One aspect of gaming in VR that lends itself particularly well to the medium is the freedom of 3D movement and the level of immersion it offers when observing things up close and getting hands-on.
In other words, if you’re a fan of puzzle games, consider getting your hands on a VR headset like the Meta Quest 3. Now, if you’re like me and enjoy a good horror game or have any affinity with vampires, Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire is an essential puzzle experience worth picking up.
There is a scene in the original Dracula novel that is seared into my memory when Johnathan Harker discovers the titular Count asleep in his coffin after gorging himself on blood, describing him as a filthy leech, his blood-bloated body more animal than man. Thankfully, thanks to its highly stylized and cartoonish aesthetic, Silent Slayer doesn’t get quite as bloody and visceral, but more importantly, it captures the dark and macabre essence of what makes Dracula, and vampires in general, so blood-curdlingly appealing.
For the uninitiated, Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire is a puzzle game in which the player must get through and hunt 10 increasingly difficult chambers that house notable vampiric threats sleeping in their coffin just prior to a big revival—adding to the tension of having to quickly deal with the undead threat that awaits.
“Instead of trying to keep your patient alive, like in Operation, Silent Slayer, instead, wants you to take out your slumbering undead target as quietly and as efficiently as possible.”
If you’ve played games like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes or newer releases like the I Expect You To Die series, you probably have a good understanding of how VR puzzlers tend to rely on getting the player to really get in there and feel out solutions by using their hands and finding clues within their immediate environment. Silent Slayer is no exception, but if I had to describe it in a single sentence, I would compare it to the classic children’s board game Operation.
Instead of trying to keep your patient alive, as in Operation, Silent Slayer wants you to take out your slumbering undead target as quietly and efficiently as possible. Levels in Silent Slayer begin with a preamble about the current vampire you’re about to slay, provided to the player by an enchanted tome that will aid you throughout the game. As you learn more about your target, you will be given a binding stone to reassemble or an object that will allow you to make contact with the vampire and get things started.
Essentially, the Bind Stones in the game are your 3D assembly-based puzzles, which start off relatively simply, with only a handful of pieces that need to be fit together in 3D space, but by the end of Silent Slayer’s 10-level campaign, can get quite complex, demanding the player to really take the time to map out and take advantage of the depth granted by the VR environment to successfully piece together the Bind Stone before moving on.
In addition to the Bind Stone section, the first five to six levels within Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire introduce new items and mechanics required to slay your target, including keys, pry tools, a hook, stakes, blades and magic-imbued runes.
After completing the Bind Stone puzzle, the player is transported to the vampire’s chamber. All the vampires share distinct coffins that the player must first pry open before doing the dark deed at hand. Things start relatively simple, only requiring the player to unbuckle a few shackles that take the form of large rectangular metal blocks on the facade of the coffin, which require a deft hand to gently slide and place on the table next to the player before moving on.
After opening the coffin, the player must examine the sleeping vampire using a special rune stone in the shape of a heart, which vibrates when in close proximity to the target’s heart. Once found, the player must trace the stake in a particular pattern, one found on the Binding Stones, before entering the vampire’s chamber. Finally, after sussing out the heart and tracing out the encantation, the player can drive the stake into the vampire’s heart, completing the level.
Visually, Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire is one of the better-looking Quest games I’ve seen, with objects and character models looking razor sharp on my Quest 3, making it an enjoyable experience both in full VR and its mixed reality mode, which transforms your play space into the haunts of some genuinely spooky vampires with the bonus of a fun colour filter that tints the world around you in a miasma of murky reds and browns, often feeling like you’re inside a jar of formaldehyde on the shelf of some deranged madman.
“Ultimately, your enjoyment of Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire will boil down to your tolerance for puzzle games, particularly ones that require time, as rushed play inevitably leads to death.”
After level 3 or so, things get a lot more complex, with each coffin requiring more and more steps before getting to stake your target. Coffins often feature bolts that must be gently pried open (sometimes in tandem), locks that are obscured behind traps, that can only be shimmied out by touch alone, with some of the later stages even featuring multiple locks that first need to match the pattern on the coffin, all of which is just to open the coffin in the first place.
Once the coffin is open, getting to the killing phase is another story. Later levels feature lasers, moving and pulsating wires that require the player to wait before cutting, and, worst of all, the Waking Idols, little demonic puppets that act as watchdogs for their sleeping masters, alerting and ending your hunt early if alerted by your presence.
My biggest issue with Silent Slayer is how quickly and brutally the game can get when it comes to prematurely ending a level due to the alarms going off and waking up your target. Things start relatively forgiving, allowing the player to make a mistake or two without issue, with the game only ending when you make several in quick succession, which is fair, but by the end, it can be frustrating to get through the tedium of cracking open a coffin, only to lose because you accidentally grazed the coffin with your hand or worse yet, the tracking goes off kilter causing the game to register a movement, ending the run early.
Adding a difficulty slider would be welcome, perhaps one that grants some checkpoints in between different phases of the level, something that would go a long way in alleviating the frustration found in the later half of the game. Ultimately, your enjoyment of Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire will boil down to your tolerance for puzzle games, particularly ones that require time, as rushed play inevitably leads to death.
