Crisol: Theater of Idols |

Publisher: Blumhouse Games

Developer: Vermila Studios

Release Date: 02/10/2026

Available On

Have you ever been afraid of the Sun? In Crisol you should be. You are Gabriel Escudero. A warrior sent by the Sun god to set things straight on the twisted island of Tormentosa. The story is very disjointed, difficult to follow, and overall not very interesting. It has some neat ideas peppered throughout, but the game is so spread out that the story elements are lost on the player. The main hook in Crisol is the blood weapons. You get five different weapons that share ammo with your health. This makes the game a survival-horror light, as the horror elements aren’t really explored much and just lightly tossed in. You must fight living puppets, which are neat and interesting-looking enemies, but the same few repeat often. In fact, there are only four types in the entire game. The types of enemies include melee puppets, crossbolt puppets, stalker types, and flying puppets. It gets old really fast, but it’s not the only thing that gets worn out in the game.

There are a lot of balancing issues in this game. For starters, you only get five weapons in the game. Your starter weapon is a pistol. You get a double-barrel shotgun a bit later, but weapons are spread pretty far apart, and you don’t get the final weapon until the last level. The main gameplay element here in combat is balancing health and ammo, as they are one and the same. You reload by pressing the spikes on the gun against your hand, and this draws blood out to fill your ammo. Of course this makes the game harder, as you are now scrounging for health stims and dead animals to absorb their blood. This is the only way to heal. Combat is, sadly, a bit janky-feeling. Animations are very slow, and you can’t quickly get out of animations. For example, if you are reloading, Gabriel looks at his hand before you can shoot. Another example is there’s a delay with the melee attack to parry, and this never feels right. Most of the enemies in the game are melee enemies, and they can swarm you. I never felt like I had a good arsenal to deal with these enemies. The pistol is really weak until halfway through the game, where you can get enough upgrades. The shotgun uses way too much health to reload, so you only use it to get out of a tight situation, which isn’t what the shotgun should be for. I mostly used the pistol through the entire game.

This really makes the game boring and repetitive. Once you fight the first few puppets and the weird and creepy tone sets in, you are over it. You later get a sniper rifle, which is very slow to reload and feels mostly useless as most of the combat is close quarters. The last weapon you get is a sub-machine gun, but it is incredibly slow to reload without any upgrades and is hard to keep stable and does little damage. This arsenal just never felt good to use or felt balanced. On top of all that, you need gasoline cans to sharpen your knife as it dulls with each attack. These survival-horror-type elements just don’t feel good here. There are a couple of boss fights, and the final boss is an unfair chore to fight. There is also an automaton named Dolores that roams certain areas and can grab you. These areas require you to sneak around and solve simple puzzles, and I felt these were annoying more than anything. Many times her AI would glitch out, and she would stop right in front of a hiding spot and never move, requiring me to run and risk getting hit.

Most of the game is running around finding keys and solving elaborate puzzles that can be fun or annoying depending on who you are. The clues are pretty useless, and I resorted to guides for most of them. Each main area has a central hub you come back to that has a save point and an upgrade station, and most of the game repeats like this. Run around various hallways shooting enemies, solve a puzzle, find a key, and repeat. Most of the game felt like a chore to play, as there was no variation in between. There were no scripted events, no opportunities for exploration, and nothing else to engage with. Just run around hoping you’re not getting turned around just to do it again later.

There’s clear inspiration from BioShock and Resident Evil here. From the various types of puzzles and main menu unlocks (gallery and models) from RE to the art deco style of BioShock. It looks great for a budget title. I felt that there was way too much pointless clutter everywhere, and the game is incredibly linear but hard to navigate. The map is mostly useless, as there’s no arrow or flashing icon of where to go next. Some levels were mazes of doors, hallways, ladders, and unlocking shortcuts. There are secrets in the game that give you chests, health upgrades, and more silver bulls to spend for upgrades. You need crow relics to buy passive abilities which I felt just didn’t do much. Many of these felt useless. What you really need are the silver bulls for weapon upgrades, and these are essential for survival. Without maxing out most of your weapons by the end, you won’t really get far.

The game suffers from a lot of FPS drops and dips down into the teens frequently. There were also multiple crashes when reloading from death, and the overall feeling of the game isn’t exactly polished. The game just feels like random hallways and rooms put together to make a level. There’s no cohesive flow to anything visually or mechanically. The entire game feels like a video game level from 2012 rather than a believable world. I applaud the small team for trying to do something different, but they bit off more than they could chew here, and it shows. The game is entertaining for those desperate for an early 10s FPS or something similar to Resident Evil or BioShock. The unique weapon mechanic isn’t balanced well enough to really pull you in, and the story is so disjointed and confusing that you won’t really care. There’s also the awful voice acting from everyone but Gabriel. The voice acting was so bad in some spots that it really pulled me out of the game. The story isn’t strong enough to save the game and the art style only goes so far. For the $20 price tag there’s some good value here, but don’t come in expecting greatness like the game it’s inspired by.