Look Outside - Switch 2 Review

A strange weather phenomenon in the sky has everyone trapped inside, the moment you look at the sky, or… if it looks at you, then death is the preferable option of what might happen next. I think I remember this story concept from a creepypasta years ago. Or was it an SCP article? Whatever its origin, the idea isn’t new in Look Outside, but I’d argue that its execution is. A JRPG-like centred on cosmic horror, it presents its turn-based combat system as something more akin to Fear & Hunger than Final Fantasy. The player takes the role of an apartment building resident, with the building itself serving as the game world, which becomes more unsettling than it sounds the further it goes on. It’s a strange game that doesn’t demand a lot from the player in order to experience its best parts except for patience. You might need a lot of patience. It’ll be worth it, though, when we can all look together. 

The Good

It feels like only just last week that I was talking about my distaste for the classic JRPG turn-based combat system. There can be exceptions where I still manage to find enjoyment and I feel like Look Outside is one of them but only because of the subject matter. I said Fear & Hunger before but that’s more about the things that you face and the way battles play out more than the mechanics thereof. You’re not targeting the… Um… “Appendages” of “predatory” ogres in their “love basements". There are things equally horrifying, however, depending on your views of body horror. To be clear, I’m not certain that Fear & Hunger actually is an influence on Look Outside, just that it feels like it could be because of the similarities I see between the two. You can die frequently in awful, disgusting ways, and usually as the result of seemingly innocuous choices. The combat is probably more like Earthbound, however, and I would hazard to guess that game is a big influence on this one.

Instead, Look Outside is like a terrible (in a good way) marriage of the two: The simplicity and almost cutesy presentation of Earthbound’s systems, with the shocking content of something like Fear & Hunger. The very first battle happens inside of the first ten minutes and has an enemy that digs out a giant eye in his abdomen with a kitchen knife. So, the tone gets set pretty fast, and I can say that it never really relents. Your party characters will "develop", based on choices made throughout the game, which are all presented neatly as part of the narrative. A lot of what you’ll be doing is interacting with the denizens and environments of the building, which also doesn’t strictly mean combat. There are more than a few encounters that can be resolved peacefully and are more rewarding for it. The horrors(?) and people of the apartment building are very much the draw of the game, all lovingly rendered in their lurid grotesqueness. The art of this game and the feelings it evokes are as much Cronenberg as they are Lovecraft, and that’s a combination that works to a greatly disturbing effect. It’s gross – as a compliment.

Something in particular I like about the game is a complete lack of any map function. Initially this was frustrating because the world, while not expansive, also isn’t small per se. Being highly segmented, as well, it can feel difficult to keep track of where you are or where you’ve been. However, a lot of the areas are quite uniform in layout, at first, and there’s a lot of backtracking through already explored areas. Eventually, navigating the place becomes second nature and readily familiar, which is what makes it so unnerving when that world begins to change. For me, the most effective moments of the game were always those that waited until you were passing through the familiar before completely messing with your memory of the world in subtle, and then increasingly unsubtle ways. 

The game does offer a chance at making this as difficult as all that might sound with its settings but it would really prefer you to experience everything the game has to offer. It can become desperate on “Normal” but never oppressive, with an optional harder difficulty for those that are into that kind of thing. At least on Normal, enemies aren’t enormous sacks of HP that drag the battle out either, with most encounters being a couple of minutes tops. Saving is baked right into the pause menu, with plentiful save slots and an autosave that goes off whenever you enter a new room. I appreciate this kind of thing, as it means I don’t mind experimenting with the systems a bit to get the most out of them, knowing I won’t be forced to redo everything from the past twenty minutes should the worst happen. Considering the sheer variety of enemies, scenario outcomes, and, of course, thirteen different endings you can reach depending on what you do during a run, I appreciate the removal of a lot of friction. Replayability is always higher when playing at all doesn’t feel like a slog.

TL;DR

• Great blend of influences for a non-traditional cosmic horror
• Mechanics lean heavily into the game
• Generous difficulty settings with options for something harder
• High replayability with good systems support

The Bad

This is a complaint about the Switch version specifically because I wasn’t a fan of the way touching the screen interacts with the game. Tapping the screen while the character is moving around will cause them to dash in the direction you tapped, and likewise, the game will rapidly push through dialogue for as long as you’re touching the screen, as well as making character choices before you can really see them. It took me a while to work out what was going on, and I was kind of worried because I’ve been playing this on a new Switch 2, so I initially feared a hardware defect. However, if you, dear reader, like me, have fat thumbs and hand shapes that are ill-suited to holding the Switch in any fashion besides “caveman mode", then it’s kind of unavoidable. Happened every time I resumed the game from sleep, and just generally whenever my ham-hock thumb stubs would spill over onto the screen edge from the buttons they failed to rest upon. Worse, there’s no setting to turn it off. 

I’ve already mused before about how I’m just not a fan of classic JRPG-style turn-based combat systems without significant effort to change how they function, so I won’t go over it again now. Suffice to say, Look Outside doesn’t make those changes and my feelings about it all haven’t changed. To be fair, I feel like the combat system used was done so out of simplicity's sake and a pinch of nostalgia, as an easy vehicle for the horror content they were clearly more focused on. I think that’s fine; however, the combat system does still introduce an ounce of tedium I wasn’t into. 

Finally, I just didn’t like the low visibility present throughout the game. I know it’s meant to provide a kind of persistent, pervasive feeling of claustrophobia and looming threats, to make you feel as though you’re never truly safe. I just feel like there are ways of doing that without reducing the entire screen down to a single, small circle for a significant portion of the game. I can hear the ghost of my high school art teacher screeching in the background about using the entire canvas and not just a tiny part right in the middle. A general gloom with some obscuring darkness can be powerful. A constant darkness because you’re not sure otherwise how to make things scary is boring.

TL;DR

• Touch screen functionality is frustrating and can’t be disabled
• Classic JRPG-style combat is a bit tired and boring
• The game relies on total darkness too much to bring the scares

Final Score: 7/10

Look Outside is a game that’s more enjoyable than not. There are some frustrations, particularly with how it handles the Switch controls, though they’re few and relatively minor overall. It’s not revolutionary in anything that it does but it finds a way to blend a lot of different influences into a wonderfully morbid and arguably non-traditional approach to cosmic horror. There is a little bit of Lovecraft in there, to be sure, but mostly as cosmetic trappings (perhaps, save for something that’s spoiler territory.) The idea seems like it was born out of early internet creepypasta, however, or at least the iterations that have arisen in the years since, which roots it in something like a modern urban legend. There’s otherwise a smorgasbord of various game and media influences that shine through in how the narrative and visuals come together. Now, where’s my knife? The sun is glaring through the window right now and there’s an itchy feeling in my stomach…

Thank you for checking out our Look Outside Switch 2 review, thank you to Devolver Digital for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

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