As the game begins, you’re tasked with becoming a vampire slayer, put into a castle that houses 9 vampires, and told that many before you have failed. You’re guided by a mysterious mentor, who tells you about the history of the vampires you’re trying to dust as they slumber and teaches you how to get past their defenses. A pry bar, clippers, and a hook made from a finger bone are among the many tools within reach, but a stake through the heart is the only way to end it.

The game relies on a spooky atmosphere and requires a good deal of patience as any sound you make risks waking up the vampire whose defenses you’re trying to get past. Tension builds as you cautiously lift bars, remove nails, and clip wires to find the vampire’s heart. Your silence and precision are key as you avoid awakening the beasts who will drain your life instantly.

COFFIN UP THE MECHANICS

As the game begins, you’re given a short but effective tutorial level. After that, the pattern is fairly consistent: solve a 3-dimensional puzzle that shows you the shapes you’ll have to make to penetrate the final defensive layer of each vampire, teleport to the vampire’s coffin, and then slowly unlock the coffin and make your way, as stealthily as possible, past their defenses.

The defenses do pile on, starting with bars that need to be slowly and carefully removed, to nails that must slowly be pried loose, to wires pulsing with electricity that you need to cut, to little voodoo watchers that’ll awaken every now and then and sound an alert if they sense any movement.

It all fosters a careful exercise in patience and slow, purposeful movement, all while in a slightly spooky atmosphere that VR veterans will find entertaining but the less adept might feel terrifying.

If you’re worried about jump scares, well, they’re tempered. In fact, Pete and I have slightly different views on the scares. I don’t consider the jump scares true jump scares since they occur only when you fail, so I consider them a death screen, and because they’re predictable (you can always tell when you’ve messed up), I don’t find them particularly scary and they don’t startle me. I love Pete, but he has the fortitude of a little baby and still thinks they’re jump scares. Clearly, your horror mileage may vary.

Overall, the game is slick and well-made, a testament to Schell Games, and honestly, after their work on the I Expect You to Die series, we expected no less than a classy execution. See what I did there?

FANG-TASTIC VISUALS

Graphically speaking, Schell Games are as sharp as they’ve always been. The castle environments are cool, well-stylized, and look great. The game’s visual presentation effectively captures the eerie, gothic atmosphere of a vampire’s lair, with dimly lit corridors, ancient stone walls, and ominous coffins.

The attention to detail in the various tools and traps you encounter adds to the immersion, making each interaction feel tactile and real. While the overall aesthetic leans more towards a cartoonish, Transylvania-inspired style rather than photorealism, it works well for the game’s tone and gameplay. Nice and spooky, in a fun, approachable way.

SOUNDS LIKE A SCREAM

The sound is equally great, with the voice acting by your mentor being quite sinister and superb, and the ambient audio of the castle environments lending everything a creepy atmosphere. You can hear spiders crawling, you can hear the occasional bat fly by, startling you a little, you can feel echoing footsteps in the distance making you look around in concern while you’re trying to slowly, carefully pry a nail loose while worrying that another nail is sympathetically coming out of the coffin with it, and might drop to the floor and wake up a damn bloodsucker.

BLOODY NITPICKS

There’s not much to complain about with Silent Slayer, but you know us better than that. We’re the nitpicking reviewers, so here it goes. The game might feel a little short; there are less than a dozen vampires to kill, and once you get past the first five, the rest just build on the first, without really adding any more game mechanics. On the other hand, it’s priced at $19.99, so you can’t really complain about the longevity you get. Still – it would have been great to keep adding on more mechanics as the game reached its conclusion rather than just piling on mechanics that have already been introduced.

The 3D puzzles are also somewhat useless. I mean, some are more challenging than others to assemble, but the conceit that solving them reveals the shapes you need to cast to defeat the vampires is rendered useless by the fact that you’re guided through the shapes by arrows that show up before the kill, so the actual utility of the puzzles is nullified.

Another issue is that once you’ve gotten used to the fact that you only get caught if you fail twice in a row, the game becomes a bit too easy. As long as you’re patient, it’s hard to fail.

But again, like I said, I’m nitpicking. At the end of the day, this is a unique game, with great graphics, great audio, an interesting conceit, and cool mechanics. It’s well-priced and knows not to wear out its welcome.

FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES

Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire is a solid new title from Schell Games. While not as deep as their I Expect You to Die installments, it’s fun and offers a nicely spooky and tactile VR experience well-suited to both VR veterans and VR newbies since the player doesn’t really move around the environment and there’s no cause for motion sickness. It’s Operation in VR, and that’s not a bad thing at all, so long as you know what you’re getting into.

