Crisol: Theater of Idols Review - Now We Got Bad Blood

Ole Gamer Joe
3 hours ago
10 min read

Crisol: Theater of Idols

PC/PS/XBOX

2/10/26

Vermila Studios/Blumhouse Games

Ah, Blumhouse, best known for delivering big-hit, low-budget horror films for franchises like Paranormal Activity, The Purge, and M3GAN, to name a few. Having enjoyed success in the movie industry for over two decades now, the popular American film and television studio is expanding further into the world of video games under the banner of Blumhouse Games. After securing publishing rights for titles such as Sleep Awake, Eyes of Hellfire, and Fear the Spotlight, the company appears committed to its trademark model: backing smaller, creator-driven horror projects that stay true to the genre's roots without breaking the bank. It’s a smart business decision without question: spend a reasonable amount to make a reasonable amount, though the topic of today’s video, Crisol: Theater of Idols, is perhaps their most ambitious foray into gaming yet and seems to have a bit more moolah behind it. But does this spooky first-person survival horror romp developed by Vermila Studios deliver the bloody good time we’ve come to expect, or did this new release leave me scared stupid, just like my old buddy Ernest? Let’s find out in our full review!

Enter the world of Tormentosa, an island somewhere within a twisted, otherworldly version of Spain that has fallen under a wretched curse. Playing as Gabriel, an overly formal soldier, you’ll unravel the mystery behind this curse, learn the origins of a Sun God, and most importantly answer the age-old question: how many times can I pump myself full of random blood-filled needles before something terrible happens? The answer, apparently, is at least enough to get through this 15-hour campaign.

Crisol: Theater of Idols is a first-person survival horror game made in a similar fashion to more modern Resident Evil releases, mainly 7 and 8. You’ll explore this massive open island across 4 unique chapters, blasting down creepy wooden statue-like creatures, occasionally avoiding the ruthless pursuit of an evil entity known as Dolores in what feels like a callback to Nemesis but is now commonplace in indie horror games, solving a variety of different puzzles, upgrading weapons, and even unlocking a few different skills to improve your survival odds. Oh, and you just might shit your pants once or twice along the way, so keep your dude wipes handy — or, for you ladies out there, a, ahem… well, I guess you won’t need to worry about it since ladies don’t poop.

For all of its familiarity, writing Crisol: Theater of Idols off as just another first-person survival horror game would be a grave mistake. Its dark island is captivating to explore, rife with bleak imagery and dripping in lore, often dribbled to players through dramatic reenactments of past events told through ghostly red figures that once inhabited this place. Much like accidentally walking in on your parents doing the nasty, you’ll see things you never wanted to see before, like how many of the folks on this island met their often grisly ends. If it wasn’t already obvious, this game ain’t for the faint of heart, though it still offers plenty of the campiness that Blumhouse is known for.

Take voice-work, for example. Normally, I would shit all over a game for having terrible acting; however, I am willing to give Crisol a bit of a pass in this department, as its ridiculous, stilted voice performances almost seem intentional. Even if they aren’t, actors delivering lines verbatim while not adding any personal touches or natural speaking patterns make for some unintentionally funny moments that strangely work in a game that is clearly not trying to take itself too seriously. The writers aren’t afraid to get weird with things here, and while some of the story moments do fall flat, mainly an eye-rolling twist towards the game's conclusion, I ultimately found myself enjoying the campiness of it all more often than not.

But the biggest and best twist that this game offers is in its use of blood. What are you talking about, Joe? PLENTY of games have blood! Yes, that may be true, but how many of those games have you draining your own blood to gain back ammunition? That’s what I thought. This is indeed how reloading works in Crisol, as you’ll need to pierce your own skin, draining your health in the process with each necessary reload. This adds a unique element of strategy that had me carefully managing health injections, switching between various weapons, keeping an eye out for animal corpses to absorb, and trying to duck out of harm's way to safely spill some more red into my gun’s chamber. This system is a bit crazy on paper, but much like the game's narrative, it works effectively and leads to some truly thrilling combat encounters.

