Look Outside
Review
Every room an adventure
by Jordan Helsley
reviewed on PC
Mysterious Apartments
Truth is, looking out that window is part of the experience. Despite the recommendations, it's very clearly not what you want. Even your creepy eyeball neighbor admits as much to open your first conversation. It is something of a rite of passage, though, and you feel that as the player. It also increases the mystery of this world, which is a nice bonus. Look Outside specializes in crafting a litany of mysteries. Things are so rarely as straightforward as they seem, and elements of individual story pieces are often teased out for much longer than you expect. It's one of the game's many, many charms. Even after three playthroughs, there's so much I’m deeply invested in answering, so much depth to uncover, and potentially red herrings to expose.
Take your neighbor, Sybil, otherwise known as the eyeball that pokes through a hole in your bedroom or living room. After erroneously telling you to look outside, and after recanting it because she was confused, Sybil becomes a confidant for the player. On normal difficulty she is the only means of saving the game, but even on easy, where the game can freely be saved any and everywhere, she still commands conversation. Your character (we'll call him Sam, though the name can be changed) recaps recent events for Sybil, and she will often comment on the experiences between interactions. While these can end up being as simple as "I thought I heard something awful downstairs," they more often come out more cryptic, more fodder for the metaphorical, or literal, notebook. It's so easy, by design, to question every single thing in this game, and Sybil is no different in that. She tells you this will all blow over in 15 days, and it's hammered home every time you wake up. Is that true? Is Sybil the only reason I believe that? What about that character that said they knew a Sybil, but insist that it's a different person? In all my time with the game, the character of Sybil has only become more enigmatic. And she's one of dozens of characters.
Staggering Depth
I mean it...you might want a notebook for this one. Not only did it come in handy for a longstanding number puzzle (the solution to which I didn't find until playthrough two), keeping track of all of the moving parts is difficult. There isn't a quest log, there are no markers for anything, there's not even a map. Without even giving consideration to the labyrinthian areas you'll stumble into, this is one deep, complicated apartment complex, which encapsulates the experience. I can map out a majority of this space by now, but there are still spaces I know I need for one thing or another but cannot relocate. It would have been nice for Sybil's usefulness to extend to reminding Sam what leads he was following, or for the moments where Sam interrogates himself in the mirror offer some sort of guidance, or for one of the game's many companions to offer a helping hand with the mental red string evidence board, but Sam it's you and Sam and no one else.
When you get a grasp on the game, the logic behind its areas, and most of all the freedom it allows the player, it’s such a beautiful thing. Yeah, this thing is over in 15 days, and these video games in this apartment aren't going to play themselves. (Tried it. Don't forget about food, eh?) What would happen if you greeted that mysterious stranger knocking on your door? Is there another way to accomplish this goal beyond just murdering all of these things? Again, more questions, but with a satisfying amount of answers that you create.
We Have Horrors At Home
Beyond all of these questions: the encompassing question of "what is outside," the little (and large) puzzles that require solving for various goals, the negative side effects of putting on the wrong hat, Look Outside excels at so many different types of horror that it is mind boggling. A lot of it is of the cosmic-based-body-horror variety, (friendly warning to those with any teeth-related aversions) but that doesn't discount its ability to create effective psychological terrors, either through its visuals or character interactions. The monstrosities you're battling, rendered in gloriously grimy pixel art, used to be people, neighbors, and their afflictions can be felt on a physical and mental level. And some of these creatures are still friends, or can be, too. While it doesn't often allow the player to accidently fight someone who is clearly a friend, you can absolutely give into the "don't trust them" instincts and take just about anyone down, which creates an entirely different kind of horror. Both the world and the turn-based battles share this cohesive vision. What was once a, presumably, normal apartment building turns into this nest of monstrosities, organic grime, and other bits of grossness, on top of the general wonder. It's a joy to explore, to get lost in, to learn how to interact with.
While Sam's home apartment is something of a safe haven, the space you return to to save to sleep, to shower, to cook up meals, it also feels like a bit untrustworthy. The planter in the hall, which used to have the spare key, is now empty. Random strangers knock on the door at all hours of the day. Even playing the wrong game with the wrong companion gives off a vibe of unease. Simply because you can see enemies coming, represented in the world rather than popping up as invisible battles like you're walking through the wrong grass with monsters in your pocket, does not mean that you ever truly let your guard down, that's by design, and highly effective.
Staying Inside
There are so many ways to die in Look Outside. There are also so many ways to deal your own brand of death. Makeshift weapons, real weapons, otherworldly weapons, and skills learned from several sessions of lovingly-described video games all come into play as you defend yourself and others. I think there are inherent flaws in this type of turn-based combat revolving on invisible dice rolls, but that's worth keeping in mind when it comes to just how punishing this game can be. Poor save management is yet another horror to deal with, but I found a number of glitches that were worse still. In one fight, my entire party got frozen with each turn, preventing any action or retreat, but the enemy missed every attack and failed to finish the job for 30 minutes. While running away has its own dice roll, being doomed to such a miserable fate without the chance felt really bad. To be clear, I recommend playing on easy, simply because it allows you to save before any and every fight (and "makes some fights easier," rather than all of them), but it wasn't without issue. Easy mode is also supposed to autosave between areas, but I found that to be more miss than hit. These are fixable issues, but issues nonetheless.
Seriously. Look Outside.
Look Outside is an excessively difficult game to talk about, and only partially because almost anything can be a spoiler. I initially booted it up expecting something simple, then expecting something effective when I saw more of the art style and spoke to more of the characters, and eventually came away from it blown away, confused, delighted, and eager to return. The horror is great on several levels, from the beautifully grotesque art style to the simple-yet-effective soundtrack, and everywhere in between. It's a game where it feels like every corner of every room holds a critical item to something or someone. Where you pack your inventory full of items that seem miscellaneous until a light bulb turns on and it all becomes clear. Where cockroaches appearing in your inventory turn into something so much more if you play it right (or wrong). At the same time its writing is effective, especially at making you trust everyone and everything, and noone and nothing at the same time. The vast majority of the game's shortcomings came down to glitches that can both end up fixed by the time I finish this sentence, and didn't ruin the experience too much anyway. Possibly the worst part is knowing that there are so many vagaries in the game that you start to wonder if those "glitches" are intentional. It's a heck of a game, a darn good horror game, and one twisted, fantastic experience. So get out of the apartment, make friends with some Lovecraftian monsters, and don't forget to look outside.
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9.5
fun score
Pros
Beautifully disgusting art style, a vast web intriguing stories, immense player freedom, and truly effective horror.
Cons
A few annoying glitches, and the "normal" difficulty is more hardcore than the name suggests with only one way to save.