FROM RUSSIA WITH GLOVES

Ah, I see that you’re still here. Probably want a bit more detail about the mission before pitching yourself headlong into the risky business. Well, fair enough. Here’s the briefing proper. I Expect You to Die 3: Cog in the Machine is the latest instalment in a series by Schell Games, dependably solid developers who have a very good handle on what constitutes a solid VR title. Just like the other I Expect You to Die games, it’s a puzzle-based escape-the-room type of affair that you’re expected to play seated, interacting with the levels using a nifty virtual telekinetic implant that allows you to grab, manipulate and freeze items in place while you work out how everything fits together. It’s a very well-wrought and designed system that feels intuitive and right and has remained largely unchanged since the first game. 

YOU ONLY LIVE THRICE

Two things really define this series for me; the first is the satisfying and clever puzzles, which are beautifully realised and a pleasure to mess about with. The second is the setting; a really likeable 1960s retro-but-current James Bond parody, which also pulls in aspects of all the other well-loved parodies of such things, like Austin Powers, Despicable Me and Get Smart. And perhaps of all the possible influences it channels, The Avengers is the most apt of all. (The wonderfully wry 60s TV series, not the unrelated modern superhero extended cinematic universe shite bearing the same name). There’s a joyous confidence to the whole thing, from the voice acting to the utterly wonderful Bond-style intro sequence and bombastic theme song which puts a lot of actual Bond efforts to shame. Honestly, A Cog in the Machine features the best VR credits sequence yet, even compared to its sister games, and the song is a classic. The setting and atmosphere are absolutely crucial to what makes these games sing so beautifully, and it’s safe to say that Schell haven’t put a foot wrong here.

DOUBLE OH BLOODY HELL FIRE

The spy game environment may have a cuddly, stylised feel but there are some outlandish, sudden and shocking player deaths, as you may – ahem – expect from the title. This will really be the only bone of contention here for some players. The puzzles are superbly designed. You start every level with no real clue what you should be doing and the game centres around reaching an understanding of each setting and the objects and gadgets within. While you’re doing that and being made to feel very clever when you start to comprehend, there will be moments when you do something that will lead to you dying. Quite a bit.

With no mid-level checkpoints, you may find that dying repeatedly leads to quite a bit of frustration. But it’s not an oversight, it’s a deliberate design trope of the game and one I really enjoy. Sometimes it’s funny when the game sort of tricks you into self-destruction, and sometimes it’s enraging. But you’ll find yourself clicking restart with determination and the desire to be just that little bit more clever and mindful next time. The feeling of reward when you perfect a level is immense, because it’s been so hard won. And don’t think that because the game plays as a seated, escape room-style affair that it will not have thrilling action sequences because it does. No spoilers here, but some of the levels will have you grinning at the clever way they weave that spy action into the game’s structure. It’s truly excellent stuff. 

DR. YES

There’s not much more I can say about I Expect You To Die 3 without spoiling something. And there’s very little I feel I can criticise about it, because it does everything it sets out to do with style and finesse, and for the core audience that love these games it’s more high-quality spy puzzle action that manages to have both a lovely sense of humour and a genuine sense of danger. There are no doubt some people who might say ‘It’s still just like DLC for the first game’, but this would be to demean the amount of work on display here, and the fun to be had. The first game hit upon a genre-defining formula which hasn’t been bettered and won’t be any time soon – it shouldn’t be denigrated for trying not trying to reinvent the wheel, any more than Tetris should be criticised for always using the same blocks.

Schell Games also debuted a mixed-reality trailer, giving players a taste of how the game will immerse them into a world of complex puzzles and exciting espionage with a bit of hilarity thrown in to round out this fun-filled adventure. Check it out here:

I Expect You To Die 3: Cog in the Machine is the latest title in Schell Games’ award-winning spy-themed VR puzzle series. Players will travel to action-packed locations, wield complex gadgets, engage robots, and harness their telekinetic powers to solve tricky puzzles and stop Dr. Zor’s plans. Players encounter Dr. Prism, her sidekick Robutler, and her various robot agents as they work to save the world once again.

Key features include:

Race to Beat Dr. Zor: Assignments take place in some of the most dangerous and expansive locales to date, and each one will require agents to deploy their most advanced covert skills. These six, fast-paced missions will leave even the most seasoned players breathless.

Meet a Brilliant Mastermind: Dr. Roxana Prism, scientist and former Agency inventor, believes she can create a better agent, one that’s superior to humans. The mission: stay alive long enough to defeat this new escalating threat. * Go Undercover in Style: Agents can show off their style (undercover, of course) with an imaginative array of Agency-approved attire. Now they can choose their hat, watch, and gloves before embarking on any of their top-secret missions.

