''Erica'' is an

interactive film An interactive film is a video game or other interactive media that has characteristics of a cinematic film. In the video game industry, the term refers to a movie game, a video game that presents its gameplay in a cinematic, scripted manner, o ...

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

developed by Flavourworks and published by

Sony Interactive Entertainment Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE) is an American video game and digital entertainment company that is a major subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Sony, Sony Group Corporation. It primarily operates the PlayStation brand of video game co ...

. It was originally released for the

PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013, in ...

on August 19, 2019. An

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port licensed by Sony was released on January 15, 2021, while a port for

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was released on May 25, 2021.

Gameplay

The game is an

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

psychological thriller, wherein the player makes choices at critical story junctures to steer which branch of the narrative will unfold. ''Erica'' can be played using a companion app on a smartphone using PlayLink (however, the PlayStation 5 is not backwards compatible with this feature), or using the touch pad on a PlayStation 4 Controller.

Plot

The game stars Holly Earl as Erica Mason, a young woman grappling with nightmares from her childhood and trying to unravel the truth of her family's occult past. The narrative begins with Erica reliving her father's murder and attempting to identify his killer from these visions. When she receives a severed hand in the mail from a mysterious sender, Erica makes contact with the police and returns temporarily to Delphi House, an asylum with which her parents worked when they were alive. There, she meets people from her father's past, as well as several young women staying at Delphi House, and begins to unravel the mystery behind Delphi House, her father's killing, and a mysterious symbol which appears throughout the game.

Reception

The game received "mixed or average" reviews according to the

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website

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. It received an aggregated score of 69/100 from 41 critic reviews. ''Ericas musical score, composed by Austin Wintory, was nominated for " Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition" during the 23rd Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, as well as the original music award at the 2019 International Film Music Critics Association Awards.

References

External links

* {{Playlink games 2010s interactive fiction 2019 video games Full motion video based games Interactive movie video games London Studio games PlayLink games PlayStation 4 games Single-player video games Sony Interactive Entertainment games Video games developed in the United Kingdom Video games featuring female protagonists Video games scored by Austin Wintory Video games with multiple endings