On the topic of combat, the developers have done a lovely job of adapting the thrilling carnage of an FPS game into a survival horror setting. Aiming feels spot-on, with the game’s admittedly small array of weapons all handling a bit differently. Your main pistol will cost less blood to refill but naturally deals out less damage. For close-range melee combat, you’ll have a dagger to hack at enemies; however, all that hacking will cause your blade to dull, so you’ll also need to stop at sharpening stations to maintain this weapon. Your shotgun can easily obliterate foes in a single blast if you get lucky, though its costly blood requirement may have you second-guessing how often you need it. Now, in fairness, combat fares much worse in close-quarters situations, as there are no real grenades or traps to clear out rooms outside of the occasional barrel you can blast. This led to a few occasions of being ganged up on with little room for escape, as there is quite literally no platforming in Crisol; thus, getting caught in a corner can be an absolute, inescapable nightmare. Thankfully, these situations are quite rare, with most battles taking place in more open areas across the island. There is also a quick-turn that could potentially get you out of a bind, and a parry can be performed with your dagger, though I hardly found a practical application for it.

Enemy variety is a bit lacking, but what’s here is excellent. Lumbering wooden statues will creep you the fuck out as they maniacally swing their swords and fire arrows in your direction. Headshots won’t always do the trick here, as their bodies splinter with each shot, often breaking down into separate components that will still come after you. It’s very cool to see an enemy torso do its best to inflict harm on Gabriel, or a headless creature waddle aimlessly. These creepy foes are the main attraction when it comes to enemies, outside of a few flying babies, sewer gremlins, and annoying glass creatures, alongside some fairly decent boss encounters that utilize Gabriel’s lack of platforming prowess in clever ways.

Thankfully, a friendly witch will also offer a variety of upgrades should you collect enough silver and crow relics. Silver will help you buy upgrades for each individual weapon, such as the ability to hold more ammunition or a faster fire rate, while hidden crow relics and essence earned through defeating enemies will bolster your skill set. This witchy station, as I have decided to name it, also acts as a save point, with various purple orbs scattered across the map for logging progress. Unfortunately, saves can sometimes feel a bit too few and far between, and the game’s built-in autosave system isn’t always perfect; thus, there were a few occasions where I felt like I wanted to stop playing for a while but couldn’t, or in a few cases, even lost some of my progress. With all of that said, I didn’t find Crisol to be a particularly difficult game, though players do have four difficulty options, including a custom mode that can be tailored to their liking. You may want to bump this one up to the hardest offering from the offset if you like your games more challenging, as at the time of this review I was unable to change this choice during gameplay.

Much of Crisol: Theater of Idols is about exploration and puzzle-solving. I was blown away by just how massive this island felt. There’s no shortage of areas to explore that are full of secrets, with a decent map available that shows you where you’ve been and items or puzzles of importance you may have missed or need to come back for. The map wasn’t perfect, but it’s better than what we’ve seen in many games, and for what it’s worth, I got through this entire review without the need for a guide, so credit the developers for that. You’ll want to scour every last corner of the map, as sadly there was no new game plus that I saw upon completion, so until that is potentially added, you may want to do as much as possible before chapter 4 rolls in. Luckily, the map also comes with a handy feature where areas that have been fully explored are marked blue, with areas that still have items of importance being labeled red.

At the center of this island is your base hub area, which contains carnival games where you can win tickets for prizes, treasure chests that can be unlocked with secret brooches hidden around the game, and catch your breath between chapters. The minigames are a nice distraction, though simple in nature and a bit repetitive after the first go. Still, this area serves as a welcome reprieve from all of the corpses and bloodletting.

For those of you who love shooting and exploration but aren’t big on puzzles, you might cringe a bit to hear that Crisol: Theater of Idols has tons of different conundrums to crack that come in all shapes and challenge levels. That said, I assume the vast majority of you watching or reading this review expected as much, and you’ll be pleased to know that the puzzles presented aren’t overly obtuse or frustrating to deal with. If you’ve dealt with Resident Evil logic in the past, you’ll breeze through most of these unscathed. There’s your standard fare on offer, such as sliding puzzles, moving about switches, and remembering important numbers, but I was also genuinely impressed with how clever some of these solutions were. Outside of a few frustrating moments, I was able to find most solutions in short order, massively helped by the game’s built-in memo tracker, which highlights key clues that will help you find answers.

