Review by owner(s).

Possessors is mostly a peaceful game, but everyone is buzzing. The action takes place in a walled corporate city after a mysterious cataclysm. Teenage heroine Luca loses her legs in a cataclysm and is left for dead, but luckily she soon becomes possessed by a demon named Rhem, who gives her novel insect legs on the condition that they cooperate to escape the ruined city. As far as pacts with the devil go, this is quite rational. The 20-hour metroidvania that follows has a lot to admire, but it doesn’t break through or create any trends.

Before its fall, the corporate overlords of this walled city of Agradyne drained captured demons of a raw material called Chroma, which was used to power the batteries they sold. In the aftermath of the cataclysm, demons escaped from their vats and possessed everything from livid teenagers to potted plants.

This means Luca has to fight demon-possessed witch hats, demon-possessed security cameras, demon-possessed filing cabinets, and more, usually with a baseball bat or hockey stick. This also means that he is in constant dialogue with his wielder Rhem, who looks like Astarion plays the bass in Type O Negative. These demons are not fantasy demons: they are hipster demons whose carelessness hides the trauma of their status as resource extraction sites for greedy corporations.

Full movement

The action of Possessors takes place in a three-dimensional world played from a strictly lateral perspective. Luca and all the enemies are meticulously animated 2D sprites, giving the whole thing an imaginative urban fantasy feel that looks great in the trailers, but takes time to get used to in practice. The 3D world is presented in subdued, gloomy, dystopian color schemes, and the sprites are fluorescent and clearly readable. If it reminds me of anything, it’s films from the ’90s like Roger Rabbit that combined – sometimes very awkwardly – live action with animation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Possessors takes place in the fictional year 1992.

This art style contributes to occasional inaccuracies in platforming and combat: it’s not always very obvious, for example, exactly how much of a brittle ledge you can grab, and sometimes the stylish foreground graphics can unrecognized the action. There are other issues that aren’t strictly related to the art style: Luca can’t look down, and I’ve encountered plenty of situations where it would be helpful if he could. It’s a platformer with a ponderous emphasis on precision, but at the same time full of leaps of faith.

Combat is better when it comes to precision. Much has been written about Posessors’ similarity to Smash Bros, and while I can’t vouch for it, I can confirm that the combat here is actually really fun at its core. Luca can wield a variety of primary weapons – kitchen knives, hockey sticks and a baseball bat – but can also equip three types of special weapons. I usually used a special katana to deal damage quickly, but there are also things like a computer mouse that works like a ball and chain, and a cell phone that sends out a shockwave that can stun enemies. Luca has a whip that she can swing between hooks to drag weaker enemies into melee range, and her parry can deflect projectiles from the volley.

The combat is fun, often frantic, but ultimately simplistic: it takes many hours for this game to show its teeth. Those familiar with newfangled 2D action games will beat most bosses on the first try, and while Heart Machine has certainly mastered stately attacks, dodges, and parries – it feels precise and flashy – its attempts to incorporate aerial movement generally feel wasted: in a game where lethal projectiles fly in all directions at once, it almost always pays to hold tight and play defensively. I didn’t have to learn novel strategies after five hours: I just had to do them faster and more reliably.

This doesn’t mean that the lack of a headache-inducing fight is a mark against the Holders. In fact, as the game progressed, I admired its commitment to a gentle difficulty curve in an age where almost every indie action game feels like an excuse for bragging rights (some of that can be blamed on influential studio Hyper Light Drifter). Although the loosely connected map extends as it should, little dots mark places I haven’t yet discovered: I never once felt lost or disoriented. Dying means losing the currency I collected, but there’s nothing wrong with that as I can deposit it for safekeeping at regular save points anyway. I never felt distraught or livid while playing Possessors as I did when playing Silksong. Everything goes smoothly, maybe even too smoothly for some.

The devil is in the details

This gentleness seems fitting for a story that contrasts interpersonal exploitation (terrible friends taking advantage of you) with its abstract industrialized version (corporations literally farm you for commodities). The tone of the writing deliberately vacillates between ’90s anime and newborn adult novel, but Heart Machine still manages to maintain admirable restraint in a pop-sci-fi genre that can be stubborn in skipping lofty themes. I came to admire how the game’s sometimes awkward blend of 2D and 3D graphics reflected the contrasting existential puzzles at the heart of Possessors.

The soundtrack is also stunning and diverse, ranging from slightly melancholic ’90s electronic jazz to star-studded urban pop ballads. This helps the game build gently towards a climax that feels over-the-top and cathartic (read: quite emotional), as befits a story about a teenager and her demon pal navigating a world in irreversible crisis, but also leaves room for a broader, more reflective approach to storytelling.

None of the considerate environments in Possessors are particularly novel – we visit corporate buildings, luxury apartments, dilapidated aquariums and dilapidated libraries – but the music, even the sound, adds an atmospheric subtlety to a design that feels like a secret weapon. Another studio might have opted for a uncomplicated paint-by-numbers symphony or a return to chiptune.

Sometimes annoying imperfections appear. Areas flooded with water tended to drop frame rates on my elderly two-gen gaming laptop, and I encountered one annoying bug that basically erased the entire room (thankfully approaching it from another entry rematerialized it, but I never got around to using that broken entry).

The upgrade system is also strangely murky: I found out very behind schedule in the game that I had to upgrade my weapons in order to apply buffs (or “affixes”) to them. Perhaps it’s my fault, but the system for upgrading health and healing potions is also unnecessarily vague: upgrade items cannot be “used” and I spent hours waiting to meet an NPC who could lend a hand me apply them. But no: they are automatically used when I reach a mysterious milestone of five, four or six people – I still don’t know how many. Due to the vagueness of this system, I quickly lost interest in collecting.

Heart Machine embraced 2D pixel art from the start in Hyper Light Drifter, but made the awkward transition to 3D in Solar Ash. Now they’ve combined the two, and while I don’t think Possessors is as groundbreaking as it perhaps should be in the unsustainable 2025 market, it’s certainly the work of a studio with a specific approach to graphics, motion, and storytelling.

Frustratingly, Heart Machine’s future doesn’t seem guaranteed at this point. In a better world, such peaceful messages could earn a penny or more, providing a livelihood for all involved. This is not reality now, especially for a studio whose main early access push has clearly failed. As it stands, Possessors should be seen for what it is in the current climate: a low-key, almost pathetic metroidvania with great ideas, made for people living in line with its interests. It’s a peaceful little job sent out into a barking, crazy atmosphere.