Those Who Remain Reviews
There is an awful lot to like about Those Who Remain, but unfortunately, there is also a lot which will leave players deeply frustrated.
Those who remain to the end of this game might find some tidbits of enjoyment in the puzzles, or weighing up some pretty heavy narrative decisions. But Those Who Remain too often forgoes its better ideas, for ones derived from better, more well-executed horror games and doesn't execute those very well.
There's a good game buried within Those Who Remain's many shortcomings, but it blunders the final hundred meters of its dash for survival like a sorority girl outrunning a slasher in a forest filled with tree roots. Repetitive scenarios of item-hunting tarnish the more ingenious puzzles you're presented with, horror clichés sour an otherwise wonderfully tense atmosphere and a control scheme from hell drags a promising game back into the shadows, never to be seen again.
Those Who Remain is a puzzle game disguised as a survival horror. It fails to deliver a memorable and thrilling game experience and is based on an old game structure with very few interesting moments.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Those Who Remain is difficult to recommend, but there is an interesting meditation on guilt, redemption, and judgement hidden amongst an unfortunate mass of clunky design and gameplay. It might even be that watching someone else play the game is the best way to enjoy it, so you won't have to fight the controls and frustrating checkpoints. Ultimately, the game itself fails to live up to the potential of its ideas. This is one that should remain on the shelf.
I'm a massive horror gaming fan, so it's disappointing when games continue to take the same paths in a bid to scare players. Those Who Remain is an example of wasting an interesting beginning and stretching it out over the entirety of a full-length adventure. It's just bland and mediocre – not awful – but forgettable, especially when there are so many better horror stories out there to be told.
Those Who Remain is presented as one of the most generic first-person horror adventures of the year and does not manage to be easy to recommend when there are so many works betting on similar ideas with a better execution.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
There's an intriguing and intelligent story to Those Who Remain, but poor checkpointing and awkward chase scenes often spoil the experience.
Although it had some good ideas at the start, Those Who Remain feels like the most cookie cutter horror game possible that barely manages to present anything fresh enough to keep you interested across the six hour playtime.
Those Who Remain is a trivial story about corruption and injustice. Trying to seem like a horror game, it is not able to scare even a schoolboy. Pixel hunting and a weak story cause only disappointment. However, from a small company that has not released a single notable project before, it was hardly worth waiting for pleasant surprises.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Overall, Those Who Remain is fine. Just fine. It’s not terrible and doesn’t deserve to be hate-played or mocked or anything like that. Edward is a fine protagonist, the eerie atmosphere starts out strong and devolves to fine, and the gameplay is fine. I’m sure a lot of work went into this experience (I say this a lot, but I mean it), but unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be anything keeping this game safe from the gaping maw of irrelevance.
Although it often looks cool and has some strong level design, Those Who Remain is tedious, and loaded with boring item hunts and frustrating "stealth" sections/
Those Who Remain deserves major points for creativity of ideas and premise.
With two different endings, Those Who Remain is worth playing through all the way at least once to find out how the story ends. But with so many issues, it’s hard to find the motivation to jump back in to reveal that second ending. There’s a small bit of horror and well-crafted atmosphere on offer, but it’s short lived – and there’s definitely better games to play in the genre. Maybe give it a miss, at least until the technical issues have been (hopefully) fixed.
Those Who Remain won't stay with you for long, but with some good scares and a story that twists more than I expected, it's a decent horror story for an evening.
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.
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.
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.
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.
According to the developer, there are three different endings depending on how you decide the fates of our subjects. I played through the game twice and made totally opposite decisions in both playthroughs, but still ended up with the same ending. It is entirely possible that there is a certain combination of decisions that need to be made to achieve a different ending, but there is absolutely no indication in the game to say what you “should” do. The team behind Those Who Remain clearly have a love for psychological horror. While I believe they have a good starting point, this entry may be better left in the dark.