Those Who Remain Reviews
Those Who Remain is a first person horror game that offers a quite remarkable visual and sound proposal. The story, without being original, has many interesting elements that leave out the common place and offer you food for thought. But what Those Who Remain does best is create atmospheres. The mixture of all its elements make it cause real terror. Its gameplay mixes puzzles with novel elements such as research with the purpose of putting both the living and the dead on trial, according to their actions. And the fact that you have to act as a judge feels in the game as a fairly strong moral weight that affects you too, psychologically speaking.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Despite some inventive ideas, Those Who Remain is just another generic horror game, albeit one that offers little in the way of suspense or scares. While its puzzle design is at times inspired, disjointed storytelling, inconsistent visual design, and gameplay that often resigns itself to tedious busywork make for a frustratingly unfulfilling experience.
Those Who Remain tries to stand out (without admittedly putting much effort), but the multiple technical problems, the shallow mechanics, the repetitive gameplay, the atmosphere that disappears after the first hours, as well as the fact that from the beginning you can easily predict everything, make the whole experience indifferent, annoying and boring.
Review in Greek | Read full review
Those Who Remain is a Frankenstein of cool concepts lifted from other horror games and shoddily reconstituted into a mishmash of mediocrity. It’s got some of the ingredients of a good horror game, but they mesh together like pizza and ice cream. Though the game doesn’t deserve to be cast into hell for eternity, it definitely has some mistakes that are hard to forgive.
This isn’t one to just rule out if you decide to go for it, the adventure itself is creepy, unsettling, and truly one I wish I could have enjoyed more than I did. Ultimately, it was let down by performance issues, a lack of variety in gameplay elements, and its overreliance on “search and obtain” mechanics. While there are a few amazingly designed puzzles, this is not one I can say will really pop out and draw you in.
This is a scrappy, occasionally interesting horror, that has the capacity to creep you out and make you jump. And it plays with some unexpected, fascinating themes that will at least give you something to think about. For those who remain and see it through to the end, that is.
I wanted to like it, I really did, especially since the true premise of the game is pretty original. It could lend itself very well to other games in the future. Unfortunately, its fleeting moments of brilliance are lost within the dregs of tired horror tropes, inconsistency with its rules, uninspired gameplay mechanics, and an unfulfilling ending.
There is an awful lot to like about Those Who Remain, but unfortunately, there is also a lot which will leave players deeply frustrated.
The environmental puzzles thrown at you by Those Who Remain really are tough. There’s usually a couple of things you need to do to progress, and it’s usually easy enough. However, there’s always that one item or interaction you need that can be easily overlooked.
The developers of Those Who Remain have crafted a game that excellently takes advantage of atmosphere to enhance the horror. The puzzles are simplistic yet fun, and how this game challenges your moral compass makes it more impactful than many other games in the same genre.
If you’re looking for a new psychological thriller which will make you jump (a lot), Those Who Remain is for you. Despite the pre-launch technical issues, which I believe will get fixed over the coming weeks, the game is held together by its interesting story, tense and exciting stealth segments, fun puzzles, and intriguing moral dilemmas. Although I personally got stuck and lost a few times, the fact the game doesn’t hold your hand and requires you to seek out clues and discover the next step in the narrative yourself is great and very satisfying when you figure it out – not many games do this these days. Thanks to the moral choices, lack of manual saves, and multiple ending trophies, replaying the game multiple times is a must to see everything the game has to offer.
Those Who Remain wants to scare us with its tense atmosphere and great use of light mechanics. And it certainly does.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Those Who Remain certainly won't be for everyone and there will undoubtedly be a good portion of players that take one look at the early, clunky mechanics and outdated character models and turn this off. That's a shame though because if you can get past some of the initial jankiness, Those Who Remain opens up to produce a pretty enjoyable (albeit flawed) Indie horror experience. The sound design is great, there's some nicely placed jump scares in here and the story is engaging enough to actually answer the numerous questions raised early on about what's going on and why this town is blanketed in a nightmarish veil of despair. This won't win any awards for being the best horror of the year, nor is it likely to be a title you return to in a hurry when you finish it. For £15.99 though, if you can look past some of the graphical issues and bugs and take to the story being told, there's enough here to make for an enjoyable enough play-through that's actually worth experiencing despite its flaws.
Dark, disturbing, and intense, Those Who Remain might not be a perfect game, but it’s one horror fans shouldn’t sleep on.
While Those Who Remain has an engrossing narrative, its overplayed stealth mechanics sadly prevent it from bringing anything new to the psychological horror genre. It's still definitely worth a try for those who enjoy horror games - especially games like Layers of Fear and Alan Wake - but just don't expect anything revolutionary.