Mole is a narrative horror that takes you deeper underground
There's too much panic in this town
Plot-heavy, claustrophobic, and frightening, Mole kept me hooked right through to the end.
Narrative horror games are ten-a-penny these days, so it takes something interesting to both catch and keep my attention. So many of them are jump scare factories or “bad-dad simulators” as I’ve seen them called, which don’t really do anything smart with the medium. Bad horror games certainly have their place, but that’s rarely what I’m looking for. Occasionally though, you get something like Project Songbird or Reveil that play with your expectations of the genre in creative ways. Mole very much leans into that style, keeping me constantly engaged whilst keeping its biggest secrets for the final moments.
You play as Viktor, the navigator on a huge subterranean drill nicknamed Mole. The world on the surface has suffered some sort of catastrophic event as a result of something called The White Rabbit Signal. This strange effect causes people to hear the voices of their dead loved ones that compels them to dig beneath the earth to find them. Viktor is part of a team sent to dig deeper than anyone has before in the hopes of discovering the source of this signal, and putting to rest the madness on the surface.
Unsurprisingly, there’s more to this than meets the eye, and Viktor’s personal journey is really the main focus here. He’s been nigh-on forced into his role due to crippling debts and finds no joy in being stuck in this four-man claustrophobia-inducing vessel. Interestingly, you never actually see any of the other crew members directly, receiving most of your orders from above ground using retro-futuristic technology.
This technology is how you interact with the game for the most part. You’ll walk around in the Mole seeing a number of bizarre sights that I won’t spoil, where you carry out your duties such as adjusting the power, repairing systems, and driving the vehicle towards its destination. Interestingly, much of the machine is controlled using cassette tapes. Whether it’s receiving messages from above, finding the safest route through the rocks, or even opening secure doors, everything is done by downloading information onto these tapes and then putting the result into a reader.
Mechanically, it’s not that different from using a computer in any other horror game, but when you combine it with the grungy, dieselpunk style of the game it works incredibly well. It’s even more effective when you’re being chased by something and are desperately trying to find the right tape in your inventory to open the door to safety. Yes, there are monsters, and yes you will be chased. I felt under just enough threat to panic, but never to the point where I would die repeatedly, meaning that the fear was there throughout. The devs have done well to pace the monsters just right to keep that tension.
Something that I liked with the mechanics is that you aren’t directly told how to do anything. All the systems exist in-world and require you learn how to action them through guides the characters will have had to work with. For example, to start the drill up again you’re told you need to download the co-ordinates onto a cassette, decode them, use the screens to aim the vessel and read off the co-ordinates before inputting them into the system and setting the correct drill speed. Mole doesn’t tell you precisely how to do every step of that, instead expecting you to infer how to do this from what is available around you. I recognise that this might frustrate a few players, but in reality the systems are actually quite simple, and it doesn’t take long to work out how to make things happen, even when you’re under a time limit.
The visual style is strong, using that popular PS1-era blocky aesthetic and even with that, everything is clear and easy to read. This gives everything a grubby, unpleasant look to the interior of the Mole to sell something of a bleak atmosphere. The monsters are kept out of sight often enough for you to not get a clear view, keeping them frightening throughout. The sound work is great, especially when the drill is whirring away and the room starts to shake. There’s voice acting, but I’m pretty sure it’s in a made up language. I suppose that prevents the devs needing to dub in multiple languages.
Mole is an excellent horror game that I can only fault for being a little on the short side at only three hours. Even then I think it’s the right length for what it’s trying to achieve. It’s unsettling and has a story that’s in equal parts heartbreaking and fascinating. For what appears to be a debut game from a developer, this is really impressive. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do next.
Mole is available now on PC.