And the award for my least favorite aspect of the entire game goes to… THE STEALTH. Look, I actually like stealth in games if it’s done well; the problem is, so many games handle it poorly, and Crisol is no exception. While these stealth sections are thankfully limited to just a few small portions of the game, I cringed with each encounter, as it became difficult to explore with a massive metallic creature pursuing me and the game not really being built with stealth in mind. As you are stalked by Deloroes, she will swipe at you and even grab you from locations where you think you are safe. It’s frustrating without question trying to creep about the map, hide in some tunnels, and hope you aren’t spotted, but far from a dealbreaker.

If you’ve been with me this long, first off, thank you, and secondly, you already know that this game looks bloody awesome. Emphasis on the bloody, of course. Each location has been painstakingly detailed, making this island feel rich in history. Dark corridors feature exceptional lighting, enemy designs are suitably creepy, and in general, I tip my hat to the developers for creating such a dreadful, dreary place that I genuinely enjoyed uncovering every square inch of. That said, being such a dark and gritty game, the visuals are definitely best enjoyed at night in a dimly lit room (or total darkness) for full effect.

Ironically, the sun is not good for this game. From wretched churches to haunted hallways and caverns, the art direction is astonishing, only let down in spots by a few low‑resolution textures when viewed up close. You can tell so much love and care went into the visual design of this game; from simple touches like signage to drizzling rains, I was truly impressed throughout. Adding to the immersion is an excellent 5.1 mix that will have you looking behind you, wondering where the last noise came from. Eerie creaks and cracks as enemies lurk in shadows, the sound of rain splattering is only less satisfying than the sound of blood hitting the floor, and an atmospheric soundtrack featuring excellent Spanish vocal tracks and some lovely strummed acoustics puts a feather in the cap of this game’s excellent presentation. Sure, the voice acting is campy and admittedly not great, but it fits the vibe of the game well. And the whizzing of bullets during combat alongside epic explosions? Phenomenal stuff.

Unfortunately, where Crisol: Theater of Idols stumbles a bit is in its performance. Despite having a plethora of visual options, I struggled to get the game to maintain a steady framerate throughout, even on my 4070 rig. Frame skipping was common, which as someone who values performance in games, I found pretty annoying. The best configuration I came up with was changing my upscaling technique to XESS and the upscale resolution to “ultra performance.” This wasn’t perfect, but it gave me the most optimal framerate possible at the time of this review. Thankfully, a day one patch is said to be in the works that will hopefully clean up some of the patchy framerate spots I hit.

Thankfully, this wasn’t a consistent issue throughout, with many sections of the game running without a hitch. On Steam Deck, I ran into an initial issue where the screen was not formatted to the display correctly. I managed to stumble my way into the graphics setting, and switching to “borderless window” fixed this issue. To my surprise, using the same upscaling setting as on the big brother PC version, albeit at low graphical settings, worked effectively, with the game looking and performing great. I was able to achieve 60 FPS gameplay, of course with the occasional dip mainly when loading into new areas. It’s obvious the game wasn’t built with the small screen in mind, but with a few workarounds it can still be a pretty good way to experience the game on a handheld.

While Crisol: Theater of Idols stumbled in a few key areas, I still had a great time going through its bizarrely entertaining single-player campaign. Hell, this game deserves props for being an all chiller no filler single-player experience alone. The island is beautifully realized and a joy to explore with fun gunfights, creepy inhabitants, and an interesting blood-fueled ammo system that adds an interesting element of strategy and depth to a familiar formula. Its puzzles are just challenging enough to not be frustrating, and its visuals and sound design are top-notch. It’s all enough to make you forget about some of the lackluster stealth, campy voice acting (though this could be viewed as a positive), and technical quirks. If you're a fan of first-person survival horror games, and you’ve enjoyed cheesy Blumhouse horror flicks in the past, this feels like a match made in heaven.

SILVER GREAT

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