Look Outside

I really like RPG Maker games. Don’t know if I ever made that clear in the past. Aside from just Lisa: The Painful and OneShot. As well as Undertale, you can’t forget one of the most popular indie games ever made. Don’t forget To The Moon, Hylics, Ib, In Stars and Time, Off,. Okay, so maybe I have made it clear in the past that I really love RPG Maker games. The engine might have its limitations and creators can only do so much with it, but I’m amazed with what they’re able to do each time. Proving you don’t need the best tech in the world to create experiences that’ll be remembered for years. I’m really tired of games being overfunded just to make something we already had before. Even if the game is good I’m not one to think it should’ve cost one hundred million dollars to make. Keep on going you crazy bastards. You as well as the rest of the indie scene are helping preserve what little stability is left in the market. Now we have a new contender to sit amongst the greats.

Look Outside, a survival horror RPG developed by Francis Coulombe and published by Devolver Digital. A surprise release if you ask me. There was no advertisement for Look Outside, and the promotion Devolver did give out was a teaser a day before they released the full trailer. Which is when they then decided to shadow drop the full release the same day. If it’s anything Hi-Fi Rush has taught us it’s this. You have to be very brave to release a game out of nowhere and hope that it does well. I myself was very confused by the unscheduled release of Look Outside. Devolver has always put out great products with recent ones being more higher end. Neva, Death’s Door, The Plucky Squire, Inscryption, Katana Zero, The Talos Principle, the last of the Monkey Island games, etc. To see them help with publishing an RPG Maker was surprising, because majority of the time RPG Maker developers either rely on obscure publishers or do it themselves. There was very little room to build up excitement with Look Outside, and yet I was intrigued by the initial teaser. What started as a Game Jam project evolved into a full game in a short period of time.

A few weeks have passed since the game’s launch and this week I finally took the time to play it. In fact, I did something I normally don’t do for any of the games I cover. I played it twice to get one of the basic endings and the true ending. Beat the final boss earlier today and am now ready to offer my full opinion. Look Outside is gonna go down as yet another one of the greatest RPG Maker games ever made. It’s not the first survival horror RPG to be made, and this is where we address the elephant in the room. Fear and Hunger, a niche RPG Maker game that blew up in popularity within the last two years. Dubbed the cruelest RPG to have been made, but it’s the cruelty that separates Fear and Hunger from the rest of the crowd. Combine this with the game’s bleak atmosphere and subject matters you get a game that’s fun to talk about with people. I can see why people love Fear and Hunger….. No one will ever convince me to play it. I don’t mean to talk down to the developer, but it’s not my cup of tea. Mainly for how it’s ‘horror’ is the touchy subject matter I mentioned earlier mainly being used for shock value content rather than being addressed maturely.

I don’t plan to play or review the Fear and Hunger games. It’s when I saw Look Outside that I was interested. Another survival horror RPG, but instead of decrepit fantasy it’s lovecraftian. The type of horror you’d see in games like Bloodborne or Still Wakes The Deep. Horror beyond one’s comprehension. Horror that cannot be fully explained or understood, and this elevates the horror. The type of horror that rewards you for trying to understand it or use your imagination to fill in the gaps. The type of horror that is my cup of tea. Today we’ll be talking about Look Outside and why it highly deserves your attention. 

Story

A young man by the name of Sam awakens in his apartment. Having a strange dream of stairs ascending into the sky. A bright glow blinding the way forward as he slowly inches towards the place it came. The dream was mysterious. It makes you wonder if it’s real. You have the urge to look outside. A mysterious light from the window nearby beckons you towards it. Begging you to open the curtains. However, your neighbor communicates to you using a hole in the wall and warns Sam not to look outside. Their name is Sybil, and they tell Sam strange things are going on. Looking outside, it changes you. Wanting to know more of what’s going on without having to witness the dangers of the outside, Sam decides to venture out of his apartment. Finding a blood trail leading to one of his neighbors. The neighbor has gone insane. Butchering anyone he dares stumble into, and asking whether or not they’ve seen the truth beyond the windows. Stabbing himself and revealing a gigantic eye has mutated onto his chest. Sam defends and rushes away to safety. Only to realize more of the apartment complex’s residents have transformed too.

Their bodies mutate into terrifying monstrosities. Unable to control themselves and remember who they exactly are. Sybil tells Sam whatever is occurring right now will blow over in fifthteen days. The news has instructed civilians who haven’t looked outside to close their windows and stay safely indoors. Sam isn’t that type of person. Bored of everyday life and knowing the food in his apartment will eventually run out he explores the apartment complex. Asking the residents if they know what’s going on. Gathering strange allies and encountering these hooded figures. They seem to know what’s going on, and they knew it was coming for a long time. The truth is for you to unravel.

