Wilson’s Heart review: horror homage, in rich monochrome

Wilson’s Heart takes place in a creaky old hospital where the player wakes up and removes bolts from their head, then sets out to discover who they are and what they’re doing there. Is the whole thing a metaphor for having a terrible hangover? The experience evokes old-timey midnight movie vibes—like something from a James Whale or Hammer Films production. 

We embody Robert Wilson, a grumpy elderly man (voiced by Robocop star Peter Weller) who wakes up in said hospital on a stormy night, of course, hands shackled to an operating table. Freeing yourself is easy; so is removing the bolts from your head. It’s far harder to get out of this place and find your missing heart, which has been replaced through surgery with an orb-like device that grants Wilson special powers. Boss-like monsters occasionally appear and are taken down through repetitive turn-based combat. This is repetitive to the point of being immersion-breaking: one of these knuckleheaded ghouls even hurls grenades at you then waits for you to catch them and throw them back. 

It unfolds in striking monochrome, schlock and homage informing both the form and content of this world. Prior to playing, I assumed entirely black-and-white visuals might take some getting used to, but they didn’t: the developers at Stranger Pixel have made a point—perhaps inadvertently—that in VR we accept the aesthetic reality we’re given. 

Wilson’s Heart uses a node-based navigation system, each node (the destination we can be transported to) visually represented using a still outline of Wilson. To move you look around, pick one, then transport into its space, into the outline. Essentially this is a point (with your gaze) and click navigation system, restrictive in the obvious ways: we naturally want to move around for ourselves rather than hop between reference points. Variations of this kind of navigation system were fairly common in VR when Wilson’s Heart was released in 2017, and were always going to go the way of the dodo—replaced of course by actual movement. 

Nobody will mourn its demise… but in this experience it does have an interesting effect on pacing and visual reveals. Every relocation via node is a new tableau, a new mini-scene, an opportunity for surprises and reveals. During an early visit to an abandoned doctor’s office, for instance, we transport into an outline in front of a largely destroyed wall. Upon arrival Wilson lets out a cry as a bat flies into his face and we discover ourselves too close to the ledge. A more contemporary experience could activate a moment like that by having the player wander into the space, though it wouldn’t involve the same kind of suspense—of not knowing what’ll come at you in that hair’s breadth between clicking and arriving. 

The appeal of virtual reality is sometimes described as the VR participant’s ability to go “inside the picture.” The cheeky devils at Twisted Pixel added an extra layer of nuance: if we can go inside the picture, they ask, why can’t something inside the picture come out at us? At least in VR. Ergo: one of the aforementioned monsters and quasi-bosses is an evil teddy bear (like something from Five Nights at Freddy’s) who leaps out of a painting then causes all kinds of hideous havoc. The final confrontation with this bear involves a scare so gallingly obvious you know if they’re taking the piss. You remove a piece of paper from a drawer with “DON’T” written on one side and “LOOK UP” written on the other.

Guess what you have to do to move forward? At least this interaction uses your head rather than your hands—because there’s a lot of hand-based puzzles and fussing about. Pick this item up, move over here, retrieve it; wash dry repeat. After a few hours Wilson’s Heart becomes a bit of a slog: like fighting those monsters, it’s too repetitive. When I recall the experience I think first and foremost of that deep, dark, rich cinematic monochrome.