This guest post is written by Jacob Linden.

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I’m just as hungry for fun horror games in the early months of a New Year as I am for a schlocky January horror film, so I was very excited to preview the new horror game “Crisol: Theater of Idols” in New York. “Crisol” is the debut title from Spanish studio Vermila, published by Blumhouse Games. The game’s setting is dripping with atmosphere, and I had a good time blasting creepy humanoid puppets and other constructs with a litany of stylish bloodsucking guns.

Yes, the guns suck your blood. It’s weird. They’re blood guns. Your blood is the ammo.

The stealth segments with the hulking behemoth Dolores I faced in the preview were a tougher hang, unfortunately. Still, on pure, blood-soaked style points alone, and based on my love for FPS games with a creepy twist, I’ll definitely still be checking out the full game when it launches next month.

Shocking Gameplay

This new hour of gameplay served up an experience reminiscent of “Bioshock,” with player character Gabriel quickly getting sidetracked from the stated objective by a blockade of flames you had to redirect water onto in order to advance. The path to the water pipes involved several enemy scraps, a couple of puzzles, visions of past scenes in these areas, and run-ins with Dolores.

Enemy types weren’t revolutionary. In the preview, I was blasting down two-legged puppets with ranged and melee flavors, and baby dolls molded from candle wax that checked the Flying Enemy box. The enemies didn’t reinvent the wheel, but the fights still were plenty challenging here, especially since your reload in this game saps your health. 

Each gun has a gnarly unique reload that pierces poor Gabriel’s hand in different demented ways to sap his blood and reload your bullets. You can also absorb the blood from human and animal corpses littered around the island of Tormentosa to top off your health in a very satisfying animation.

I appreciated that this mechanic meant I might not be scrounging for loot as much as other survival horror games, but I still ended up desperately searching for barrels to smash for more blood syringes. There are other items to loot, like coins and gas canisters to power a wheel that sharpens your knife, but I didn’t have access to any vendors or upgrade systems in the preview.

I’m curious to see how the combat toolkit will expand throughout the rest of the game. Slain enemies dropped an Essence item that will apparently be used to upgrade your skills, but I didn’t get a look at what those upgrades might entail. I found myself getting surrounded and beaten up by the standard puppet bruisers pretty often, only landing a parry with the clunky melee attack once by accident.

Not every FPS needs to be smooth as silk with a million kinds of movement tech, but I would have loved to see a few more options besides fumbling to do a quick turn and dashing away. I’m not afraid to admit I needed the PR rep watching me play to give me more syringes with a cheat code, and I still barely scraped through. That said, I wouldn’t say it’s a negative that I died a lot in the survival horror game; it’s the game’s job to kill me as much as possible, and that’s what I signed up for!

Dolores

And then there’s Dolores. To start positively, her visual design was impeccable. I was definitely put on edge by her pounding footfalls and appropriately off-kilter voice lines. One time when she plucked me from my shipping container hiding place, she roared in my face, exposing some bloody, mottled flesh under her expressionless porcelain mask. When it came to actually playing these segments, Dolores’s behavior was a little too rigid to be as exciting and terrifying a foe as Mr. X from “Resident Evil 2” or the Nightmares from “Prey.”

Waiting for Dolores to finish a lap in the area I needed to be while crouching in various nooks got a little repetitive, and I found myself itching for a way to distract her. I appreciate the presence of an enemy that can stop your blood-fueled power fantasy in its tracks, but these parts were the roughest sequences of the preview. Hopefully, when I get more abilities, I’ll get my bloody revenge on this monstrosity.

Sooner Than You Think

Overall, this preview showed a solid foundation for a survival shooter, even if parts left me wanting. I’m certainly going to be checking out the full game, because I’ll give anything a chance if it has the slightest whiff of “BioShock’s” design or inspiration. The cherry on top is the twisted marriage of Spanish folklore and Gothic religious inspiration, which provides a fascinating canvas for the devs to paint with bloody brush strokes.

“Crisol: Theater of Idols” launches February 10th, 2026, on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.

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Image Credit: “Crisol: Theater of Idols,” Vermila and Blumhouse Games