Gameplay

The mixture between survival horror elements and RPG staples makes Look Outside one of the more interesting RPG Maker games I’ve played in quite some time. The player is given fifthteen days and they can spend that time either holding out or working towards one of the game’s main endings. Specifically figuring out what’s going on and using the little power you have to possibly stop this madness. Look Outside boils down to three aspects. Resource management, exploration, and time. There’s five floors to the apartment complex you can explore and they each contain their own dangers. Different kinds of enemies you’ll face and mazelike level design that’ll leave you confused. Doors that can’t be opened unless you're on the other side, have a key, or reasons that are unclear. A blend of dungeon crawling and trying to get to where you need to be like in a survival horror game. As you explore you’ll stumble onto resources and containers you can loot, and you want to grab everything you see. Food, equipment, medicine, crafting resources, and any weapons because you don’t know when you’ll need them. Important note is that weapons can break in Look Outside. Once broken they cannot be used or deal decreased damage, so be careful what tools you use or if you want to save weapons up for the later stages.

You’ll also want to keep an eye out for allies. Party members who can support you in your cause and help make combat easier. Each party member comes with their quirks, skills, and as they level up they unlock new abilities. Specific weapons will change what skills they have during fights, and sometimes you want to give them equipment that caters to their playstyle. You don’t always have to fight what’s in front of you. Sometimes an enemy is too much to handle, and the game plays a specific music track to signal when it’s best to run away. Your chances of running away on the first two turns are decreased, but on the third turn and onward you have a one hundred percent chance to slip away easily. Combat in Look Outside functions like any other of the RPG Maker games that have come out in recent memory. Choose what actions you want each of your characters to perform, what you and the enemies take turns attacking, and if all of your party members die it’s game over. Skills require mana and if you decide to equip a character with a gun then you need ammo which is sparse just like any of the other supplies in Look Outside. 

As you explore the apartment complex and discover new areas time passes. A danger meter fills up the longer you’re away from home, and when it’s maxed out dangerous creatures begin to pop up. They’re as hard to fight as the wandering boss monsters, so it’s best to not run into them. If you return to your apartment the danger level decreases. You’re rewarded experience points with more being given if the danger meter is higher. So combat isn’t the only way to level up you and your party. However, you don’t always want to be hopping about despite the stressful time limit of fifthteen days. Sam can become stressed from all the dangers, and if he’s too stressed less XP will be given from battles and coming back safely. You also have to manage hunger, because if that too is too low your maximum health is decreased. Hunger can be reduced by eating meals, and if you have recruited allies they’ll share the meal. Reducing hunger, and restoring health and mana. Stress can be reduced in numerous ways like watching TV, playing games, filling out a crossword puzzle, or sleeping. There’s even another stat you have to manage called hygiene, but I forgot what that does and the best thing to do is brush your teeth and shower at the start of every day. Time moves forward and eventually night time comes. Best to get sleep, because you don’t want to know what’s roaming around at night .

You’ll discover numerous items and quests in your journey, and without spoiling too much of the narrative you want to be on the lookout for four specific items. The specific needed to figure out what is truly going on and end it. These items require you to perform specific actions and go on quests to retrieve them. Turn in the wrong items and you will not get one of the true endings of this game. That’s all I have to say right now about Look Outside. The mechanics are simple on paper, but when put into practice Look Outside contains more depth than most contemporaries. It’s a puddle as deep as an ocean, and you just have to love when games put more thought into their content rather than their scope. Hopefully you can survive the next fifthteen days or unravel the truth that lies above the surface.

Thoughts

This was a game I knew was going to be good based on what I’ve heard these last few months, but ended up being better than I expected. Look Outside is a masterpiece of RPG design and how it handles cosmic lovecraftian horror. Some of my views may be biased because I am a major fan of RPG Maker games and lovecraft inspired stories. It’s not a perfect game by any means and a few aspects are held back from the limitations of RPG Maker, but there’s charm to be found in these limitations. I remember listening to a review of Silent Hill by Josh Strife Hayes, and one of these thoughts he shared in this review was interesting. Developers who face limitations will find more interesting ways around problems versus people given a ton of money to do whatever they want. It means that truly creative ideas are ones thought of during problem solving, and if not then you can at least mask the problem through other means. Look Outside is one of these games, and like I mentioned a few seconds ago it’s a game that’s wide as a puzzle but deep as an ocean. I did two playthroughs of this game, and the things I noticed during my second run was that this game is a lot shorter and smaller than I thought. Kind of makes me understand why they charged ten dollars for the game rather than the usual fifthteen to twenty dollars.

