Hunted Within: The Walls Review (PC)

If there’s one thing that we missed out on, it was the chance to transform Maze Runner into a full-fledged game. It could’ve been a reality. Heck, it should’ve been a reality. Yet, the closest that we ever got to it coming to fruition was with Divergent. But even then, the monolithic walls were missing, and the ever-clutching thrill of having to withstand the perils of the enclosed spaces weren’t as present as they should’ve been. But that ship had sailed a long, long time ago. Or at least, so I thought. Fast-forward several years and, with a pinch of luck, Hunted Within: The Walls eventually came knocking. That was the Maze Runner that I wanted to see. Well, it was the closest thing that I could get to an authentic emulation, anyway.

While Hunted Within: The Walls isn’t the love letter to James Dashner’s cult anthology that we might have wanted, it is a fitting tribute that pays homage to a lot of the series’ core themes, including its dystopian premise, towering labyrinthine walls, and harrowing escapades that congregate in the twilight sections. It has more to it, for sure, but the Maze Runner themes are alive and kicking here — and it shows. Naturally, it isn’t the be all, end all of adaptations, though it does come clean with a lot of solid survival-based gameplay mechanics and memorable challenges. Maybe that’s enough to warrant a trip to the pit, or maybe not.

The story here is vaguely similar: a prisoner finds themselves trapped in an enormous labyrinth with overhanging walls, and, with the aid of makeshift tools and other equipment, decides to plot a daring escape. A simple setup, I’ll admit. But, again, there’s more here than meets the eye.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

Hunted Within: The Walls takes a leaf out of your typical survival-obsessed textbook and adds its own ink blot to the usual pulpy tropes, with a monolithic, somewhat dystopian plateau for a setting and a twist on the classic tower defense formula. The bulk of the game, though, is incredibly simple—“craft, explore, and defend” simple. Much like your traditional survival-crafting IP, Hunted Within peppers its assets over two gameplay experiences, one that revolves around exploring the world and gathering resources for crafting purposes, and another that focuses on night-time hunting and defending. Think Dying Light, and how its world turns on its axis once the sun goes down, and you’ll have a rough idea of how this one works. It’s the same basic idea, but with ghoulish foes and eight-legged monsters instead of flesh-eating zombies. Oh, and a stone labyrinth instead of a post-apocalyptic metropolis.

The goal of Hunted Within: The Wall is to, well, escape from the wall, so to speak. To do that, you have a number of objectives to accomplish before setting out on your journey, most of which involve locating important artifacts in the world, crafting tools and weapons from the materials that you gather, and confronting malicious enemies that loom in the dark and actively hunt you down. Encased within all of that is a relatively simple gameplay loop that frequents the usual progression hooks that we’ve seen numerous times before. By that I mean, if you’re not unearthing better materials to craft better weapons, then you’re using your equipment to carve a little deeper into the world and unlock more of its secrets. There isn’t much more to it than that.

What Looms Behind the Curtain?

Hunted Within: The Wall dresses itself up as a hybrid of three pivotal works of mainstream art: Maze Runner, Dying Light, and Outlast. Frankly, I cannot see the Outlast themes here, but I can, however, see what the devs were trying to capture with its stealth-based gameplay mechanics. Combat-wise, eh, it’s a hit-and-miss thing; it’s fluid and it’s satisfying, but it’s also chaotic and weirdly lacking in finesse and grace. And while it isn’t a lackluster experience—the act of bashing an enemy’s face in with an axe—it is one that stops being enjoyable after so many hours. But that’s a small price to pay for an otherwise engaging journey that’s stupendously entertaining, nonetheless.

If I was to cut out these minor nitpicking issues, then you would actually have a pretty solid survival game, and more importantly, an indie that deserves to be cradled, at least for a while before the next survival-crafting games steps up to the plate to take a swing at the podium. While it isn’t a perfect game, much less one that brings anything particularly new to the table, it is a game that checks a lot of boxes and makes a good effort to wade through some uncharted waters and into crossbreed territories that we haven’t seen all that many times before.

Verdict

Hunted Within: The Walls takes a classic dime-a-dozen concept and meshes that signature Dying Light combat with a Maze Runner-like twist to formulate its own crafting-horror hybrid. And the best thing about this is that it blends surprisingly well, with its addition of a clean, albeit slightly liminal environment serving as a cherry on top of its lofty foundation.

There’s a lot to love about Hunted Within. But then, there’s also nothing particularly extraordinary about it. On the one hand, it does most of its job in an effective manner, and it does enough to scratch an itch or two. Having said that, it also falls to one of the biggest challenges of having to keep a candle alight in a sea of lit flames. In other words, it has the problem of having to grasp a platform to propel even its greatest qualities and distinctive characteristics. And with so, so many of these survival-crafting properties afloat, this doesn’t come as much of a surprise, sadly.

With all of the above said, Hunted Within is a still a great game with a lot of fantastic components. Aside from it being a visually appealing work of art, it’s also a game that’s capable of stealing a handful of hours from you, no doubt due to its wealth of content and upgrade trees, dystopian premise and labyrinthine design. If those are the sorts of things that make you tick, then you’ll probably enjoy knocking at the stone walls of Hunted Within.