Ratshaker (PS5) | REVIEW | Psychological Horror Meets Pest Control

As a psychological horror game with a pest control gimmick, Ratshaker breaks the mold of the genre while delivering an uncannily unnerving story that unfolds in the most peculiar of ways. Initially starting off in a wheat field in the middle of nowhere, holding in your right hand a bug-eyed rodent, you slowly begin to notice things aren't quite as they seem. 

Shaking the rat violently upon prompt to the point that it wails in disapproval causes a barn to appear off in the distance. After this you squeeze the ever loving life out of the rat until it turns purple only to let it breathe again so that it can verbally taunt you, and reveal your true objective. It seems the rat in your grips knows something about yourself that you don't know. In order to get those secrets out of said rat you'll need to shake it, and squeeze it, but never kill it. This leads you from the wheat field to the newly conjured house, and into a constantly morphing interior that is home to a truly nightmarish scene. A place where rat shaking in front of set pieces of interest will get you one step closer to the darker truth of your situation.

As Ratshaker's rat shaker you will find that the controller in your hand offscreen acts as the means with which you'll shake the hints out of the rat, and squeeze it for different effects. This leads you on a trail of events in an ever evolving maze-like interior that showcases cryptic details of your life, and where something went horribly wrong. There are moments where shaking or squeezing the rat unlocks new areas of interest, offers up more dialogue from the rat, or gifts you one of several pieces of a photo that acts as the puzzle that will lead you to your truth. 

It's all about following the clues, interacting with the right objects, and noticing things that open your eyes to what might have happened. This of course starts off with a preview of a house just moved into by a recently married couple. Boxes lay in each room ready to be unpacked, with a photo of the couple situated on their bedroom nightstand. From here things slowly, but surely take a dark and sinister turn. Hinting at, but not directly pointing to, a criminal act. By pressing forward, and using the rat as your guide without accidently killing him through traps or grip you will eventually find what you are looking for. 

The Presentation ...

The game as a whole has a darkly comedic vibe throughout with the cartoonish rat being the almost funny focal point, and the house being the means with which the story unravels in real time. Shaking the rat causes it to scream leaving it's teasing spoken words to spill out like a haunting reminder of something you forgot. All of this plays on a dual track of sound in which you'll hear what sounds like satanic reverberation and the actual eerie tunes that play alongside the rat's vocal cues. It's a perfect buildup to the horrors that will eventually make themselves known.

The Verdict ...

Going into Ratshaker I didn't know what to expect. Those of us who got early access were told it was about pest control, but that's not entirely the truth. While the rat in the protagonist's hand is a pest and there are plenty more rats in-game it's not the point of this first person narratively driven horror experience. By utilizing the uncanny nature of various visuals including the cartoonish rat the developer has effectively amplified the unnerving psychological effects of the gameplay. 

It is an eerie atmospheric tale that gets darker the more you listen to the rat and use it to seek out a buried reality. Through mixed audio and visuals the developer manages to create something unique that drives the curious to follow through willingly while they are fully aware something not nice lies in wait for their efforts. It is this clever method of storytelling that makes Ratshaker so brilliant, and genre effective. For these reasons I can recommend it to horror fans. It's something fresh from the indie scene!!!