Hong Kong’s famed Kowloon Walled City was a ramshackle, ever-growing colossus of haphazardly-connected high-rise buildings, ungoverned by the country’s health or sanitation authorities. Before its demolition in 1993, some 33,000 families resided and worked for a living in dank, windowless apartments, with some children having never seen true sunlight. Squatters, criminals, and drug addicts alike dwelled in the city’s corridors, mingling with great fleshy spiders and sanity-sucking tentacles.

“ The fear is real in

Phantasmal’s newly released Early Access build has evolved far from the premise outlined in its initial announcement . While the alpha was billed as the adventure of a Vietnam War vet-turned-janitor mopping a university’s halls during the graveyard shift, that vision has now shifted. The nondescript university’s been swapped out for the squalid, constantly dripping maze that is the Kowloon Walled City, and you now instead play a private investigator searching for his eccentric Aunt Jackie, a resident of the city who grew obsessed with a cult in the days before she disappeared.It’s a big change to have made mid-development, but it certainly seems to be paying off so far. While I’m sure any of us can already name a horror title that takes place in a school, can you remember when you last got to explore one of modern history’s most compelling cities? Phantasmal relies on environmental storytelling, borrowing from local stories and myths to craft an experience firmly rooted in reality. Buzzing neon signs peek through the occasional, boarded-up window. An abandoned bar, with its stools and tables thrown across the room, suggest that its inhabitants did not leave the city peacefully. At times I wasn’t sure what I found more horrific: the mutilated monsters skulking in dark corners, or the fact that people once had to sleep on the torn, stained mattresses now strewn all over the place.Speaking of the monsters, they’re dealt with in the fairly typical fight-or-hide survival-horror approach. I began each playthrough with a gun, which isn’t really the blessing it seems; once I’d run out of bullets I had to do with makeshift weapons, such as wooden boards pried from the wall (and even these quick-and-dirty weapons can only withstand a few wallops before breaking). The sound of gunfire or smacking a mutant around the head tended to awaken an omniscient being called the “The Sleeper,” though, sending out life-sucking tentacles that I could never seem to outrun before reaching the elevator that marked the end of the level.I much preferred to stick to shadows, waddling about awkwardly in a crouch and skirting monsters in the darkness where I could – but even at my most careful I would occasionally be swarmed.The fear is real in Phantasmal: visual effects are exaggerated, with motion blur affecting even your aim reticle (though that can be turned off if you get queasy easily). The occasional lights you come across in-game seem to cast lurid, impossible shades of green and fuchsia in their otherwise grimy surroundings. An optional noise filter overlays your view with a grainy texture similar to what you’d find in a VHS tape, perfectly befitting Phantasmal’s ‘90s setting. Monsters’ footsteps rumble unnaturally loudly, and looking at them too long reduces your “sanity,” warping your vision drastically. All of this only lent to the panic when I came face-to-face with each lumbering beast; as much as I enjoyed the thrill of never knowing what was around the corner, I found it difficult to advance beyond two or three levels in a single session.And that hits upon probably the most disappointing thing about Phantasmal’s public release: it still doesn’t have save/load functionality. Dying dumps you right back at the first level again, meaning that for the moment, Phantasmal is essentially a one-shot permadeath experience. It’s cool if you’re into permadeath, but Phantasmal’s story is probably its most intriguing selling point, and it’s hard to experience much of it at the moment.Telling a story with a beginning and an end is an interesting conundrum in a procedurally generated game, and one that I feel Eyemobi has only just begun to tackle; there isn’t even a real tutorial yet, with the basic how-to info contained in a text dump at the beginning of the game. It’s best to think of Phantasmal’s current build as a remarkable tech and concept demo. The procedural level generation is impressive – I never felt like I was seeing the same rooms twice – but now that that feature seems nailed down, I’m looking forward to seeing Phantasmal get its basic save/load functions fleshed out so we can finally discover just what stories unfold in this gruesome metropolis.

Katie Williams is a freelance writer and journalist. She tweets at @desensitisation and hopes that one day, a bird will tweet back.