Dark Game Review: We Went Back (PC)
Review by Casey Douglass
There are so many
cautionary tales about going back to things you shouldn’t. Never go
back to a lit firework. Never go back to someone who treats you
badly. Yet we’re human, we’re idiots, we go back. We Went Back
is a free sci-fi horror game from Dead Thread Games, and even though
by the end, I wasn’t sure what we “went back” to, or why for
that matter, I’m kind of glad “we” did. Okay, I’m banning
myself from doing “this” again in this review, unless I’m
quoting something I said.
We Went Back
begins with your character inside a stasis-chamber, being helpfully
prompted to Press E to open the thing. The computer system warns of a
life form being detected, and if you’ve cut your teeth on the space horror genre, you'll be itching to see what this life form
is. Unless it’s space fleas of course, in which case you'll just
itch. You move off to explore and find a camera hanging from the
roof. This is an important item; it’s your way of solving the
puzzle that spans the game. You then come to a door that will only
open with the correct password. Opening this is your goal, and the puzzle that you have to solve.
We Went Back is
a game in which you explore the corridors and the items in them,
trying to find clues that will help you enter the correct password.
You only really walk in one direction, and seem to make a circuit of
the space station. You soon find yourself back where you started, but
each time around the circle reveals new things, and these sometimes
come with a jump-scare. The creepy horror atmosphere is handled
nicely and I was pleased that the game also managed to create
insidious and more subtle tension too. The jump-scares got me twice,
one even causing me to shout: “Fuck me!” which doesn’t happen
that often.
It was the more
insidious type of fear that I enjoyed the most. There is a rat in a
science lab that you pass early in the game. When things started
happening on another rotation, I stopped short at that spot and
realised that the rat was gone! This startled me and wowed me in
equal measure as it genuinely felt like an “Ohh!” moment. I’ll
also add, that it isn’t the end of the tale (tail?) as far as the
rat is concerned, so I haven’t robbed the rat of all its mystery.
On a technical level, I
played the game at 1080p, all settings turned to high on my GTX 970.
It ran smoothly but I detected a slight judder to things when I
looked around at times. The game recommends a 960 at minimum so
maybe my 970 is too close to the lower end? Who knows. It wasn’t
any kind of problem, just something I noticed. The graphical style of
the environment and the objects it contains is pleasing. The
life-form that you catch sight of at times was probably the least
impressive visual element. The music/ambient sounds did a fine job of
setting the atmosphere too, and married with the 70's style sci-fi
aesthetic, does help you to feel like you are stuck in some kind of retro-sci-fi space flick.
We Went Back is
a short game. The developer says it’s a 30-50 minute experience. My
first playthrough clocked in at 28 minutes, and I didn’t rush. I
think it’s well worth the download. If I remember rightly, the download size (not install size) was 2.5 gigabytes, so even if you
have a crappy connection like mine, you can soon grab it in a
couple of hours. I think the best thing I can say is that if it was a
30 minute section in a much longer game, I’d have been happy to
play on to see what else might happen. As it stands, it’s a fun 30
minute horror experience that did make me jump, and I’m happy with
that.
Click the link to go to
the We Went Back page on the Steam Store.
Game Title: We
Went Back
Game Developer:
Dead Thread Games
RRP: Free!
Released: 3
April 2020
Platform: PC