Eager Agents can order the game now on the Meta Quest Store for $24.99 USD. Agents can also find the game on Steam for PCVR.

Are you excited about I Expect You to Die 3? Have you played either of the first two games? Let us know in the comments!

It’s important to be clear at the beginning, Lost Recipes is not a game. Or at least, I bloody well hope not. 

When viewed as an “experience” instead of a “game”, this review can be quite positive, but make no mistake – If you are looking for a cooking game, move along. This is not that. Had the team at 6DOF Reviews decided to judge Lost Recipe against our gaming criteria, holding its merit against other offers within that genre, Schell Games’ latest creation would definitely not have fared well…

ORDERING OFF MENU

Lost Recipes is categorised in the Oculus Store as an ‘app’ yet described on its store page as a cooking game. Under its announcement trailer on the official Meta Quest YouTube channel, it’s described as a “cooking simulator” at the start of a paragraph that itself concludes by calling it a game. To say that its marketing is muddled is an understatement.

A reasonably brief time within the world of Lost Recipes reveals that what you actually have here is a virtual cooking experience, with a side of homage to oral tradition. Unlike a genuinely gamified cooking offering, Lost Recipes features neither the frantic energy of service nor the compulsions of score-chasing, both of which nest traditional cooking games firmly within the genre of Time Management games. 

Instead, Lost Recipes guides the player through several recipes in an authentic, interactive historical kitchen while picking up a few info-taining facts about the local culture along the way. It is thoughtfully delivered, and once you get past the disappointment of not being in a cooking game, really quite enjoyable to be a part of. 

Lost Recipes allows the player to serve dishes from three different kitchens from three cultures throughout history; Mayan, Chinese, and Greek. You will be greeted by an authentically voiced ghost in each kitchen. This ghost will verbally walk you through the steps needed to recreate favoured or culturally significant dishes. While there is also a visual aid, in the form of a floating cookbook, the actual experience seems centred around the art of verbally handing down things of cultural significance, such as recipes.

Listen carefully to your ghost and follow your instructions closely, and you pretty much can’t go wrong.

LET ME SEE THOSE TONGS

Lost Recipes is incredibly well produced. The core mechanics that allow you to bring your long-dead cuisine to life are absolutely excellent. The kitchen operates with an understated physics system that only seems impressive when past experiences have shown you how complex natural-seeming physics in a kitchen environment are to achieve. To players without that reference point, everything just moves as effortlessly as it should, and it’s all remarkably intuitive.

Chopping, grabbing, and pouring are detailed and accurate and allow the player to shed the usual cognitive load and just listen to the instructions and enjoy the process. Ironically, this refined delivery is also the most frustrating element of the Lost Recipes experience. It highlights that although this is not a game (it’s really NOT), it would be outstanding if it were.

The raw potential for a fast-paced, high-pressure game with these mechanics is stark. Calmly making someone’s dead grandma their favourite pork dish is lovely, but I was hoping to be in an ancient Chinese restaurant prepping and serving Dongpo Pork against the clock. Please Schell Games? PLEEEEEEAAASSE?

PRESENTATION IS EVERYTHING

Lost recipes is exactly as one would expect from a studio as accomplished as Schell Games. The visual style is bright and easy to interpret. The world occupies enough hyperbole to be accessible yet provides enough realism to make the experience land. The visual language, particularly across the ingredients, is convincing, and items move and interact as you would expect them to. The kitchen and environments seem authentic to the period and culture they represent. I am not a scholar in ancient cuisine, though, so take that with an appropriate pinch of salt, I guess.

The visual cues that indicate that a component is correctly prepared are easy to identify, making it easy to understand if you have achieved what is being asked. However, this is almost too efficient as following the glowing, golden indicators makes it very difficult to get anything wrong.

As with previous Schell Games offerings like the superb I Expect You To Die Games, the audio is exceptionally well delivered and forms an integral part of the experience. The ambient sounds and background music feel regionally appropriate and add to your sense of presence within the world. More importantly, they do very little to intrude on the player’s experience, focusing instead on the conversation between student and cooking instructor.

The voice acting is well directed, with voice actors indigenous to the regions they represent. Each performance is admirably directed to be easily understandable yet immediately recognisable as authentic to each region. The ghost voices brought a sense of genuine warmth to the kitchen, which I found both engaging and endearing.   

MAKE MINE A SUPERSIZE??

