I don't browse Google Play's marketplace with much enthusiasm these days. Anymore, I find myself window shopping and ultimately conserving my phone's memory. One could attribute my apathy to the oodles of middling games the Android platform offers, but personally I think the opulence of titles containing words like candy, saga, tap, zombie, bird, and horror have killed my mobile gaming ardor (and heaven help me if I should ever stumble upon Candy Zombie Bird Tap Horror Saga). Perhaps it was my indifference that drew me to freeware scare Silent Insanity P.T. "You don't belong here!" I said to my phone upon discovering the game, which earned me curious glances in the grocery line. Right before me sat a free product aping Silent Hill--a brand associated with consoles instead of handheld devices--in possibly the most cringeworthy way. It sounded so deliciously awful that I couldn't not download it.
...and it didn't take long for Silent Insanity to nose dive, either.
The first few minutes of play pitted me against a closed door in a dark room. Said device opened inward when operated. I didn't immediately step out of its way when opening it, so the door stopped dead, waited a few seconds, and shut on me. I reopened it and backed away, giving the portal all the space it would ever need. The distance required to travel from my position to the hallway would have taken maybe two seconds, in which time the door closed on me once again. I took my difficulties with this simple action to be an omen, and I had to wonder how the rest of the campaign was going to turn out. I gulped, fumbled for the knob one last time, and advanced in spite of my burgeoning regret.
Silent Insanity mostly borrows from Silent Hill IV: The Room. Sixteen out of its eighteen chapters transpire within an apartment, wherein "horrific" manifestations occur. Unlike The Room, though, Silent Insanity's ghostly phenomena are thoroughly tame. Now and then you might spot a household object splattered with blood or hear a peculiar noise emanating from random corner. Occasionally, stimuli appear in spaces either previously unoccupied or inhabited by another item. For instance, there's a small storage chamber that sometimes holds cardboard boxes, but might also contain a bloody crib exuding the cry of a phantasmal baby. Sadly, this is only one of two bona fide scares the game offers.
Advancing through Silent Insanity is like visiting a poorly constructed haunted house attraction. You begin the first sixteen stages in the aforementioned room with the annoying door. From there, you amble your way through the T-shaped apartment, examine several horror cliches, abide noises and flashing lights, and then exit through another door to end the level. You must check out these anomalies in order to progress to the next stage. Sometimes you're also required to nab a key before completing a mission, but locating it is so simple--it's usually on a table or shelf--that its inclusion is unnecessary.
You'll find your tedious work "rewarded" if you make it to level seventeen. There you'll depart from the apartment into the crisp, exhaust-scented air of the city. Oh, by the way, there are also zombies on the prowl. Thankfully, by this point you'll possess a pistol, so dropping the ghouls shouldn't be a problem. With that conflict resolved, you can then mosey on to a downed helicopter that takes you to the final stage.
Eighteen thrusts you into an asylum with multiple identical rooms. You travel from one end of the series, inspect an object, and head back to the beginning. Cue ending. That's it. By now, you should have seen Silent Insanity's "twist" ending coming from miles away. However, the developer placed so little trust in his audience's intellect that he spelled out the primitive conclusion with a brief passage. It's insulting, to say the least.
Silent Insanity P.T. suffers from familiar symptoms that plague other free horror titles. It's bereft of any significant scares, repetitive, and filled with insubstantial gameplay that ranges from looking at things to fighting off about ten zombies total. To top it all off, the affair culminates in a maddening climax where the programmer beats you over the head with the story's predictable twist. Silent Insanity may not the be the worst app I've played on Android, but frankly it's not far from the bottom.
