Re:Turn - One Way Trip

Horror stories are not easy to integrate into video games, mainly because a lot of focus is on the atmosphere itself. Hence, even if the plot or the characters are not particularly intricate or well-written, players can still be terrorized with the right mixture of graphics and sound effects. As always, it’s also more effective to keep the suspense going instead of flooding the screen with monsters all the time.

Re:Turn - One Way Trip is a 2D sidescrolling adventure with a horror story, in which you play the role of a college student by the name of Saki, who goes on a camping trip with her friends. The game uses simple gameplay mechanics to relay the story, which means that most of the time you just have to move from one point to the next and make use of a few items, but the atmosphere is pretty creepy.

Saki is on this trip in order to celebrate her engagement with Sen, and as it’s usually the case with most camping trips, horror stories enter the picture once darkness falls. However, things get truly creepy once Saki wakes up in the middle of the night and her friends are all gone. Not only that, but after a short walk around the campsite, she stumbles upon an abandoned train that must be investigated.

As mentioned before, your main goal is to explore the surroundings and pick up the items that might come in handy. Once you reach an obstacle, you can open the inventory and make use of a specific object, which in turn allows you to move further into the game. Naturally, you also have to unravel the mystery of the train, and all sorts of weird sound and visions make the journey pretty horrifying.

Speaking of which, the pixelated 2D graphics are not bad at all, even of most of the environments are shrouded in darkness most of the time. The character artwork is sublime too, and every now and again there are hand-drawn images that pop on the screen to provide you with a more detailed view of the environment. The sound effects complete the atmosphere and keep you in suspense at all times.

Re:Turn - One Way Trip is not on par with Amnesia or similar games in terms of horror elements, but it can still raise your heartbeat every now and again. The story and the characters are interesting enough to keep you engaged.