two questions, the rest of the game is already quite predictable, including the corresponding escalation of action and the gameplay.

Praise and cooperation

From the point of view of the gameplay, do not expect any hardcore tactics of secrecy. Instead of a commander, or something is similar to the game of brothers or inside, the gameplay is fun, and some stall riddles can torment you for a while, but in general it is just a plot adventure with a relatively easy passage for one or two evenings (eight hours). Hannah is armed with a blower with arrows for sleeping, while other game characters have their own unique skills. Later chapters of history create a gameplay to switch between the characters and the unification of their arsenal.

Do not expect any hardcore rack.

Although in a trailer for the game they will probably get impressive films sequences, the game itself also looks very good. Obviously, the artistic direction was at a high level, because the whole city literally breathes a believable atmosphere, and individual places are full of complex details. At the same time, the PS5 game works completely smoothly and without any technical problems, if a random problem with the detection of an interactive element in the environment (for example, if you allow a corpse near the door, contextual control easily causes you to unintentively use one of these two things). Unfortunately, I found that the music is somewhat impressive, which would cause the right atmosphere, but some stronger melodies probably will not remember it. Speech, on the other hand, are impressive, especially as natural symbols react to each other.

When the game was first shown to the public last year, it is immediately fascinated by its atmosphere and expedition. It is pleasant to see how high the bar of India will be reached by the modern technology (in this case, it is an unreal engine 5, and the creators especially appreciated the Metahuman tool), although, of course, their experience in participating in such battlefield or small nightmares. Eriksholm is a relatively simple and shorter game with a predictable story, but its unusual expedition and emphasis on working with characters suggest that we, of course, should monitor the further work of this team.

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