You are Ben, the eldest of the Richter family children. While on vacation at a country house, you’re the witness to three dangerous intruders slipping into the house and taking your parents hostage. With your parents restrained and your sister hiding, you’re stuck in the house with the intruders. You’ll have to find a way to save your family while you figure out who the three assailants are and what they want. You cannot run away or confront them. Your only option is... to hide...

Get the layout of the house... and find every hiding spot

Intruders: Hide and Seek is a first-person stealth game, an intense thriller combining psychological terror from the point of view of a defenseless boy.

The game has been available for the Playstation since 2019. In fact the PSVR version of the game is available to pick up in the current Playstation store sale for under £2 as this Xbox edition is released for £18. While I own well over 100 PSVR games Intruders was never one that appealed to me. Even at £2 I haven't bothered snapping it up. So, when we were sent the Xbox version to review I was looking forward to finally playing it... and then deciding whether to buy if for PSVR.

The graphics are pretty basic, and at the start of the game there are some fairly long, dull cut sequences that add little to the story. You're then slowly introduced to the game's mechanics as you lay the family table, and play a game of sneaking around without your sister seeing you - all I can say is she might need to visit an opticians because it's almost impossible to get caught by her. Then your parents are captured by mysterious assailants. This is where the game starts proper, with you having to sneak around the house, avoiding your attackers, and performing various tasks.

Who are the mysterious intruders and what do they want?

By far my biggest complaint is that once the game starts I could see no way to go back to the main menu and change the settings. I'm one of those gamers that like to invert the up and down controls (understandable in flight sim games, but a little odd for normal games, I admit). So, I spent most of my time faffing about constantly getting up and down confused. And in a game where you constantly have to make a quick dash for the nearest hiding spot, this soon became a frustratingly annoying issue.

While there was a sense of suspense, which I'm sure is way more intense in VR, there just wasn't enough here to keep pulling me back to continue the story. If you're a fan of this style of game then it might be worth a look, otherwise I think I'd wait until it goes on sale...

5

Nick Smithson