The Occultist is a tightly focused, first‑person horror experience built around investigation, stealth and a single supernatural tool that defines almost every interaction you’ll have throughout the game.
Developed by Pentadimensional Games and published by Daedalic Entertainment, The Occultist promises a walking simulator with a heavy focus on horror elements which means that it has all the ingredients to be a favourite in my household.
As with most games in this genre, The Occultist leans heavily into atmosphere, tension and slow, deliberate pacing. You play as Alan Rebels, a paranormal investigator who travels to the abandoned island of Godstone to uncover the truth behind his father’s disappearance. The island’s history is rooted in the activities of a cult that performed disturbing rituals until its abandonment in 1950, and the remnants of that past now haunt every corner of the island.
Alan’s pendulum is the centre of The Occultist’s design. It is his only meaningful tool, and it drives almost every puzzle, clue and supernatural interaction. The pendulum has four distinct functions, each tied to a different form of occult perception or environmental manipulation. It reveals hidden trails, exposes objects that exist between planes and allows Alan to interact with spaces that would otherwise be inaccessible. Because there’s (unfortunately) no combat at all in The Occultist, the pendulum becomes something of a lifeline, guiding progress through the island’s derelict houses, barns, hospitals and other abandoned structures.
The absence of combat seems as deliberate here as it always is in this genre, but it does introduce one of the game’s limitations. Hostile entities cannot be defeated by any means, and must simply be avoided.. When they appear, the only option is to hide or run, and because Alan moves at a measured, methodical pace even when sprinting, these moments can feel restrictive and anti-climactic.
Enemies tend to patrol predictable routes, which makes encounters feel slightly artificial once you understand their patterns. The tension remains when you enter a new area, but the sense of danger becomes more mechanical than organic once an enemy is revealed, especially if you need to cross the same “patrol route” multiple times.
Despite this, The Occultist’s atmosphere is consistently strong. The Unreal Engine 5 presentation emphasises dense fog, dramatic lighting and highly detailed interiors, all of which contribute to a continuous sense of unease that rarely lifts once you pass the initial pseudo-tutorial opening scenes.
The PS5 version supports some really nice vibration feedback and platform‑specific features that remind me why the Dual-Sense is the superior controller for slower paced games, and the visual design makes excellent use of shadow, narrow sightlines and environmental clutter to keep the player on edge. I felt that The Occultist was at its best between encounters, with some fantastic incidental detail, a well-created and deeply unsettling world and some cool environment-related jump scares that were much more effective than the actual spawned enemies.
On that note, the island of Godstone is the game’s most compelling presence, with its history revealed through documents, spectral encounters and environmental storytelling. The cult’s rituals and experiments have left deep scars, and Alan’s investigation forces him to confront both the island’s past and his own family’s connection to it. Of course, not all spectres pose a threat, and some of the chattier ones do happen to fill out the story whilst simultaneously reducing the overall effectiveness of the horror aspect.
Puzzle‑solving forms the backbone of progression in The Occultist. Some puzzles rely on environmental observation, while others require the pendulum’s more advanced functions. The game encourages slow, careful exploration, and many solutions depend on noticing small details or interpreting supernatural clues correctly and by using the pendulum’s transdimensional view.
This slow pacing is clearly deliberate, and the narrative unfolds through Alan’s internal monologue and interactions with the island’s lingering spirits. Doug Cockle’s (famous as Geralt in The Witcher) performance as Alan gives the story emotional weight, grounding the supernatural elements in a personal search for truth. Here, Cockle does a good job in his own right, but his fame unfortunately precedes him — as I struggled not to imagine CD Projekt Red’s character in some of the situations Alan finds himself in.
Part of the reason for this deliberate pacing is probably because the overall experience is compact, with a full playthrough lasting around seven hours and spanning a relatively sparse number of locations. This works in the game’s favour, as the structure is linear and tightly controlled. The lack of combat, the reliance on stealth and the predictable enemy behaviour will almost certainly limit replayability, but within its intended scope, The Occultist remains focused on its horror movie vibe and relatively strong story.
The Occultist is a moody, atmospheric horror game built around exploration, vulnerability and supernatural investigation. Its strengths lie in its setting, its interesting pendulum‑based mechanics and its commitment to slow‑burn tension. Its weaknesses — non‑interactive enemies, predictable patrols and a protagonist who can only plod away from danger — are noticeable but do not undermine the core experience. The Occultist is a specific kind of horror game and it does relatively little that is “brand new”, but it is deliberate, unsettling and rooted in the lingering history of a place that feels well-crafted and complete as a setting.
The Occultist is available now for PC, as well as Xbox and PlayStation consoles.
