A Haunting House of Horrors Through a Bear’s Eyes
As a kid, the things that make you really scared aren’t necessarily what you may think they are. Huge monsters with great big teeth and zombies banging on the door rarely worry youngsters, but instead it’s the strange humans that bring the fear; The Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Miss Trunchbull from Ronald Dahl’s, Matilda.
In Out of Sight the two main villains of the piece are human. They – and the game itself – remind of a Dahl story, as you play a blind child trying to escape a scary house.
Sophie’s Perilous Journey
You play a young girl called Sophie who is blindfolded but has lost her eyes. She is being held captive in a huge creepy house by the disturbed, Mother Janna. But Sophie, for reasons unknown, can see through the eyes of her teddy bear. At the start of the game, Sophie escapes with her bear and tries to make her way out of the house before Mother Janna makes the most of her in a creepy ritual.
The narrative found in Out of Sight fails to ever give you too much information and, to be honest, by the time you reach the end of the game, you may well be left with a host of questions. As you progress through the game you find ghosts of other children and it’s these which you’ll want to know more. Were they trying to escape too?
Further, you’ll discover more environmental storytelling through secret rooms and on chalkboards that hint at a larger narrative outside the game you are playing. I liked the storytelling in this game and the writing is interesting, very atmospheric throughout.
Gameplay Mechanics Through Teddy’s Eyes
The gameplay is pretty unique. You see everything from the teddy bear’s eyes, as you move its head slightly left and right of its field of vision. Sophie holds the bear in her hands and moves forward from a first-person perspective. You can move and crouch with the bear in your hands, but nothing else like holding objects or jumping.
And then, when you get to a room, you have a space where you can put the bear down. Now through its eyes, you control Sophie in the third person and she can then jump, push objects, and interact with items. The catch? Well, you’ll see this through the eyes of the bear.
Ingenious Puzzles and Set Pieces
Out of Sight boils down to a series of escape room puzzles, as you are left to work out how to get out of the room using both the first-person and the third-person perspective. These are both ingenious and frustrating in equal measure, but enjoyable to work out. In certain rooms, you can place the teddy bear in multiple viewpoints or use outside forces to create openings in the room.
There are a couple of very clever set pieces that play out, involving a chase sequence and a special power that dissolves objects so that you can get a lift mechanism working. Sometimes the checkpointing is pretty annoying though, and due to this you may well end up doing whole sections multiple times. There are noise traps you need to be wary of as well; mousetraps and hanging bells – touch these twice and you will be caught.
Cartoonish Creepiness
Out of Sight has a great visual look, with its cartoon-like rooms where everything feels overly large because it is all shown from the perspective of the child and bear. It has some nice environmental design and the human villains look scary in their mundanity.
The soundtrack is excellent as well, with the game full of some brilliant audio design in terms of sound effects and environmental sounds. The voice work is radiant all around with some great performances from Mother Janna and the voice actor for Sophie sounds like a real child.
A Clever and Atmospheric Puzzle Horror
Out of Sight is a fairly short experience, running at just a couple of hours in length, but you’ll enjoy the playthrough, even if you may not know what exactly is going on until the end. The gameplay is clever, and if you like puzzle rooms then you will certainly enjoy this. There is some checkpoint annoyance to be had, but two perspectives, and the opportunity to see things through the eyes of a teddy, is superb.
Important Links
Second-Person Horror? Out of Sight Launches its Unique Vision – https://www.thexboxhub.com/second-person-horror-out-of-sight-launches-its-unique-vision/
Buy Out of Sight on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/out-of-sight/9MZSR3XGF5PJ/0010
