I think there’s a lot of potential for effective use of tactile gameplay in horror games. Panic leads to mistakes and that gets amplified when you have to perform actions that take precise clicks and drags. As much as I’m tired of hide-and-seek horror games, trying to start a gas generator while an axe murderer is sniffing around the house keeps you looking over your shoulder. It’s a good time.

Anyway, MOLE is those two things I described: horror and tactile gameplay. And by “tactile,” I mean interactions that require multiple steps that you have to perform manually, usually through clickery and motion-making. Like, instead of opening a door by clicking the interact button, you instead have to mouse over the knob, make a twisting motion, then pull back. It’s great, I’m surprised we didn’t see more of it on the Wii, but everyone was trying to make Wii Sports again.

Thankfully, tactile controls and diagetic UI is getting popular in indie games these days. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here, but for now, we have MOLE.

GET YOUR SHOVEL

MOLE  drops you into a digging expedition that is already fucked. A strange transmission that drives people insane is emanating from deep within the Earth, and the only logical solution is to send people down there to see what’s up. It’s suggested that this brilliant idea comes from a morally bankrupt corporation, because every blue-collar horror story needs a Weyland-Yutani.

It’s hard to not see shades of Mouthwashing in MOLE, and I’ve only played Mouthwashing’s demo. It’s actually hard to not see a lot of MOLE’s influences, as quite a bit of it feels kind of routine. Flashbacks are told through hallucinations, and it’s pretty obvious that the protagonist, Viktor, is an unreliable narrator. It’s not enough that I could outright predict the ending, but there is a pervasive feeling of déjà vu throughout.

That’s not outright damning, however. The protagonist is driven by the loss of his son, with the strange signal promising a way to bring him back. And while this falls into my annoyance that family in video games only exist to die and serve as motivation, and while some of it comes across as a bit cliché, Viktor’s grief is well-explored and relatable. Adding to this, observations provided by other characters give added insight to what drives him and what he’s like when you’re not steering him around like a meat car. So, frankly, I have admiration for the execution of the story, even if it leans pretty hard on stuff I’ve seen all too frequently.

TOTE THAT PAIL, LIFT THAT BARGE

MOLE’s gameplay is also rather split. The parts where it has you completing tasks around the drill are easily the highlight. Repairing an engine, changing a fuse, blowing a hole in a barrier with a torpedo, or even the repeated task of setting a course; that’s where it excels. A lot of it is very satisfying.

There are shades of Iron Lung here (another of its cited inspirations), but while you can’t see outside your vessel, you also aren’t actually steering it, so the comparison, gameplay-wise, is largely superficial. Iron Lung had you piloting blind, whereas, in MOLE, that’s just an illusion. However, the idea that you’re sent to investigate some poorly-understood phenomenon with little care for your actual well-being is a starker association.

There’s also a monster hanging about, almost out of obligation. I hate it. It only comes up in a few scenes, but it serves no narrative function. And in terms of gameplay, it’s a nuisance. You can’t fight back, so it’s a matter of avoidance. Despite what I said in the lede about how performing complicated actions wall a monster is breathing down your neck is rewarding, that only happens once or twice in the entirety of MOLE, and those instances stop short of greatness. It’s maybe because making the monster AI capable of more than just single-mindedly pursuing the player is beyond the capacity of the small dev team, which is understandable, but also disappointing.

The point is, not every horror game needs a monster. For example, MOLE doesn’t need a monster. It feels jammed in just to prevent it from being labelled a walking sim. It’s lame.

FAMILIAR GROUND

What frustrates me about MOLE is that its design makes it clear that it understands what is effective about what it is doing. It’s been made with the knowledge that heavy machinery feels best when many clicks are needed to operate. It’s also, in parts, able to communicate atmosphere extremely well. While the soundtrack is largely just the type that creeps in quietly to elevate the atmosphere, whenever my ears tuned into it, I found it to be exceptional.

The horror genre in indie games is flooded with a lot of low effort stuff. For some reason, it often seems like it’s what curious developers attempt first, so there are heaps of cobbled together experiences that are shoved out the door and forgotten. MOLE isn’t cobbled together in that way. It’s more earnest than that. There’s some quality craftsmanship. I think it just takes too many parts from other games and stories and puts them together in a way that they only sort of fit. And nothing really tops it off. It doesn’t feel like anything has been added.

I wasn’t hating my time with MOLE. Getting from beginning to end was mostly breezy, barring a few encounters with that pointless monster. It’s just I don’t feel I got a lot of nutrition from it. While it doesn’t outright copy anyone, its adherence to its inspirations is so stark that it still seems like it doesn’t have its own voice. It’s buried somewhere in there. Deep down. I’ll get my shovel.

5/10

This review was conducted on a digital PC version of the game. It was provided by the publisher.