Those Who Remain Preview – Stay in the light

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Those Who Remain is a first-person psychological horror game developed by Camel 101 and published by Wired Productions and is scheduled for release on May 15th on PC, Xbox & PS4 with a summer release coming for the Nintendo Switch.

Those Who Remain is set in the sleepy town of Dormont where your character named Edward is unaware how much this night will change his life. You need to navigate Edward to unravel what is happening around you whilst surviving the intruding darkness by staying in the protection of the light.

Let’s jump into this playthrough.

Gameplay

I have had Those Who Remain in my Steam wishlist for quite a while now so when I had the opportunity to give this demo a try, I couldn’t pass it up. My demo playthrough starts with you, Edward, sitting at his desk, bottles of alcohol sprawled across it and seemingly talking about losing his wife, Andrea. Where is she? Has she left him? Is she missing? Or is she …..dead? You start to try and slowly piece their relationship together and in the next moment Edward pulls out a gun. You can see he’s very intoxicated at this point and he’s not thinking straight, as he nervously debates whether to use the weapon he has tightly in his right hand. All of a sudden he gets a text message from a woman named Diane asking to meet at a motel outside Dormont.

The next scene plays out as you’re driving up to the said motel meeting with Diane who you’re seemingly having an affair with. Arriving at the motel, you decide you need to check-in at the reception to see which room Diane is staying in, but as you enter the room, no-one is there. It’s empty. You start to look around the room to see if there is anything that can help you, and you notice the motel’s register on the desk that states which room Diane is staying in. As you proceed through the game you start learning that people are disappearing in the town, which is resulting in spreading fear to Those Who Remain in Dormont and doesn’t help the fact that immense darkness has resided in the town also. 

My playthrough for the preview lasted around 30 minutes and ended just when I was starting to get into it. But one thing I did learn, remember to…stay in the light.

Graphics

Camel 101 recent releases have been Mechs & Mercs: Black Talons (2015), which is a real-time strategy game, Orczz (2016), a strategy tower defence game and the first-person survival horror game named Syndrome (2016). I haven’t played any of these games if I’m being honest, but It’s clear to see that the development team have a keen interest in strategy games, and enjoy making horror games too, which results in the newly anticipated Those Who Remain fast approaching its release. 

What I liked about Those Who Remain whilst playing is its extremely dark, an obvious perfect setting for a horror game, but the light in the game, whether being the streetlights, fire, or the buildings radiating their lights is almost like a weapon. It protects you. You feel safe in the light. It was quite scary at one point when you’re walking down the road and you start to hear the street lights behind you smashing one by one, you turn around, and the darkness is starting to rapidly get closer and closer. You run ahead to try to find the next area of light that will help you. If you edge too close to the dark, you begin to see the makings of someone, or something just standing there, and all you can see is the bright whites of their eyes. Who are they? What do they want? If you go even closer, your life starts draining away as if their *things* are slowly shaking the life away from you. The screen goes all blurry and you need to get back into the light. Those Who Remain ran smoothly on my GTX 1060 and I didn’t encounter any framing issues so I was happy with the performance.

Audio

The audio in Those Who Remain was what I’d expect from the horror game. Quiet & eerie in the moments when you’re walking around and carrying out the little objectives to proceed further. For example when trying to figure out how to turn on the generator to power up the lights across the sunflower field on the farm, as a way of using the light to your advantage. Then as quickly as things start to take a turn for the worse, the music kicks in and sounds of the thunder will become increasingly louder, giving you that sense of feeling of HURRY THE F*** UP AND GET OUT!!! I did think the voice acting for Edward’s character was slightly boring, it had the same tone throughout, but it wouldn’t hinder me wanting to play the game.

Longevity

My playthrough for this preview was around 30 minutes, but I did play it about 3 more times to see if I missed anything extra. Hard to say the longevity of Those Who Remain until the game is fully released in June, as we haven’t been given too much information on the length of the game, I’m hoping for around the 6-8 hours mark.

Conclusion

I liked what I saw of Those Who Remain demo, even though it was very short. I knew it was on my Steam wishlist for a reason, even though I can’t seem to remember where I first heard about it for me to want to add it in there, nevermind, I am glad I did.

I definitely would like to continue my journey as Edward in the small town of Dormont trying to figure out what the hell those *things* are with the glowing white eyes in the dark? And what has happened to my wife Andrea? Where has this Diane whom I am having an affair with disappeared to? 

Lots of questions need answering for me and I am looking forward to stepping back in. Here’s hoping here at Thumb Culture, more specifically me 😉 can review the full game in the future.

 

Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.

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