Out of Sight Review

I think it’s hard to overstate the effect that games like Limbo and Little Nightmares have had on horror games, while these games won’t boast the highest graphical fidelity they still manage to provide a scary experience to the player with their creative use of atmosphere coupled with music and the most important part, their artstyle. Little Nightmares has even gone so far to result in a splintering of studios that are continuing on the series legacy with Bandai Namco owning the rights and giving the series to Supermassive Games to develop the 3rd installment, Little Nightmares 3, the original creators Tarsier Studios signed a contract with THQ Nordic to work on their new IP, Reanimal, that looks to share a lot of DNA with Little Nightmares from what we have seen so far. Then there is Section 9 Interactive, composed of previous staff of Tarsier Studios that have partnered with Epic Games Publishing to release their first game, End of Abyss, which again from what was shown as Summer Games Fest shares DNA with the Little Nightmares series. The DNA that they all share is the similar concept of using a less realistic artstyle and combining it with enemies that have exaggerated features, such as being absurdly fat, absolutely towering in height with exaggerated limb lengths to create something that bends the perception of what a human figure looks like. This is where Out of Sight sits, it utilises these things to great effect as well, enemies having a human form but looking off just enough that you would do anything to avoid being near them.

the psychological horror, puzzle game that follows the young girl Sophie who awakens in a bedroom of a mansion that would send alarm bells to any Scooby Doo fan.

Out of Sight is developed by Swedish based The Gang and published by Starbreeze Entertainment, The Gang are previously known for making Roblox experiences for massive corporations such as Ikea, Netflix and Gucci. This is The Gang’s first release that isn’t powered by Roblox or Fortnite’s UEFN, instead opting for pure Unreal Engine 5 to power the psychological horror, puzzle game that follows the young girl Sophie who awakens in a bedroom of a mansion that would send alarm bells to any Scooby Doo fan. Sophie is blind and wears a red blindfold, after awakening she finds that she has regained the ability to see, the only catch is that this vision is dependent on the eyes of her beloved teddy bear, aptly called “Teddy”. With her restored vision Sophie must avoid her captors, the monstrous Mr Clayton and Mother Janna who are seemingly the reason that Sophie can no longer see and escape the mansion before they can complete a mysterious ritual that they both talk about throughout the game.

This gameplay hook captured me immediately, throughout the game you’ll be holding Teddy between your arms and facing forward, giving you a first person view, but to unlock doors, pick up items, move blocks, footstools and just in general solve puzzles you’ll often be expected to put Teddy down in areas marked with a pink blanket, when doing this the camera POV stays with Teddy, as you must remember, this stuff bear is your eyes and you’re moved to a second person view. Teddy cannot move its body and limbs, but it can move its eyes to allow Sophie to see what she needs to do and where she is going. I loved this gameplay, it was very engaging and the developers made good use of the perspective changes to give memorable moments. Typically, the gameplay follows the loop of traveling between rooms, hiding or sneaking around an enemy as they pass by, solving puzzles and then a chase sequence commences, this loop is nicely punctuated with looking out for hidden collectibles which are presented in the form of toys that previously belonged to children that have presumably perished in the mansion. It may sound repetitive but I never felt that these overstayed their welcome, it takes in total around 3-5 hours to complete Out of Sight which may sound short, to some but if the game was longer and still employed this gameplay loop it would easily become frustrating, expected and ultimately pretty boring.

I am immediately reminded of Rayman 2: The Great Escape and the Cave of Bad Dreams section where you are sliding down to escape from Jano and the camera is positioned within his mouth.

Out of Sight’s chase sequences avoids falling into this pit as they are never the same, while there might be multiple chase sequences they are always different in some way which keeps the chase and the horror fresh for the players. The first chase sequence is to escape from Mr Clayton, a horizontally large man that has an old timey hearing aid, after unlocking a door and before we can pick up Teddy again he picks them up and chases us with Teddy in his arms, giving us a unique viewpoint of being chased, from behind and above. This really demonstrates the difference in height that these adults have over Sophie and the decision to have us run away from what is our only source of vision. I am immediately reminded of Rayman 2: The Great Escape and the Cave of Bad Dreams section where you are sliding down to escape from Jano and the camera is positioned within his mouth. Another time ghosts, which the story seems to indicate are previous victims of the monstrous duo take Teddy and drag him throughout the hallways and you need to run towards the camera, almost like a Crash Bandicoot boulder sequence. Fantastic ways of building anxiety and since these chase sequences aren’t repeated it has the benefit of sticking out and being memorable to myself.

The use of music is minimalistic, it’s not uncommon for the old mansion to creak with each footstep, or for the sounds of rats scuttering across the rugs and the many crawlspaces. That’s not to say that the game is silent, when the aforementioned chase sequences begin this is when the music will kick in, almost like a fanfare, heightening tension and the anxious feeling of whether or not you will escape from the monsters this time. While exploring Sophie will discover toys of previous children, further adding to the lore that Sophie isn’t the first person this has happened to, and if allowed to continue, won’t be the last. She will also comment on her surroundings as most protagonists do, this is obviously being done to keep the player engaged as otherwise I could see the game being too quiet and could fail to keep player attention. Alongside this she will constantly comment on how she needs to escape and that she trusts Teddy. In comparison to the chase sequences this is something that I did find overbearing while playing, especially when it felt like it was just the same thing being repeated in different ways.

Out of Sight may not set the world on fire but I would easily recommend it, the developers have created a great little piece of art that I would be happy to see continue in one shape or another.

I very much enjoyed my time with Out of Sight, I was ensnared by the POV switching from first person to second person. With the way the game ended I would hope that there is a sequel of some kind, which I would be very interested in seeing where it goes. While the game took me around 5 hours to complete the story, another couple of hours was added on top to collect all of the lost toys, and if we’re going to compare the price to hours ratio I think this one is pretty good with the game only clocking in at £20.99, an extremely fair price for a game of this scope and length I’d say. Out of Sight may not set the world on fire but I would easily recommend it, the developers have created a great little piece of art that I would be happy to see continue in one shape or another.