The 9th Charnel Review – Hard to Recommend

I’m torn between tearing The 9th Charnel to the ground and feeling cautiously optimistic about what Saikat Deb Creations learns from it now that the studio has joined the PlayStation Partners Program.” As a full-fledged game, it’s terrible, and would be so even in an era of gaming long gone. But as a prototype of an idea, I’m left wondering if it does enough to differentiate itself from tried and tested horror tropes.

Quick disclaimer: I played the PS5 version, and I couldn’t finish the game—even though it’s short—because I hit a progression-stopping bug. I went into the game with a clear board, expecting a psychological horror experience that was only mildly interesting right off the bat, only to find my time with protagonist Michael cut short by the bug. Here’s what happened.

"Could the story or gameplay have improved later on? I want to say yes, but everything I’ve seen so far makes me hesitate to do so."

A computer that seemed vital to progression around the midpoint refused to register any interaction, locking me out of progressing further. I couldn’t fix it no matter what I tried, even reinstalling the game and restarting my PS5 to see if that could help. It didn’t, but do I really care about Michael’s fate?

I couldn’t honestly say I do, since the story is so vapid that it just fails to catch your attention. The 9th Charnel tries to do so many things that other games have done before, and done better, that the only thing scary about its attempt at horror was how laughable the entire thing was. The cutscenes look generations behind, and they’re intercut with Michael’s predicament—stranded in a remote valley and stumbling into something deeply off.

With no means to get out and only a trusty flashlight in tow, Michael soon enters into a tedious series of fetch-and-carry quests, slowly uncovering a story of corporate apathy from the Charnel family and encountering mutated creatures that feel lifted from better horror games.

I pushed past a few enemies, hoping the game would introduce a weapon, but it didn’t in the portion I played, right up untilI found myself in the house of the man from the cutscenes, his computer being the one that brought a premature end to my playthrough. Could the story or gameplay have improved later on? I want to say yes, but everything I’ve seen so far makes me hesitate to do so.

"Could the story or gameplay have improved later on? I want to say yes, but everything I’ve seen so far makes me hesitate to do so."

A lackluster story could be offset by solid gameplay in most cases, but The 9th Charnel is actually more frustrating than tense. The controls are a major part of my angst, with clunky movement made worse by an awkward sprint input that quickly becomes tiring, which makes giving Michael directions a literal thumb ache.

Controls aside, interacting with important key objects or switches in the environment is too inconsistent and finicky to be reliable, and even something as simple as getting down a ladder becomes a matter of trial and error. The inventory system makes things worse, because you have to dig through the menu and ‘equip’ an item before the world will acknowledge it. Details like these matter, especially in the current generation of games and even more so when there’s a highly anticipated horror experience right around the corner.

With exploration this tedious, the game might have been bearable if there were things worth discovering in it. Your paths are largely linear with minor deviations where important items, or completely redundant assets, are strewn about. The choppy framerate is something I’m willing to overlook, but it’s there if that matters to you. But the game’s very first chapter hides an important item so darn well that it took me a very long time to find it.

The next chapter, however, was nothing more than a crawl through a space where spike traps did nothing to me, and then a sprint through a short hallway with a monster chasing after me. That ended with me having to rotate a crank for a door and then make my way through it, at which point the monster could clearly see me but couldn’t pathfind around the obstacle and follow me through.

"On the visual front, the characters in cutscenes seem to have their faces carved from stone and move so unnaturally that I found them to be as scary as the monsters Michael was facing."

The next chapter introduced me to a Lovecraftian horror that clearly saw me diving under a nearby bed and decided I was not worth the trouble it had to go to in order to make a meal out of me. But the second I came back into the open, it rediscovered its appetite and how! That’s largely been my experience with the enemy AI, each enemy being so braindead I could only laugh at how easy it was to evade them. You might have more fun just trying to find ways to cheese them, honestly.

The distinct lack of weapons early on was a sore spot – I didn’t find a single one in the portion I played, which makes the pacing feel glacial for something sold as survival horror. I’m estimating I was a little past the halfway point of the story, and that’s a long time to leave you helpless in a survival horror experience, even if the terrors you face are nothing more than salad dressing.

On the visual front, the characters in cutscenes seem to have their faces carved from stone and move so unnaturally that I found them to be as scary as the monsters Michael was facing. In the present, while you explore the world, the game’s all over the place. It all looks like a PS2 game, and a bad one at that.

I suppose looking for DualSense integration is just me being unreasonable at this point, and the game’s audio design and soundtrack are nothing to write home about either. Hell, Michael doesn’t even utter a sound, even as a hulking brute of an enemy came crashing through a wall in front of him, or at the sight of the corpse of a man he had just spoken to, sprang at him. As far as silent protagonists go, Michael’s clearly a pro.

"It gives me no joy to criticize a game as much as I have with this one, but it’s hard to make me feel actually bored when I play a game."

The only good thing I can say about The 9th Charnel is that it’s a short game. Its concept isn’t interesting enough as an opening hook, and things would only go downhill from there. It gives me no joy to criticize a game as much as I have with this one, but it’s hard to make me feel actually bored when I play a game. I got through Code Violet for crying out loud. This one felt like an early build of a concept, much less a full game.

All in all, based on what I played, The 9th Charnel isn’t a game I can recommend. But it might be worth keeping an eye on as a rough debut from Saikat Deb Creations, a newly approved PlayStation Partner. If that’s the case, this one is simply a bad beginning to an interesting journey. And I sincerely hope my theory is right.

But as a game you’re paying your hard-earned money for, it’s too buggy, lackluster, and unintentionally campy that it’s only worth it for a laugh. I’d suggest saving that cash for other popular horror games if you’re looking to scratch that survival itch.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.