Whilst Lost Recipes does many things well, particularly when removed from the context and standards of a game, it lacks enough content to really achieve its broader aims. Developers Schell Games have indicated that they want Lost Recipes to be viewed as educational. However, they miss the mark somewhat and land in the realm of light infotainment. The anecdotal style of passing information to the player is natural and engaging, but there doesn’t seem to be enough depth in the imparted knowledge to truly call the experience educational. 

The other aim seems to be creating a calm, relaxing experience within which players can find small moments of zen. However, these moments are often too brief. Each cuisine/culture has only three dishes to prepare, most of which take around 6-7 minutes to prepare. There are indeed a few more robust dishes that will take about 15 minutes or so, but overall my experience indicates that a complete play-through would take no more than 1.5 – 2 hours. 

Each dish you prepare is graded on a five-star scale, but I found it easy to score four stars on every dish without much effort. With incredibly forgiving mechanics, a lack of distractions, a clear vis with a friendly ghost, and obvious visual cues, it’s almost impossible to make a mistake here. Unfortunately, this also suggests very little motivation to come back and try and improve on your first scores.

CHECK PLEASE

When viewed as an experience instead of a game, Lost Recipes is a quaintly charming offer, offering a relaxing and simple way to pass an hour or two. It provides the chance to feel enveloped within a warm and inviting historical context, albeit superficially.

But please, heed this warning. If you are looking for a fast-paced, fully developed, kitchen based time management game, then Lost Recipes will sorely disappoint.

Following on from their 2016 release of the original IEYTD followed by the successful 2019 Quest launch, Schell Games are once again donning the fake moustache of intrigue and the laser watch of… also intrigue. The original game won players over with its complex, challenging, yet achievable puzzles and its well-judged sense of humour. It’s safe to say that if you enjoyed the first outing, you’re probably going to love the sequel. 

DISCLAIMERS ARE FOREVER

Shortly after IEYTD launched on Quest in 2019, the team at 6dofreviews did what we do best… we reviewed. 

At the time, the charming and articulate Andrew Podolski gave the original an impressive score of 9. Upon being assigned the sequel, the first thing that I did was re-read his review. The second thing I did was play the first game, a particular delight that had until now eluded me.

It’s probably worth noting that although I wholeheartedly agree with everything he wrote and thoroughly enjoyed the game, I would have set the score a little lower. I don’t raise this to criticise Andrew, but to contextualise my score for I Expect You To Die 2. So, despite the slightly lower score, rest assured, this game is every bit as good as the first one. 

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE… OR MAYBE 3 OR 4 TIMES

The I Expect You To Die series operates on a simple premise. The player embodies the voiceless form of a daring international person of mystery who, with the help of a dryly witted and quintessentially British handler, must take down a nefarious international conspiracy. I won’t go into any detail on the story’s particulars, but if you go in expecting an intersection between Austin Powers and Skyfall, you’ll be reasonably well prepared.

Each mission sees the player begin in a thematically appropriate setting with little more than a few verbal prompts to guide you to your task. Vagaries along the lines of “See if you can find out what they’re up to” are often all you get before setting about unravelling the mysteries that will see you through to the next stage.

Early in the process, you will find that there are a great many ways for you to fall afoul of the games’ traps and trickeries, and subsequently that there are many, many ways to die. Careless handling of seemingly innocuous objects can result in a swift and unexpected death, which gives an underlying sense of tension to what can occasionally become haphazard experimentation with the environments.

There is a fundamental logic to how you approach puzzles that quickly grows familiar while remaining challenging. Despite this inherent logic, there is still a healthy dose of trial and error involved in working your way through the puzzles – a fact which is largely responsible for your titular demise. Mercifully you can try, fail and try again as many times as it takes. 

As long as you have the patience to keep going…

THE SPY WHO TOUCHED EVERYTHING…

If you’re anything like me, when faced with a lack of clear direction and an arbitrary set of tasks, you may well find yourself doing entirely unexpected things. As mentioned above, the game’s logic is consistent, but when you’re feeling clueless, you might find that the best course of action is simply to touch things. Lots of things. In fact, all the things.

Items that can be interacted with will make your reticule glow cyan, and almost all objects you can interact with will play a part in your mission. Some red herrings are mixed in to keep you guessing, but generally speaking, you can find a way to progress with the general attitude of “when in doubt, grab stuff”.

My only real criticism of the gameplay comes as a side effect of one of its strongest elements. The fact that there are so many ways to die means that as you complete each of the sequenced tasks making up a level, the feeling of tension intensifies. Make one wrong move and bang! You’re back at the beginning.

