SKYHILL: Black Mist Gameplay Preview – Zombie Stealth Action

SKYHILL: Black Mist is a stealth action game at heart. While the game does have a serviceable narrative featuring a few characters, it takes the back seat for most of the game. Little bits and pieces of story are sprinkled here and there through the use of phone calls. There are some elements of intrigue and mystery involved as you slowly piece together what happened to the protagonist’s missing daughter.

The stealth action is arguably the strongest portion of the game. It is a distillation of stealth action without any of the distracting frills. The goal is to navigate the building complex you are in and survive to the very end. Avoiding the enemies is key here as the available weaponry, ammunition, restorative items, and crafting materials are all scarce and hard to come by.

This scarcity forces the player to master avoiding enemies, as taking a run and gun approach will often find the player out of ammo and outnumbered and cornered. The weapons merely serve as a mulligan for botched stealth runs and in this sense the game is pretty generous. It gives the player the option to eliminate enemies at key choke points to bypass a tedious stealth segment. It becomes a puzzle of figuring out how to best utilize the given tools in a level to bypass the enemies as efficiently as possible.

The game does provide more challenges by introducing new types of enemies, each with new abilities and behavioral patterns. The game also has areas of the map that become accessible as you find more tools. In addition to this are items that help you misdirect the enemy. Once you master all of these tools, you can navigate the map and bypass enemies rather quickly.

Overall, SKYHILL: Black Mist embodies the essence of stealth action. It adds in other elements such as narrative in the background, leaving the stealth action as the main focus of the game.