This does bring me onto one of my many praises for Look Outside. The game rewards thoughtful play, but rewards you even more for daring play. It’s a survival horror turned based game, so of course a lot of thought is at play. Whether you can handle a combat scenario or not. What tools you should bring into a fight. When to return to your apartment when you and your team are at low health. What resources to save for later, and the list goes on. However, there are times when you just have to take a dare and push forward. Maybe a big scary boss monster blocks the way forward. They have something you need or you want the experience points to level up. Maybe it is best to use stronger weapons now so you can make progress or slay a monster faster. Maybe you should explore more to reap more or better rewards. Look Outside is driven by risk reward factors, and this makes the game more fun to play with time rather than stressful. However, I do recommend playing on the lowest difficulty if you’re not familiar with these kinds of games. This is especially the case with Look Outside and even Fear and Hunger. Both are overly difficult, but where I draw the line is Look Outside isn’t cruel. Death and game over states are more often than not fair. Either because you made a poor choice you should know the outcome of or because you made a bad move during fights. Resources given are fair with the lower difficulty giving out more, and at least the game doesn’t have unpredictable moments you are unprepared for or can't run from. What makes Look Outside approachable. 

There’s more depth to the combat than I would imagine. Not saying the combat is great as there are limitations with the RPG Maker engine. However, I enjoyed the combat for what it was. The different weapon types open up good enough builds and playstyles, and a majority of characters aren’t restricted to specific weapons. Some have irreplaceable gear, but they don’t bog you down too much in player choice. Weapons have different kinds of damage which enemies can be weak or immune to. Enemies further away from you have a lower likeliness of being hit compared to enemies in the front row. Guns are great, but ammunition is sparse and they have to be reloaded. Durability in Look Outside actually makes sense! As you are constantly scrounging for supplies, broken tools get replaced pretty easily. The game does become a bit easy in my opinion when you have a full party. Most fights are against singular opponents, and if not multiple ones with low health. You end up cutting them down really quickly, but I like this. Shows how powerful the player is by the endgame whereas in the beginning they were struggling with a baseball bat alone. Overall the game is challenging and I bet those who are skilled enough with these kinds of games get a kick out of the harder difficulty setting. However, it’s not frustrating or unfair. 

The puzzles and questlines reward you for thinking cleverly or remembering information you had obtained minutes earlier. With the door puzzles specifically having you remember numbers and know how to perform math operations based on these remembered numbers. Despite the art not being the most detailed I love it for what it is. I feel as if games with pixelated details are a bit scarier than games with graphic detail, because reaction-wise it’s scarier to see something you can’t fully understand. Then the details fade in more and it becomes more horrifying. Monsters have incredible design and there’s enough variety that the themes don’t become repetitive. Let me list a few of the creatures I encountered during my playthrough. A walking typewriter whose tongue was written pages. A heavily armored police truck whose doors opened up to reveal a nig face with individuals sprouting out to be weapons. A spore mother, an angel made of paint, and so on. Despite the whole game taking place within an apartment building there’s enough variety in the monsters and environments to prevent your journey through Look Outside from becoming stale. With open shortcuts making backtracking more manageable.

The story of Look Outside despite being basic is presented so wonderfully that it transforms the alright narrative into a great one. I’ve said several times in the past that lovecraftian horror is one of my favorite forms of horror. Horror that is not explained to the player is often more interesting and frightening than horror with backing behind it. Your mind is confused with what stands before you. Unable to process the information at hand, and if so it's terrifying. Look Outside does exactly that. You’re not shown what’s outside until you reach the endgame. Looking outside at the beginning just shows your character terrified and having their face sucked out. All you can do is witness what the outside created in your apartment building, and after witnessing all the forms of horror it can create it makes you think, what is this exactly? How can this be humanly possible? Well clearly it’s not human means. Something beyond this world. Something that has transcended the very existence of god and the heavens above. If I were to make a list of the best lovecraftian games made you know what would be at the top. Bloodborne obviously, but right in second or third place would be Look Outside. For how it paces and reveals info.

The game does a lot right with the little it manages to do. One of the only gripes I have is the soundtrack could be better. It’s not bad. If I were to really criticize it I would say it does a good job replicating the feel of retro RPGs from the SNES era. However, its tone clashes with the horror and tone Look Outside is going for. Creating a goofy feeling rather than a scary feeling. Yet again, the game does cram in occasional comedy at times and I will say the comedy is at least done well. It’s not meme material like Undertale, but it got a laugh from me every now and then. You can tell by now that I strongly recommend Look Outside. For ten dollars you get another deep highly replayable RPG, and I feel bad I paid so little for the game. I hope the developer makes enough bank a year from now, because again I love what’s here and for any future projects they have in store I wish them the best of luck. In the end I am going to have to give Look Outside a 9.5/10 for being superb.

9.5/10, Superb