This is a fantastic hook until you get stuck on a puzzle towards the end of a level and find yourself replaying several minutes worth of puzzles that you’ve already solved just to get to the same bit. It’s not game-breaking, but this repetitiousness was definitely my least favourite part of the game.

THE SEQUEL NEVER DIES

While I Expect You To Die 2 is clearly a polished game in its own right, it would also play just as well as a paid DLC for the original game. The sequel is every bit as good as the original, if only because, on almost every metric, it scores almost precisely the same. The levels are among the best that the series has offered but lack new gameplay concepts that would make the sequel stand out from its forbear.

Before beginning this review, I played four levels of the first game. I then immediately played the first four levels of the second. In all honesty, at that point, I just felt like I was on level eight of the same game. That is not intended as a criticism, as I really enjoyed the first game, and as such, more of a good thing is always welcome. But those hoping that Schell Games have somehow come to tip the world of VR espionage on its head may want to check their expectations.

LIVE AND LET DIE… A LOT

The team at Schell Games have maintained the aesthetic of the first instalment of the series, albeit in a somewhat more refined way. The graphics are a bright, playful caricature of espionage classics, a choice that marries well with the game’s humour. Items in the world interact with a sense of mass, all the more impressive given the gravity-defying telekinesis that you, as a super-spy, obviously possess.

Objects collide rather than just passing through each other, which goes a long way to adding weight to the world. The game ran smoothly without any glitches or drops in framerates throughout my entire playthrough. Still, given at that one point, I was sat in a largely deserted room for around twenty minutes, trying to unlock a desk by silently repeating the mantra, “Why won’t you just unlock, you stupid desk!” I would be surprised if the Quest suddenly struggled to keep up.

SPIES LIKE US

I really wanted a better music-based spy gag title here. A shiny penny for the person in the comments who comes up with the best spy-based music pun!

On every metric, I Expect You To Die 2 is a polished and well-presented title, but particularly so in terms of its sound design. From the epic intro song dripping with the sexy swagger of a Connery era Bond film to the subtle touches with the in-game music, every auditory component of the game serves a clear purpose. Each sonic element enriches the gameplay and, more importantly, contributes to the overall sense of character that the game possesses.

The voice acting, which includes an engaging performance from TV’s Wil Wheaton, is directed perfectly for the game’s tone. From the bit players to the villainess, all of the performances tread an admirable line between glib fancy and credibility. Add to this a world with responsive collision sounds and unobtrusive ambient noises, and you can quickly lose yourself in the game’s world while you sit staring at some puzzle or another, wishing you were just a bit cleverer.

The music’s versatility is also worthy of some praise. Given that you will spend extended periods concentrating on environmental puzzles, too much music would have been distracting. I Expect You To Die 2 provides a soundtrack that is appropriately, even deliberately tempered and is a highlight for its lack of notoriety. There is even a level where the subtle background music is piped in via an old radio, which you are free to turn off. As long as you’re sure that doing that won’t kill you…

MISSION IMPROBABLE

As far as longevity goes, I Expect You To Die 2 will be a bit of a mixed bag for some players. Despite challenging puzzles that might even test genre veterans, the game does only launch with six levels. As such, experienced puzzle-solvers may well sail through it in two or three hours, and once completed, there isn’t much reason to return.

There are speedrun challenges, but they feel like an oddly out of place addition to the game. All of the considerable satisfaction that I Expect You To Die 2 yields comes from that feeling when things click, and you have your “Aha!” moments. The opportunity to simply try and perform the solutions as fast as possible seems incongruent with why you’re playing the game in the first place. It’s like if Gorn added a mode where you suddenly had to play the game while tap dancing.

Amateur puzzle solvers like myself will probably get a better value equation, as it took me around an hour to complete a few of the game’s six levels. That said, some of that time was spent in frustrated bewilderment, which I didn’t quite enjoy.

It’s worth noting that the original IEYTD also launched with six levels but received an additional three in post-launch content updates, so perhaps the generous folk at Schell Games will have more to add to his title in the not-too-distant future.

BURN AFTER PLAYING

I Expect you to Die 2 is a sequel that seems to effortlessly continue from the groundwork laid down in the original. While it doesn’t offer much that pushes the game beyond its predecessor, it doesn’t fall behind it in any way. With slick production values, great music and voice acting, fiendishly clever puzzles, and an artfully balanced sense of humour, I Expect You To Die 2 offers an elegant second helping of comedic espionage for fans of the first iteration and of the genre alike.

Fair warning, though, casual puzzlers (such as myself) may sometimes find the game difficult to the point of being frustrating. Despite the puzzles being fair, there are a few head-scratchingly tough puzzles mixed in that might test the patience of the less experienced.